Knowing ourselves

We take a walk up to our neighborhood park almost every evening. On one particular evening a few days back, as I was loading up a few things in our stroller, I noticed a very large rock in the bottom of the stroller's storage pouch. A few thoughts immediately came to mind: How did that get in there… No wonder this stroller is so heavy… How long have I been hauling that thing around… I wonder if this will become a fasting and prayer message. :)

We are all hauling some rocks around (perhaps you would prefer to think about them as planks in your eye). Some of them we don't know about. But there are some that we do know about but we choose to ignore them. Not all the pretenses we put on are to fool others. Some of them are to fool ourselves. I can remember lying about things when I was younger to the point that I didn't remember what the truth was. Our topic for this Wednesday is knowing ourselves. We want to be authentic with ourselves and we want to really get to know the depths of who we are. If we develop a thorough understanding of our strengths and weaknesses, God can more readily use us and Satan's attacks won't catch us off guard. God knows everything there is to know about us. He can help us discover the rocks we don't know about and then He can help us get rid of them. Before Jesus was arrested, Peter swore the following "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." But Jesus knew Peter better than Peter did. And Peter eventually came to understand this (read John 21:15-19). If we really want to know ourselves, it's essential to know that He knows everything about us. We can learn about ourselves from Him. And when we really know our weaknesses, we come to recognize His strength in our lives and the true miracle we are in Him. His power is made perfect in our weakness.

We can also learn a lot about ourselves from others provided we don't let pride get in the way. Proverbs 27:6 says "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses." Let's pray that we know who are friends are and that we can learn about ourselves through them.

Have a great week and a great fast.
Your brother,
Bob