Getting Over Yourself

Last Sunday I mentioned that I just finished a terrific new book by Dean Inserra, Pastor of City Church in Tallahassee, Florida.  It’s called, Getting Over Yourself:  Trading Believe-in-Yourself Religion for Christ-Centered Christianity. Here are a few key thoughts:

There’s a popular message supposedly aligning with Christianity, but which seeks little more than motivation, empowerment, and personal fulfillment.  “These ambitions have become a central focus for many North American Christians” (p. 20).  This new teaching is centered on “the idea that God is ‘in my corner’ waiting to give me my ‘breakthrough’” (21).

Inserra acknowledges that there’s a grain of truth in these plati­tudes—and that’s what makes them dangerous.  Yes, God wants us to experience the “abundant life”; but no, God being for us does not assure of us worldly gain (22).  The trending me-focused message is characterized by both avoidance of Jesus’ call to self-denial and a disregard for eternal gain, heavenly blessing.

This popular spiritual narrative is all about you:  your dreams, your destiny, your untapped potential, your unleashed vision of victory.  “The primary error of the new prosperity theology is that it places the individual in the center of every situation and places God in orbit as a sort of powerful yet controllable satellite” (p. 35).

But the one true God revealed in Scripture has something SO much better for us than this kind of self-centered blather.

Maturing Christians focus on a different prize; they care about what people think of them only in terms of how it repre­sents Jesus (p. 45).  Inserra summons us to leave earthly gain in God’s hands and echo Paul, “I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14-15).

Friends, don’t fall for the twisted teaching that “it’s all about you.”  God’s promises are “yes” in Christ, not in the desires of this world.