"A Self Centered Life" -2

"For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful." (Psalms 36:2) More importantly, we have this thing about our relationship towards God, as in the lack of fear we have, most directly connected to the lack of relationship that we have with God; the stronger our relationship is with God, the more we fear before His eyes. Living a life that is self centered does not afford a person to invest the time or effort into any strong relationships, especially with God; strong relationships take sacrifice of self and require less of me and more of Him to make it actually matter when it comes to respect and honor; an occasional pray or reading the Word once a week will not amount to much when it comes to knowing God's heart, let alone having any sort of ongoing relationship. Which brings me to the second part of this verse, in relationship to our fear before God, "hateful" is a word that speaks to those that are enemies of God; much as Jesus spoke of trying to serve two masters, which leads to love for one and hate for the other, when we have a life that revolves around self, our life is all about serving ourselves, not God; and who do you think gets the love, and who gets the hate? The only way that we can achieve victory over the flesh is by denying ourselves, which means that we live outside of ourselves, as strange as that might sound. To try and make this seem simple to understand, it is very much the same as when we are building a strong relationship, say with a spouse, or someone you are trying to win over; you build that relationship by living to please that person, not yourself; taking the time to study what they like, and then sitting aside what you might want, for the sake of winning their heart and showing them that you care for their needs and wants. The same is for what is required to please our Lord, because to pick up our cross and follow Him, requires that we deny ourselves, just as He denied Himself and placed Himself on that cross for our sins, which was what we needed to be saved. That said, let me sum this up by saying, it is impossible to please the Lord when we are serving ourselves, because serving ourselves is basically the same as living in the flesh, and this flesh will not be inheriting eternal life... "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:19-21)