12 Sermon Illustrations on Self-Centeredness

A seamstress whom I know was sewing in the home of a wealthy woman in one of the aristocratic suburbs of Boston. She was there every day for nearly a week, when finally her patience became exhausted and she left the house never to return.

She said she could stand being fed on crackers and milk every day at the noon meal, but when she heard the mistress of the house at the telephone ordering half a chicken for her pet dogs she could withhold her wrath no longer.

Of course, the good woman of the house was sweetly unconscious of the absurd comparison between the dogs’ food and the food for the seamstress. Had she had any sense of the meanness of her conduct, she never would have telephoned that message within the hearing of the seamstress.

The truth of the matter was that her heart--as much as she had left of it--was all wrapt up in her pet dogs, and her interest in human beings had become as a matter of habit, simply a question of the amount of service they could render her. She is probably whining to-day about the seamstress who didn’t know her place and who was jealous of people who had means.--GEORGE W. COLEMAN, “Searchlights.”

"Outland" cartoon has Opus the penguin, Bill the cat and the Cockroach sitting in a swamp. Oliver Jones, a brainy twerp, is rowing up to them in a small boat.

Oliver: "I've spent all week on the calculations. There'z no mistakes!

GALILEO WAS WRONG!!

The world ... revolves around ME."

(He flings the research papers to the winds, and rows off.)

Opus, calling out to the retreating figure: "Boy, are YOU ever wrong!"

(Each one is sitting in the swamp, concluding:)

Opus: "It goes around ME!!"

Bill the cat: "Me!"

Cockroach: "Me, Me, MEEEEE!"

Pam was a young woman who was active in a Campus Life Club I ran some years ago, and she was very lonely. She used to call different ones of us leaders two or three times a week. Pam felt like she was unattractive. She had never had a date, and she had problems at home. And she usually called to talk about her problems and how depressed she was. Until that week she called me and I said to her, “Pam, don't call me again until you've carried out an assignment I'd like to give you.” Well, I encouraged her to go to the local senior citizens' facility and volunteer for one night. She was hesitant, but she did it.

Well, that night she read to those folks and she walked with them and listened to their stories. When she was leaving, some of them asked, “When will you be back?” Well, she hadn't planned to come back. But their encouragements caused her to tell them, “Uh, next week.” She did go back the following week - and virtually every week after that through the rest of high school. Last I knew, she'd become a doctor. Once she started to live for some people who needed her, Pam didn't call much anymore. She didn't need to. She was too busy making a difference.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about “Escaping The 'Me' Monster.”

The “me” monster. That's the tendency to think about myself most of the time, and it's the main reason Pam was down so much of the time, and maybe you are. There's nothing like hurt and pain and pressure to turn us into self-focused people. Too often, life is about my needs, my issues, my problems, my agenda, my feelings, my load. But a life of self-focus or self-pity or self-centeredness is just not how we were wired to live, especially if we belong to Jesus Christ.

Listen to our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 5:15. It says that Jesus “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again.” Notice “no longer for themselves.” Now that might be a word God knows you need to hear right now because, without you even realizing it, the “me” monster has been consuming too much of your time and your attention and your conversation.

My friend Pam learned something when she began to focus on the needs of others rather than on her own needs - that the most satisfying times in our lives are the times when we're living for others. Take Christmas, for example. Think about the joy you experience in giving, sometimes sacrificially, to someone you love. Or that time when you went out of your way to help someone you really didn't have time to help. Or if you've ever been on a missions trip. Remember the deep sense of fulfillment you felt from sacrificing to serve some people who needed you? Life's golden moments aren't the ones that are about us - they're about others!

So, if you've been feeling down, you need to do what I challenged that young woman to do - find someone who needs you and do what you can to reach out to them. It may be a hurting neighbor or co-worker or fellow student, someone in the hospital, someone who's recently lost a job or even someone they love, maybe your pastor or a Christian worker you know, or someone who is going through the same kind of valley you've been through. Your pain can become God's powerful tool to understand and encourage someone who's experiencing that same kind of hurt. No one could help them like a wounded healer - someone like you.

