Matthew 16:23-25 Then Jesus said to his
disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take
up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life[a] will
lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
The more
we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over,
the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and
millions of 'little Christs', all different, will still be too few to express
Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a
novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense
our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to 'be
myself' without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more
I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and
natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call 'Myself' becomes merely the
meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot
stop. What I call 'My wishes' become merely the desires thrown up by my
physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts or even suggested
to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night's sleep will be the real
origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and
discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway
carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own
personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a
person as I like to believe: most of what I call 'me' can be very easily
explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His
Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.
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