14/01/2026
SELF
What basically is self? Whatever man possess and is able to do without seeking, waiting and depending on God is self. In God’s eyes there is nothing more unclean than "self" it being the mother of all sins. Self is God's greatest enemy, because self always declares independence from Him. He therefore looks upon all self as extremely unclean, totally unacceptable and absolutely useless.
Although the Lord hates "self" so much, the attitude of believers towards it is quite different. They delight in depending on self, cherishing self, and glorying in self.
They are ignorant of their true self; and neither do they know how unclean and corrupt and weak the self is in God’s eyes. They lack the divine insight into the matter.
In short, they do not know themselves. If in such a situation they should make much progress, experiencing an increasing number of successes and victories, their self life will be nourished and grow bigger and it will thus become harder to deny. Each time they do a good deed, they drift a step further from the life of God. A little more power of their own means a little more distance away from the Holy Spirit. More success results in more glory to self, hence prolonging the evil life of self.
God would rather have the believers sin than do good: because the more they sin,the more they shall realize their undependability; the weaker they are, the more they shall see the vanity of self; and the more they fall, the clearer they shall perceive their helplessness and hopelessness. God would rather see believers sin at such a time in their walk because sinning will enable them to know themselves more thoroughly and to depend on the Lord.
God has no other aim than to lead you to the end of yourself that you may know yourself. This is thus the explanation for why, when sometimes you have struggled to overcome, you nevertheless have failed. Oh how you cried, you strove, you fought, you pursued, you prayed, you worked and labored,you employed all kinds of means to overcome sin and reach holiness; yet you ended up in defeat. Although at times you did experience a little victory, such victory was only temporary. You tried your best to sustain it, but it flew away like a bird.
You concluded that you were worse than all, and therefore you could not gain the victory. Such experiences find their meaning in the fact that God was leading you to know your own self. It was because you were not corrupt enough in your own eyes to win the victory. You ought to recognize that it is you yourself who cried, it was you who struggled and fought, it was you yourself who prayed and pursued, that it was you who worked and labored. You were the one active, and it was all for your own self.
How much do you really depend on God? Do you truly know yourself as irredeemable and are thus ready to rely on God? what is the motive for your struggling and pursuing anyway? Is it not for your own self? Yes, you seek to overcome sin and to strive at holiness; but for what? Is it not for the sake of giving you more joy, more glory, and more ground for boasting?
Unless you come to acknowledge your own weakness and deceitfulness, you will continue to fail and fall until you recognize that you are powerless and deserve no honor.
God wants you to be united with Him and to depend on Him totally in all things so that you may do His will and glorify Him. But since you do not know your real character as evidenced by the fact that you continue to consider yourself good and able, you will naturally not rely on God and thus fail to render glory to Him.
You will be self-reliant and self-glorifying. Even now you still do not know how weak you actually are. Hence God allows you to be repeatedly defeated. And with each defeat it tells you you are weak.
Yet you insist on not believing; you still refuse to despair of yourself; you instead continue to be full of hope. You conclude that that defeat of yours was due to the lack of exerting yourself. If you exert yourself more next time, you say to yourself, then you will no doubt overcome.
Many have been your defeats, and many have been the times that you encountered ups and downs. Yet you remain ignorant of how weak you truly are. Up to the very present hour, you are not ready to learn the lesson which God has designed for you.
Having suffered so many defeats, why are you not yet totally despairing of yourself and wholly casting yourself upon God? When will you expect nothing from yourself, committing yourself completely into God's hand? Oh! When that finally does happen, you will depend on Him without planning or doing anything out from yourself and cease from your own work so that God may deliver you.
God today allows His children to struggle and struggle till they realize how futile is their effort. The Lord will wait until their strength is exhausted. Until that very moment will God stretch out His saving hand.
Whenever a believer ceases to trust in himself, God will wholly save him at that moment. For the Lord has no other aim than to show the believer that he is absolutely useless in divine life and work.
Apart from depending on God, the believer has no life.