All the way to the cross - even on the cross - Jesus kept thinking of others. If He's your Lord, then that's supposed to be your focus, too. When you live your life asking, “Who needs me today?” you can finally escape the depressing clutches of the “me” monster.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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A 16-year-old boy in our community hit his mother in the head with a pipe, used a high-powered rifle to kill the deputy who answered the 911 call, staged a day-and-a-half standoff with a SWAT team, and then ended the ordeal by shooting himself in the head. This happened in the suburbs. He was the son of one of the county’s district attorneys.

My wife and I saw five minutes of an MTV program that documented one college girl’s quest to become a Playboy model. She had already been published and was trying to get another gig with the magazine. After her photo shoot, the editor told her that she needed to lose some weight and tone up a little more. She left the studio muttering something like, “I guess I’ll have to work hard and tone up . . . this is my dream.”

SPIRITUAL FORMATION HAPPENS

These stories illustrate a comment C. S. Lewis made in MERE CHRISTIANITY about spiritual formation:

“Taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices,

all your life long you are slowly turning that central [part of

you] into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either

into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other

creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state

of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and

with itself . . . Each of us at each moment is progressing to the

one state or the other.”

Robert Mulholland, author of Invitation to a Journey, agrees:

“We are being shaped into either the wholeness of the image of

Christ or a horribly destructive caricature of that image —

destructive not only to ourselves but also to others, for we

inflict our brokenness upon them . . . We become either the

agents of God’s healing and liberating grace or carriers of the

sickness of the world . . . Spiritual formation is not an

option!”

Every member of the next generation is being spiritually formed for better or worse. Right now, America’s 73 million-plus 0- to 22-year-olds are either being formed in a God-ward or self-ward direction.

SPRINGS OR SEWERS?

The Bible teaches that there are two kinds of people in the world: those whose innermost beings are becoming springs of living waters that pour love for God and others into their worlds, or those whose lives are becoming sewer drains that suck in whatever comes along, sustaining and spreading the virus of self-centeredness that infects so much of their worlds already. Jesus and Paul both used a word to describe the central part of every person. The Greek word koilia literally refers to “the hidden, innermost recesses of the human body,” but also became a metaphor for one’s “innermost being” or heart.

In John 7:37-39, Jesus paints a portrait of the soul that is being transformed in a God-ward direction. He invites soul-thirsty folks to come to and drink of Him, believing in Him as He is offered in the Gospel. Those who do so are given the promise that “out of his heart [koilia] will come rivers of living water,” referring to the promise of God’s indwelling and overflowing Holy Spirit. According to Jesus, God-ward spiritual formation happens when hearts by faith fill up on the love of God as it is offered in the Gospel and then overflow with love back to God and out to others (Matthew 22:36-40).

Paul, however, uses the same Greek word for “innermost being” to give us a vivid picture of the soul that is forming a self-ward orientation. In Philippians 3:19, he says that “enemies of the cross” are people whose “god is their belly [koilia].” In Romans 16:18, the apostle again describes these sewer souls as persons who “do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites [koilia].” People who do not embrace the message of the cross are being shaped to worship and serve the cravings of their own vacuous hearts. Our souls are either filled to overflowing with the Spirit of God or they become our god. The spiritual formation that is happening to us either results in soul springs that are pouring themselves out for the sake of God and others or sewer souls that attempt to consume God and others for the sake of self.

WHERE DO WE START?

The soul of every young person is being shaped into a vessel that is either honorable or dishonorable to the One who made them in His image (2 Timothy 1:20-21), and the majority of them are headed for trouble. Let this statement of the obvious make you look at every child and teenager with enough compassion to ask, “How is this one being formed?” The rate of self-ward spiritual formation seems to be growing exponentially, while the rate of God-ward spiritual formation seems to trudge along. What will our culture look like 10 or 20 years from now? Ponder the problem enough to have it overwhelm you. Are you going to throw your hands up in resignation, or will you ask God how He would like to use you to stem the tide of self-ward spiritual formation through relationships with younger folks who are in your sphere of influence?

What about your church? Are the teenagers in your church being shaped in a God-ward direction, or is the culture squeezing them into its mold, too? Has your church spent more of its time and energy on managing programs than on making room for the Spirit to shape the souls of students? I have too many sad stories to tell about students who grew up in youth ministries that I directed, but are not continuing to be formed in a God-ward direction today.

