Self-Examination

Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus – Not the Logs!

Sometimes I fail to take time to just stop and be still with the Lord, meditating on just what it means that, “I was sanctified, I was justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.1 Corinthians 6:1-11 NIV


It is truly amazing to know that Almighty, holy God set me apart for Himself, which is what it means to be sanctified. I am holy – set apart – separated from those who do not know Him; set apart from those who have not been washed clean in and by the shed blood of Jesus.

Why have I been set apart? Not because of anything that I have done or could ever do, but because of the finished work of Jesus on Calvary’s cross. When Jesus gave His very life up for me, He had faith that His sacrifice of Himself would pay the price, the penalty, for my sins – past, present, and future! And because someone told me about His amazing atoning sacrifice for me and I believed in this Good News through the God-given gift of faith, I have been justified: I have had my sins washed away by the blood of Jesus! For to be justified means that it is the same as if I had never sinned. To be justified means that I am just, no longer guilty of the wrongs that I have committed; I am innocent before the throne of God! In His eyes, it is as if I had never sinned!

Praise be to God in Christ Jesus our Lord! My Abba! Father loved me so much that He allowed His only Son to suffer an excruciating death for me, for you, for all of humanity, that we might believe and be washed clean in His blood and saved from the eternal death that is the penalty of our sin! And when I accept Jesus’ gift of perfect atonement for me by faith, I am granted eternal life, a life that is meant to be lived with abundant love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and, self-control. I cannot help but think of Psalm 27:1:

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Emotions & Recovery – Self Awareness

A. The importance of emotional self-awareness.
In a 1992 SRI Gallup study, commissioned by the Knox Area Rescue Ministry, six critical “life themes” were identified in the lives of people who recovered from homelessness. Among the most important was the “Self-Awareness ” theme, which they described in this manner:

Persons who are high on the Self-Awareness theme are in touch with their own emotions. They can name the feelings that are surging through themselves… As they grow, they can discuss their emotions with other people and they will tend to express them to other people rather than keep them inside. Then, they can talk about how they feel about their own life and its hurts; they can say that and then ask for help in making the corrections. They can own the bad things that have happened to them in their life, and they can know the good feelings that they want to achieve.

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Self-Forgiveness

An alcoholic woman told me, “My dad was always drunk and in and out of prison.” She sniffled and continued, “I hated him for that. Now I’m doing the same thing to my family.” She leaned over my desk, sobbed and said, “I can’t forgive myself.”

A drug addict told me he couldn’t forgive himself because his use left him with short-term memory loss and in financial ruin.

Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” John 19:30 He never said it is finished except for alcoholics and other addicts.

Do you identify with them? What is at the root of this lack of self-forgiveness?

Maybe you’ve done something awful. You asked God for forgiveness and He forgave you (1 John 1:9). However, you think you need to punish yourself anyway. God doesn’t need your help. Jesus paid the price in full for your forgiveness.

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Dealing with Body Image

Have you struggled to deal with body image issues in your eating disorder recovery? Do you have a difficult time looking at yourself in the mirror? Even though it may be difficult to do, it’s important to address the issue of body image in eating disorder recovery.

Have you struggled to deal with body image issues in your eating disorder recovery? Do you have a difficult time looking at yourself in the mirror? Even though it may be difficult to do, it’s important to address the issue of body image in eating disorder recovery.

Remember that this is a distressing time for you and that your perspective of things might be different, so the image you see in the mirror might be distorted in your mind. Therefore, when others assure you that you are not fat, they may be right. Consider believing what they have to say.

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But What Am I Guilty Of?

I would almost make a presumption that almost everybody in the world knows what guilt is and that they are guilty of something in their life. Who has not told a “white lie” in order to make things look a little cleaner than they actually are? I admit to telling more white lies than I can count and I am only 36 at the moment. And even if you were to argue that you are not guilty of anything, have I got some shocking news for you. According to the Bible, everybody is guilty of sin. In fact, when we are born, we are born into a sinful world and we automatically become part of that sinful world. (Isaiah 53:6 New Living Translation (NLT)

All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10 RSV)

Romans 3:23
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

And the Bible tells us that if we think we have not sinned that what we are indeed doing is calling God a liar –
1 John 1:10 King James Version
(KJV) If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

What we are guilty of depends on how we were raised, what we were taught to believe in school, at home, and our other places of meeting. But the Bible makes it clear that all sin is equal. There is no one sin greater than another like we as humans class them as, save one special sin. According to the New Testament, Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the ONLY sin that is not forgivable.

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The 10 Commandments

Exodus 20:1-17 KJV
1 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

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You May Not Hate But…. Do You Love?

John 8:12 NRSV
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

I am by nature probably more like a chicken than any other animal on the planet. I like to wake up with the sun and go to sleep with the sun. In the winter, I like to sleep for long periods of time in the darkness and in the summer, I am up with the light and energetic until the darkness comes. For me, all this is is a quirk of physiology or training or something. It makes it difficult for me to entertain others long into the night because I begin to drop off after nine, but other than that, it is simply a personal eccentricity. We all have them.

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Do You Practice Humility?

Humility is not something regularly taught these days. Preachers focus on salvation, on relationships, and some focus on integrity (though not many). But it’s been a long time since I heard someone teach on humility. Peter has an interesting take on humility. He states that it is the foundation of all relationships: “You must cloth yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another.” For me, there are three aspects to humility when I deal with those around me.

1 Peter 5:5-9 NRSV

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New Year’s Resolutions

written January 1st but applicable to any new beginning

Today is traditionally a day of resolutions: I will eat more healthy. I will exercise more. I will spend more time with my family. To be honest, I’m just horrible with resolutions. Even if I make just one, I can do that one thing regularly… for a while… and then life comes crashing in and I find that my resolution (and all my good intentions) go right out the window. I just can’t handle looking at life over a long period of time. Too many things happen that make demands upon me… demands on my time, on my emotions, on my energy, on my focus.

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Making Choices

Romans 6:16-18 NRSV
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

The Lord has been talking to me a lot lately about how I make decisions. There has been instilled within me a strong Puritan work ethic: God only helps those who help themselves. And while I do believe that Christians are commanded to work and to work hard (and often), I think that my own worldview has been corrupted with the idea of American self-determination.

Romans is an interesting book. Of all the books, this is the one that is the least personal. All of Paul’s other epistles are letters written to churches with whom he had personal relationships, but the letter to the church at Rome was written to people he had never met. Thus, Paul takes the time to outline the doctrines of Christianity. In essence, this–even more than the other epistles–is a book of the Bible written to us for this time, a church which Paul never meets and a church which desperately needs the anchor of correct Christian thought and practice.

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