Obsession with Self

Read Romans 8

In the Amplified Bible version, the additional phrase used to amplify “flesh” is “living a life that caters to sinful appetites and impulses”. In The Message version, “Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.”

The scripture today is straightforward. It sounds simple, yet so challenging to live out. Without us recognizing, sometimes our self is becoming our idol. We are more consumed with ourselves, what we need, what we are entitled of, what will make us happy, what we can do, and many more. It is not bad to think about ourselves; we are to value our body and well being, intentionally living fully alive, mind, body, and spirit. What’s not good is when we are making “self” our idol, when it is replacing God in our life. The more we think we are self-sustaining and capable on our own, the more we will ignore God.

The Message version says it clearly enough, “Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God.”

Where is your focus?