Self-Help Is Anything But

"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." (16: 25, KJV)

"Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self." (Matthew 16: 25, The Message)

The more that I have been research the self-help movement, and self-help books like Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most devious and poisonous cults I have ever encountered, I began to see a trend inescapable

All of this self-help really was not helping. Well, aside from giving the book writers more money, the whole self-help dynamic is quite pathetic as well as disappointing.

All of this fascination with ourselves is precisely the problem.

We do not like what we see in ourselves, and yet we think that we can improve what we see.

The problem is that if we are broken and need repairing, what gives any of us the idea that we can improve ourselves in the first place?

"Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come." (Romans 5: 14)

Death reigns in all of mankind because of Adam, but the second Adam arrived, so that in Christ we no longer have to be dead in our trespasses, but we can live and sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2: 1-6)

When we look at what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, in that they believed that they could know right from wrong and live without God directing and supplying them, we find a perfect example of self-help, in that they sought out the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and ate of its fruit, convinced that they coud figure everything out on their own.

Instead, the whole creation and fell, and with it the glory of God was taken from man.

To this day, even in Christian circles, men and women are trying to perfect and improve themselves, when in fact all they can do is amplify the dead failure of the frail flesh and dead spirit.

Self-help does not help ourselves, for ourselves are beyond help. Self-help is not help at all , but when we realize that our selves are beyond help, then we can help ourselves (and ourselves) by receiving a new self, Himself!

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17, KJV)

"This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day - our standing in the world is identical with Christ's." (1 John 4: 17, The Message)