Self-realization is the wrong focus

OC writes (June 10) that if we ask for things from God from a desire for self-realization, we are asking amiss, as in Jas 4:

"You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives..."

He comments, "The more you realize yourself the less will you seek God." I truly wonder about this. Even Oswald Chambers isn't infallible. But I have also thought in the past that seeking to "know thyself" is truly depressing without God. What I discover as I know myself deeper is depressing (usually), since I admit that I am a sinner. I never stop finding new depths of evil in me, if I look closely. We are so inundated with propaganda from what I call the Disney philosophy. (Watch one of their 90s era movies, like Pocahontas. "It's all about ME.")

Nevertheless, it's hard to find anything in the Bible encouraging us to make such an effort to self-realize. Colossians 3:2,3, for example, says the opposite:

"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

Paul encourages us to set our minds on heavenly things, which certainly cannot include myself. And in Romans 6:6 Paul says,

"For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin."

The most important thing we must seek to realize, then, is Christ. So Paul says in Philippians,

"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord"

This doesn't say we shouldn't know ourselves. It just points to a better way. But it is true that knowing myself draws me away from God, as OC asserts? I'm not going to answer this, for I am tired of intellectualizing. I'm just going to make less effort to know myself, and more to know Christ. How?

That's a good question. Probably I need to spend more time in solitary prayer, as Jesus did, more time in ministry, as Jesus did, and definitely more time in Bible study, and make a little more effort to memorize scripture, at least a few verses each week, since I know Jesus had plenty of verses memorized. I think today I must memorize James 4:1-9:

"¹What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? ²You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. ³When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

⁴You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? ⁶But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble."

⁷Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up."

Lord, I don't want to "grieve, mourn and wail." I don't want to be humble. By myself, I want to be a friend of the world, at least in the sense that Jesus was "a friend of sinners." But please break my heart those you love. Show me how to pray for them, preach to them and win them lost—not by effort or clever words, but by lifting up Jesus. Take away my penchant for intellectualizing and fill me with your Holy Spirit. IJNA