"Know Thyself"
This was the highly esteemed Greek principle inscribed at the front entrance way to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, which meant “Know Thyself”. The saying referred to the Greek value of understanding human behavior, morals and thought, because it was thought that ultimately to understand oneself is to understand other humans as well. Although there is some truth in the idea that knowing yourself is important, this idea has some serious limitations as well.
Knowing yourself is important if you are to understand what motivates you, what you desire and what you are living for. However, self-examination is not enough and in the end will prove futile if we do not examine ourselves in the light of God’s Word. We must seek to understand the desires and inclination of our sin nature that remain and then seek to apply the truth of Scripture our lives. We must know how our ambitions and desires stack up against what God says is true and discern how they compare to what the Bible says should motivate our lives.
Ultimately, our motivation should be to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord because of what He has done for us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Or as the Apostle Paul said about living for the sake of Christ, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
So what about you? Do you know yourself? If you answer the below questions honestly, (not how you know you should answer them but being honest about what you really think) they may help reveal what is motivating you:
- What are your favorite things to do?
- What do you like to spend time on?
- What are your favorite things to watch?
- What are your hobbies?
- What do you like to spend money on?
- Who are your favorite bands?
- What are the last 5 songs or artists you downloaded on your iPod?
- What are your favorite TV shows?
- What are your favorite movies?
- What are your favorite books?
- What are your favorite shoes?
- What are your favorite clothes?
- What are your favorite games?
- What are your favorite internet sites to go to?
- What do you want to do in life?
- What do you spend most of your free time doing?
- Who do you want to notice you most?
- Who do you most want to impress?
Your answers to the above questions could help reveal what you really love. The question is whether a motivation to live for God because of His great love for you is revealed? Or is a love for the world or the things of the world revealed?
1 John 2:15-17 says,
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions - is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
This scripture confronts us where we live and doesn’t leave us with any wiggle room. If we love the world or the things of the world, the love of the Father is not in us. This is radical. This requires that we know ourselves and that we live to love and please the Lord in what we do.
Obviously, because sin still remains in our hearts, our desires are never completely pure and our motives are most often mixed. The question is not whether we at times live for things other than God – the question is what the over-riding desire of our lives is normally. Do we seek to make each day an act of worship to God, even though we fail and need His grace continuously or are we just coasting along and living for the world and the things of the world without even realizing it? Or perhaps, even more seriously, are we living for the world and comfortable with it?
So, the question for us is, what do you love? Over the next few posts, we are going to address the topic of worldliness. In the meanwhile, I would encourage you to pray and ask the Lord to reveal your heart to you. Where you experience conviction, I would encourage you to repent and trust in the grace of God to enable you to live a life that is pleasing to Him. We can never earn our salvation or keep our salvation by how we live, but how we live is a good indicator of whether we really love God.
(By the way - you may have noticed that this is the same as the CrossCurrent post - Although I wouldn't normally have the same post on two blogs, I think this topic will serve both groups)
