Quotes about Self

This side of eternity in this broken world, cursing is the default language of the kingdom of self, but mourning is the default language of the kingdom of God. Which language will you speak today?

It's only when my heart is captured by the awe of God that I will view my identity rightly.

I am still tempted to assess the "good" of a day by whether it pleased me versus whether I pleased God and was loving toward others.

I have been freed, not from God's rule, but from my bondage to me.

One of the most dangerous delusions for each of us is the delusion of our own sovereignty. And one of our most dangerous idols is the idol of control.

You see, the biggest protection against the kingdom of self is not a set of self-reformative defensive strategies. It's a heart that's so blown away by the right-here, right-now glories of the grace of Jesus Christ that we're not easily seduced by the lesser temporary glories of that claustrophobic kingdom of one, the kingdom of self.

The purpose of God's grace is not to make your little kingdom of one work better.

Prayer always forsakes the kingdom of self for the kingdom of God, and for that we all need forgiving, rescuing, and transforming grace.

the identity we assign to ourselves shapes and defines the way that we live our lives.

The war that rages in all our hearts is a war between the awe of God and the awe of self. The war really does somehow turn all of us into glory thieves. Perhaps we commit vertical larceny much more than we realize. Perhaps we quest for personal glory more than we think. Perhaps we take credit for what only God can do more often than we think we do. Perhaps, in subtle idolatry, we give credit to places and things when it really belongs to God.

But here is the reality: all of the horizontal battles are the fruit of a deeper war. The most important war, the one that needs to be won, is not the war they are having with each other, but a war that wages within them individually. Real change is all about winning this war.

When we replace vertical awe of God with awe of self, bad things happen in the horizontal community.