In Psalm 78, Asaph tells us that key to God-ward spiritual formation in the present generation is the God-ward spiritual formation of preceding generations. The parents and adult leaders of the current godless generation were themselves “a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God” (verse 8). Psalm 78 is a wake-up call to parents and other adults whose own innermost beings are sewer souls rather than springs of living water. It starts with us.

START BY BEING A NORMAL CHRISTIAN

The late Jack Miller once said that “the normal Christian is one who thirsts for Jesus, drinks of Jesus, overflows with Jesus.” The God-ward spiritual formation of the next generation begins when we as parents and adults begin to thirst for Jesus, drink of Jesus, and overflow with Jesus.

Look again at John 7:37-39. Jesus urges us as parents and church leaders to first consider our heart’s thirst. This requires us to EXAMINE our hearts, seeking to understand what we desire and how we tend to satisfy those desires apart from Christ. With what are you filling the emptiness of your heart these days? Is it Jesus, or something or someone else? Our kids will learn how to recognize their own thirsts and bring them to Jesus as they watch us do the same.

Jesus then invites us to drink of Him. “Come to me,” “drink,” and “believe in Me” all describe a desperate dependence on Jesus as the only source of spiritual satisfaction. Are you EMBRACING Jesus as He is offered to you in the Gospel for the satisfaction of your heart’s deepest desires? Our kids know where we go to satisfy our thirsty souls, and they will acquire our tastes, for better or worse.

Jesus promises that those who are aware of their thirst and drink only from His supply will overflow with His Holy Spirit. Not only will our hearts be sated by the Spirit, they will also become fountains of life to others as our faith EXPRESSES itself through love for God and for the people around us (Galatians 5:6)! Is your life flooding your world with love for God and people? Your kids can tell you.

A few years ago I took some of our church’s middle-schoolers to an inner-city housing project during a spring break service trip. A medical-equipment delivery man told us, “Be careful around here. This apartment complex is full of crack addicts. I get offers every day.” We saw little children, even toddlers, running around unsupervised on grounds that were covered in broken glass, but with no parent or other adult in sight. One little girl held tightly to one of our adult leaders and said, “I wish you could be my mommy.” As I have thought about that experience, I realize that suburban Christian parents like me are equally guilty of abandoning our children to the shaping influences of a corrupt culture.

God holds our generation responsible for whether the next generation’s souls will be springs of the Spirit or sewers of self. The Bible warns us that the streams of their souls are not likely to rise any higher than those of the generations that precede them. The next generation will learn to take their own thirsty hearts to Jesus when they see parents and other adults thirsting for, drinking of, and overflowing with Jesus at home, work, and play.

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Jimmy Davis is an ordained teaching elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. He and his wife, Christine, are currently planting Riverside Church, a family of home churches, in the historic Hardin Valley community of Knox County, Tennessee.

[see also #34895]

Prior to our wedding, David and I met with the minister to discuss our marriage ceremony and various traditions, such as lighting the unity candle from two individual candles.

Couples usually blow out the two candles as a sign of becoming one. Our minister said that many people were now leaving their individual candles lit to signify independence and personal freedom.

He asked if we wanted to extinguish our candles or leave them burning. After thinking about it, David replied, "How about if we leave mine lit and blow out hers?"

Provincialism is local pride unduly inflated. It is the temper that is ready to hail as a Swan of Avon any local gosling who has taught himself to make an unnatural use of his own quills. It is always tempting us to stand on tiptoe to proclaim our own superiority. It prevents our seeing ourselves in proper proportion to the rest of the world. It leads to the preparation of school manuals in which the threescore years and ten of American literature are made equal in importance to the thousand years of literature produced in Great Britain. It tends to render a modest writer, like Longfellow, ridiculous by comparing him implicitly with the half-dozen world poets. In the final resort, no doubt, every people must be the judge of its own authors; but before that final judgment is rendered every people consults the precedents, and measures its own local favorites by the cosmopolitan and eternal standards.

— BRANDER MATTHEWS