Sermon quotes on being
self-centered
Francis Bacon
It is a poor Center of a Mans Actions, Himself.
Bernard Bailey
When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be surprised to learn they’re not it.
Mark Batterson
Pride is a by-product of insecurity. And the more insecure a person is, the more monuments they need to build.
There is a fine line between ‘Thy kingdom come’ and ‘my kingdom come.’ If you cross the line, your relationship with God is self-serving.
You aren’t serving God. You are using God.
You aren’t building altars to God. You are building monuments to yourself.
All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life
Bernard of Clairvaux
I preached myself, the scholars came and praised me. I preached Christ, the sinners came and thanked me.
Jerry Bridges
Our first problem is that our attitude towards sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We are more concerned about our own “Victory” over sin than we are about the fact that our sin grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.
David Brooks
In 1948, psychologists asked more than 10,000 adolescents whether they considered themselves to be a very important person. At that point, 12 percent said yes. The same question was asked in 2003, and this time it wasn’t 12 percent who considered themselves very important, it was 80 percent.
John Calvin
Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own. To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.
Steve Carrell (Michael Scott)
“Would I rather be feared or loved? That’s easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”
The Office
Mason Cooley
Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.
John Hagee
Happy are those whose self-centered lives have been crushed and reshaped by the Master’s hand to be full of mercy.
H.F. Henrichs
Know thyself — but don’t tell anyone.
Timothy Keller
Our hearts love to manufacture glory for themselves.
Timothy Keller
We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made.
David Kinnaman
The motivation of transparency is important. The culture teaches people to be candid and blunt, but this usually revolves around self-centeredness – you have a right to express your true feelings and your rage. This is an entitlement. Instead, the Christian way to approach transparency is to realize out candidness should be motivated by a desire to have a pure heart before God and others.
unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters
Madeleine L’Engle
Compassion means to suffer with, but it doesn’t mean to get lost in the suffering, so that it becomes exclusively one’s own. I tend to do this, to replace the person for whom I am feeling compassion with myself.
A Circle of Quiet
John MacArthur
Man’s basic problem is preoccupation with self. He is innately beset with narcissism, a condition named after the Greek mythological character Narcissus, who spent his life admiring his reflection in a pool of water. In the final analysis, every sin results from preoccupation with self. We sin because we are totally selfish, totally devoted to ourselves, rather than to God and to others.
Matthew 1-7, Moody, 1985, p. 447.
George MacDonald
“There are who never learn to see anything except in its relation to themselves, nor that relation except as fancied by themselves; and, this being a withering habit of mind, they keep growing drier, and older, and smaller, and deader, the longer they live–thinking less of other people, and more of themselves and their past experience, all the time as they go on withering.”
Mary Marston
C.J. Mahaney
If you are anything like me, you do a lot of listening to yourself everyday.
Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing
James McDonald
To really be gripped by your identity in God’s greatness you must wade out of the shallow waters of self-absorption into the deep waters of praising Him at all times for all things. Remember, God formed you for that very purpose. Embrace your identity as a forgiven worshiper of this all-patient God.
Gripped by the Greatness of God, Moody, 2005, p. 166.
J.I. Packer
There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion.
Knowing God
David Platt
We are molding Jesus into our image. He’s beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is who we are most comfortable with. The danger now is when we gather in our church buildings to sing, and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshiping ourselves.
Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Gordon T. Smith
It is estimated that over 80 percent of the books published in any given year are about the self.
Taken from Courage and Calling by Gordon T. Smith. ©2011 by Gordon T. Smith. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Gordon T. Smith
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observes that the biblical ideal is not so much that we need to deny the self as to decenter the self: To see the self in truth, as an integral member of a community and society in which the only indispensable one is God.
Taken from Courage and Calling by Gordon T. Smith. ©2011 by Gordon T. Smith. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Dan Stone
God’s plan was to bring into being a host of sons and daughters whom He would indwell; through whom He would live and manifest Himself; and in and through whom Christ would reign supreme. We are the beneficiaries of that plan. God, in His love and grace, has made us a part of His plan. But we are not the center of it; Christ is.
The Rest of the Gospel, One Press, 2000.
Lee Strobel
If Jesus sets the divine standard for morality, I could now have an unwavering foundation for my choices and decisions, rather than basing them on the ever-shifting sands of expediency and self-centeredness.
Nick Vujicic
You and I were put on this earth to serve something greater than our narrow interests. When our focus becomes self-centered instead of God-centered we lose our greatest source of power. Our God-given talents are meant to benefit others. When we use them for that greater purpose, we put faith into action to fulfill His plan for us. We make a difference in this world that helps prepare us for the next.
Unstoppable: The Incredible Power of Faith in Action
John Wimber
Instead of a call to the King and His kingdom, people are hearing a gospel that emphasizes self: come to Jesus and get this or that need met, be personally fulfilled, reach your potential.
Ravi Zacharias
I refer to the cross of Christ. The cross stands as a mystery because it is foreign to everything we exalt – self over principle, power over meekness, the quick fix over the long haul, cover-up over confession, escapism over confrontation, comfort over sacrifice, feeling over commitment, legality over justice, the body over the spirit, anger over forgiveness, man over God.
Can Man Live Without God?
G. K. Chesterton
How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.
Orthodoxy, John Lane, 1908, p.35.
Thomas Aquinas
This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know Him.
Questiones Disputatiae de Potentia Dei (On the Power of God), trans. by the English Dominican Fathers, The Newman Press, 1952, question 7, article 5, paragraph 14.
St. Augustine
Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.
Sermon on the 33rd Psalm
Corrie ten Boom
If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.
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