There is so much truth here and my prayer is that I would continually be more Christ-aware and less Derek-aware. By nature I want to fulfill my desires and focus on my wants. Yet I realize that by constantly looking at me, it only serves to increase my longing. So I continue to try to fill a void in my life with that which deep down I know will never fill that void. It is a constant cycle that will only leave me empty and exhausted. In contrast, when I focus on Christ, I realize that it is not about me but about getting to know the Lord of the universe in a deep and intimate way. When I am getting to truly know Him, only then do I find true rest and that longing in my life is satisfied with knowing Him.
Well, Oswald explains this much better than I can. I hope this brings you some encouragement today:
"...and I will give you rest." - Matthew 11:28
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me . . . and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.
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