Looking Outwards

In his famous devotional book entitled Victorious Living, E. Stanley Jones points out that one of the positive fruits of living a victorious life is that "we will be released from ourselves and our own problems." Such a statement presents a huge challenge for many believers today since it is often discovered that so many are constantly tied up with themselves. When an opportunity to help someone comes along, or if an event with the people of God requires their assistance, often they will decline to get involved because personal problems seem to take precedence over everything else. As Stanley Jones says in his book, "when life presents its opportunity for service, our minds are too much in a whirl to meet it."

When David Livingstone returned from years of working as a missionary in Africa, someone asked him about the condition of his own soul. His reply was: "My soul, my soul, I almost forgot I had a soul." Livingstone had become so absorbed in the lives of other people, so taken with helping them to pursue better lives that he had almost forgotten about his own personal life. For us today, I think this represents a healthy condition, for perhaps in the current spiritual climate of western Christianity there is too much emphasis on introspection and too much absorption with the dealings of self. Just check out the shelves of any Christian bookstore and you'll see my point. Clearly, our faith is not meant to be another form of self-help, but rather a giving over of our lives to the will and purpose of God. In this way, we position ourselves for a life of victory!