Our Illusion Of Self

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.  And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the begining, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have preeminence.
Colossions 1: 15-18 NKJV

How much control do we feel that we have over our own lives?  In fact, isn't one of our greatest worries over our life just how we will manage to get through each day, as if it were we ourselves who are in control of such things?  Christian, if our Lord wills it, our very life can and will be taken from us in an instant!  Now, how much control do you think you have over your life?  We often go to God with requests for provision and protection, yet we still carry with us a dangerous independent streak. Our own catch phrases such as self confidence and self confidence attest to this error in our own thinking.  For how can we have confidence in ourselves if, ultimately, we had nothing at all to do with our own creation?  I can see our argument that we are truly independent would be valid if not for one vital fact.  It is God who created us, who breathed the breath of life into each and every living thing.  And yet we continue to seek our Lord with our various requests, all the while maintaining that we who He created are independent of all which He created.  This is the illusiion of our independent self.  In Colossions 1, the apostle Paul delivers a smackdown to anyone who might feel that they are truly independent.  As Paul put it, "All things were created through Him and for Him."  This "Him" is none other than our Lord Christ Jesus.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in our own image, according to our own likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
Genesis 1:26 NKJV

Yet, although through Christ all things were created, it is we who our Lord God has bestowed dominion over His creation.  Of course, there is a huge difference between being a truly independent being and simply having dominion over our Lords creation.  Somewhere along the way, our programing got skewed just a bit.  For the sake of this discussion it must be noted that God is the ONLY one who is truly independent of any other.  He is influenced by and contingent upon no other.  THAT is independence!  Feeling independent and at the same time seeking the assistance of another is NOT independence.  God is self sufficient and lacks nothing, which one of us can make that claim?  So, it is we who carry on our illusion of our independent self.  I will note that it is this assumption of ours which runs against everything God is.  It is in our best interest to keep things in the perspective of how they were created.  Our Lord the creator, and we His children.  For this is the way He intended it to be.

~Scott~