While standing in my kitchen and preparing dinner, it was just me and my dog. In the background I had K-Love playing I was trying to use the time by myself to praise and pray. K-Love sure had it right that day. The order of the songs seemed to be just for me. One after the other spoke to my soul telling me which way to pray in the spirit.
Then as I was praying, I told God, "I can't figure this out. I pretty much don't know what to do about anything. All I know is I need you and I need you to help me come to the end of myself."
Honestly those words took me a little bit by surprise. "I need to come to the end of myself." They hit home though. My soul needed to hear the words come out of my mouth. My soul needed to know which way to go and where it stood. My mind, will, and emotions (my soul) have one person in control of them, and that is me. I had to make a stand. I had to tell them what they were going to do. They were going to come to the end of themselves.
WHAT DOES COMING TO THE END OF YOURSELF MEAN
That phrase ran through my head all afternoon and throughout the night while I was sleeping. I would wake up thinking about it. "I need to come to the end of myself." Which has led me to this moment of writing out my thoughts on the phrase and what it means.
Here is my conclusion with some personal experience and scripture. Coming to the end of yourself is where you start choosing to actually leave the lies of the enemy behind and meet up with the truths of God. It's where the rubber meets the road. In other words, its where you take everything that you have learned in the word and take it at its word. Did you hear that? You take the Word at its word. It is where you start living as if the word is just not a theory and grand idea but the complete truth. There are no grey areas. It is where you take yourself out of the equation and allow God to be the determining factor in the equation.
For me, it has taken a lot of humbling. Though, I have had a desire to live a life that is on fire for the Lord, I have found myself needing to go through a lot of refining.
Ephesians 4:22 says, "to put off your former way of life, your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.". To live a genuine life after the Lord, He is going to bring you face to face with yourself. He is going to put you in front of a mirror that doesn't look at your outside appearance, but at your heart. At your motives. At what has been making you tick. At what has brought you to think and act the way you do. To be quite frank, it hurts. It makes you mad at times. It makes you sad at times. Then, you slowly start to appreciate the correction and forwardness of His method. You start to understand that it is the patience, honesty, love, and mercy of God that brings you to truly look at who you are. Because let's face it, if we don’t know the truth about something we don't know what needs to be changed.
The End of Yourself Start with You
I have spoken before of how two years ago I told the Lord out loud to help me throw off everything that hinders me from running my race with Him. He has been doing just that. And just as I said before, it has hurt. It has made me reevaluate some of my motives. It has made me search deep within to start looking at roots that needed to be pulled. It has made me look at anything that I have been holding onto instead of laying it at the altar. It has made me reevaluate anything that I felt like I could control without him.
The moment I said, "I need to come to the end of myself", I was able to finally realize the squeezing and refining he has been doing has been working. Me Myself is what has held him back from so much. John 3:30 says, "He must become greater, and I must become less". Though I felt before like I was humble and strong, e helped me to realize that there were some areas that I needed to flush out so that he could fill them up with himself.
None of us can live this life on our own. We need God. He is the one that hems us in on all sides to protect us. (Psalm 139:5) He is the one that goes before us in the battle and fights for us. (Second Chronicles 20) He is the one that parts the sea. (Psalm 38:13) He is the one that knew us before we born. (Jeremiah 1:5)
Coming to the end of what we think we deserve, what we think we want, what we think others should be doing is the beginning of ourselves. Sounds weird doesn't it. Because here this article is supposed to be defining the term "coming to the end of yourself". But without God we don't know who we are. Since the beginning of time Satan has used lies to mask the possibilities that can only come through living completely for God. He doesn't want God's people to know the freedom and peace that comes from surrendering everything to God and letting him mold your life into what he planned for it to be. So, he uses your situations, your vulnerabilities, and your fleshly habits to develop lies that will hinder you from seeing the truth. Satan is the king of lies.
So, coming to the end of what you thought you needed and deserved is the beginning of truly starting to see what God planned for you. Surrendering your character, your desires, your motives, and who you are into the hands of God gives him the doorway into your heart. This allows revelation and freedom to pour into your life. First Corinthians 2:14 says, "The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." God wants us to come to the end of ourselves so that the rose-colored glasses are taken off and we see that we need him. So that we are not walking around like the natural man in the flesh, but we are looking everything through the eyes of Christ.
The End of Yourself is the Beginning of Freedom
Freedom is truly at hand. Freedom to live in the will of God. Letting go of the past, the hurts, the selfish ambitions, the worry, jealousy, the hate, the division allows you to not carry the burden of me, me, me around. Yes, this world and the people in it will definitely let you down at times. But God never leaves anything to waste. He never leaves any stone unturned. Every stone thrown at you, if you allow him to do it, can be used as an altar of remembrance. When we take ourselves out of the equation of being able to handle everything, or thinking we know everything, we allow the ultimate creator to create a beautiful story of redemption and love. That is freedom.
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