One of the biggest battles Christians face in their church is with selfishness. Christians should not be consumed with themselves and their own interests. We need to resist this inward pull to be focused on our own needs and not the needs of others.
Excerpt from, “The Unity of the Spirit“.
Why do we have to be so eager about maintaining unity? I'll tell you why. Because there's this pull on every one of us to be selfish. Every one of us. No matter how redeemed you are and how long you've walked with the Lord there's that pull, there's that temptation. There's that reality with the flesh. Sin does something. It puts self at center. Sin makes me feel like I alone am important. What I think is what really matters. What I feel is what matters. What's happening to me is what matters. So you know, you walk into the church: I want everybody to ask me how I'm doing and what's going on in my life. The guy that walks up to you and it's like: Well, let me tell you all about my sicknesses and my problems... Something happens. There's a chemistry when we interact with other people. Something is happening about what we think about ourselves and what they think about themselves. You know that. You know that's a reality. And most of us weren't saved maybe like John the Baptist in the womb. We had years where we walked, so we know what it's like to walk as lost people through this world, and we got redeemed and we know how that thing changed. But even as it changed, we know there's this dynamic in how we interact with others. And you know this, if you're going to be eager and you're going to be diligent, you're going to cut through this, you've got to cut through the selfishness. That's where the battle lies - that I am not most important. We need to remember. We need to think. We need to be constantly given to this. We must not forget. We can get forgetful. We walk in here, we don't feel good. Or the sister had a migraine this morning. I can enter into that. We come in here - some people come to church, they just... what they can get. And when they stop getting, they just go to another church. That is exactly the attitude that they're not being earnest about and eager about this unity of the Spirit. Oh, the natural disposition is one of the things I see oftentimes in brand new Christians. They come to the prayer meeting and all their prayers are about themselves. It shouldn't be that way. You see, basically, we are to be devoted to the loving of each other and the serving of each other. We need to think about the things that bring disunity into the body. And we need to fight against them. We need to resist them. And one of the primary things is when you're stuck on yourself, and you come in here, and you want to be great, and you want to stand taller than everybody else, and you remember what it was with the Pharisees, they wanted the chief seats and there's lots of ways you can want the chief seats. You want the attention. Woe is me - self pity. The natural disposition is to spend too much time thinking about ourselves and not enough time thinking about others, occupied with our personal interests.
