Friday, August 28, 2020

day no. 15,285: we are not our own experts

"God is making us spell out our own souls... We have to get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves, it is the last conceit to go. The only One Who understands us is God." - Oswald Chamber, My Utmost for His Highest

In math class, they make you show your work. You have to spell it out. You must put on paper for everyone to see what it is going on in your head. God is doing a similar thing with us. He is making us spell out our souls. Not just working out in our own heads, where errors go unchecked or mistakes are harder to track, but on paper, in checkbooks and calendars and facial expressions and tones of voice and social media posts and likes and what not. God wants us to put it down on paper so that we can begin to see where we made our mistakes, where we got off track, where things went wrong. Because if they've gone off track, they can't be fixed by simply pushing ahead. They are mended by going back to where the error occurred and correcting it right there in order to make progress actually possible. Plowing ahead in the wrong direction is not progress. It is forward motion, but it isn't aimed at the right destination, so in fact, any steps made in that direction are merely steps which will need to be retraced if any true progress is to be achieved.

All that to say, we don't discover ourselves by looking inside, we realize ourselves by spelling it out before God and others in order to receive correction and instruction in order that we may truly discover who we really are. 

We are not our own experts.

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