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Our belief today – and it is deeply rooted in everything – is that people misbehave for lack of self-esteem and because they have too low a view of themselves.
So, although he knows himself to be the chief of sinners, that fact is not going to stop him from doing the things that he is called to do.
If I think of myself as a sinner, as someone who is filled with pride, someone filled with lust and anger and greed and all the things that Paul says he is filled with, I have no confidence. No, because we are judging ourselves. We set our standards and then we condemn ourselves. The ego will never be satisfied that way. Never!
Paul is saying something astounding. ‘I don’t care what you think and I don’t care what I think.’
us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself
less.
Gospel-humility is not needing to think...
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In fact, I stop thinking about myself. The freedom of self-forgetfulness. The blessed rest that only self-forgetfulness brings.
gospel-humble person is a self-forgetful person whose ego is just like his or her toes. It just works.
a person who is devastated by criticism is putting too much value on what other people think,
When someone whose ego is not puffed up but filled up gets criticism, it does not devastate them. They listen to it and see it as an opportunity to change.
every single day, we are in the courtroom. Every single day, we are on trial. That is the way that everyone’s identity works.
the verdict leads to performance.
verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do not have to do things just to build up my résumé. I
The performance never gets the ultimate verdict.
performance. How can that be? Here is Paul’s answer: he is out of the courtroom, he is out of the trial. How? Because Jesus Christ went on trial instead.
So I simply need to ask God to accept me because of what the Lord Jesus has done.
Then, the only person whose opinion counts looks at me and He finds me more valuable than all the jewels in the earth.
You are getting sucked back in. All I can tell you is that we have to re-live the gospel every time we pray. We have to re-live it every time we go to church. We have to re-live the gospel on the spot and ask ourselves what we are doing in the courtroom. We should not be there. The court is adjourned.
‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’, and ‘You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased’.6 Live out of that.
