Spiritual Examen : Seeing Myself as God Sees Me

As we continue to explore the seven deadly sins, we need to lay
some groundwork. You may be asking, "What good will looking
at my sinfulness do me?"  Won't it be discouraging? What if I
get discouraged and give up? 

The important thing to remember in all this is that we are not
just routing out our sins as if we were finding rotten easter
eggs hidden in a garden. The point is to rid ourselves of
the false image of ourselves that cloaks our relationship
with sinful attitudes and habits. No one can argue that
we should agree with God and that His view of us is
the correct view, right?  So let us begin by asking God
for His view of us!

Heavenly Father, please show me how You view me.
Just as You looked at the seven churches in the book
of Revelation, pointing out both their strengths and their
shortcomings, please reveal to me what pleases you
about my life and what can be improved. Show me
what is hurting You as You watch me, and, show me
where I fail to see the effects of sin hurting me.
It is easy for You to hate sin because You
clearly see what it does to us. Give us that same clarity!

When I see that I have been entertaining such
dangerous and repugnant company it will be so much
easier to allow You to take action in my heart.
Please show me what I need to know, ...I know you
will do it in a way that is as easy as possible for me
to accept. Its ok if it gets hard. I love You and trust
Your hand and Your counsel in my life. Amen!

Part of what is amiss is that we too readily trust
our own opinion of ourselves. How we look at
something is often caught up in how it affects me,
what benefits it seems to have for me, and what
will be the easiest and least invasive route for
me to get to where and what I want. But Jesus
did not live this way. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say
to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord,
but only what he sees the Father doing. For
whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
....
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my
judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the
will of him who sent me. ..If I alone bear witness about
myself, my testimony is not deemed true. There is another
 [John the Baptist]who bears witness about me, and I know
that the testimony that he bears about me is true... But the
testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the
works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very
works that I am doing, bear witness about me that
 the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself
borne witness about me. (John 5: 19, 30-32. 36-37).

Jesus lived before His Father in utter simplicity and trust.
He did not hold his own opinion. He only looked to God.
There was no pressured sense of Himself that He felt compelled to
"live up to." He listened to and lived for His Father alone. He
did not need to look to others to see what their opinion
was, He simply walked with God.

So let us put ourselves in the hands of God and ask
Him to show us how He views us: after we get
acclimated to the downgrade, we can enjoy the
upgrade :), for we are far worse than we know,
and yet, far more holy children of God than we can
take in.  Let the huge weight be lifted from your
shoulders: just be who God made you to be,
nothing more, or less!

The Seven Deadly Sins or What I Can't Bear to Face about Myself X7

During the season of  lent, traditionally a time of self-examining and turning to God,
it behooves us to discuss things that one rarely ever hears preached on, usually
because they would make the preacher unpopular, or because the truth is not
something everyone wants to hear.

Human beings are quite predictable. Patterns develop in our lives quite
easily without our recognizing it. Think about how we always gravitate
toward the same seat at church; always seem to pick the same snacks
at the store; always seem to follow a certain series of tasks when we
get out of bed, and when we get ready for bed!

The enemy of our souls takes advantage of our predictability and
once we our enslaved to a bad habit, we are seriously held back
from entering fully into our freedom as sons and daughters of God.
Sin entrenches our direction down a path that we don't want to go,
and those sins start with bad attitudes.

Remember two words: inclination and  repetition. We have underlying
attitudes that incline us toward sin, and once we have gone down
that rode a few times repetitively, we forget that there are holier
and happier routes. We repeat our sins over and over until
they are firmly entrenched.  But how to be rid of them?

Underlying all sin, never mind the seven deadly ones, are
deadly attitudes. When we start to think about this it gets
uncomfortable really quickly and we can say we don't care (?),
we can say that our sins are forgiven (they are); we can say that all this is too
negative and discouraging, (as if denying the problem will make it
go away?) or we can use what we learn to find out where
are souls are leaking righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Ghost.
Wise spiritual guides down through the centuries have
recognized that these seven players are what most often
keep us from entering the World Series of  Truly Loving Jesus
on Team "Christ in Us the Hope of Glory."

If we understand where we fall short, we are that much closer to
knowing what we need to put on the altar of God. We are sinners:
not just before we are Christians, but after, also! God is not
surprised by the state of our souls, so seeing our self as He sees
us, and  knowing that His grace is big enough to fix us, should not
be cause for us to want to back away from a deep inward journey.

The point is not to navel-gaze, but to be set free so that
we might more unself-consciously gaze at Him! Sin is a fat
man in a room full of lithe spiritual worshippers! It keeps us
from decreasing and thus makes it harder for Him to increase.
He is a Gentleman and will not evict our sinful "alters" and
altars  unless we allow Him, too. He deserves all our spiritual space.

When we invite Jesus in, we should not make Him live with
the seven deadlies seated on seven thrones within us!

So let us begin by naming the 7 deadly sins: Pride, greed,
envy, anger, lust, gluttony and sloth. Throughout history,
there have been slightly different variations, but these
are ripe to begin with. See how the mention of them,
immediately starts an interesting inner process? :)

Tomorrow we launch in!