A conceited person! These words are not exactly what you would call a compliment! Yet the highest goal of a conceited person is to be complimented. Externally he tries to have an attractive appearance and wear smart clothes. Internally he seeks the facade of a pleasant personality. His basic motive is to make a good appearance in public, to attain respect and affection. The conceited person is strongly attracted to the mirror. He looks at himself and enjoys what he sees. In a figurative sense he also looks at all his reactions, activities and conversations in a mirror and takes pleasure in them.
The vain and conceited forget, however, that there is another mirror--the eye of God, which shows us the truth about ourselves, what is behind the facade Then we see how "vain" everything really is, how transient and perishable. But if we avoid the mirror of God, we are deceiving ourselves with the mirror of human eyes which we look into all the time with the questions: How do others react to us? Are we good-looking? Are we popular? Then our conceit grows and grows, but in the end it will make us unhappy. For the greater it becomes, the more it begins to tyrannize us. We can no longer do anything without reflecting on how others will react. We make others around us feel uneasy, because at least unconsciously they feel the demands of our ego, our vanity.
Vanity places the ego on the throne. It idolizes the ego and that is why it is a great sin. Every idol takes over the place that God ought to have in our life. That is why the same verdict that God pronounced over the idol-worshippers will hit us. For we cannot serve God and our ego idol. We want others to burn incense to our ego. Our conceitedness wants others to admire our looks, our intelligence, our talents and our abilities and burn incense to them. In some cases this is combined with addiction to worldly riches. Then we spend great sums of money for an expensive wardrobe and other things that might help us gain the admiration of others.
But above all, conceit, the desire to be pleasing to our fellow-men, makes us insensitive to the most important thing for our life here and in eternity: that we be pleasing to God. No one will be pleasing to God by presenting an attractive appearance or displaying his talents and abilities. Only those who do not want to be anything in the eyes of men will attain God's good pleasure. This is the point we have to come to. It would be terrible to lose the pleasure of God while seeking pleasure from men. Then we will be far away from Jesus. That is why we have to repent completely.
The first step to getting rid of this sin is to admit honestly that we are vain and conceited. If we let the light of God show us this, we can only say; "How could I ever be conceited? My sins are so ugly. Even if I should be especially attractive or gifted, what does this matter in the eyes of God, who knows what really is in my heart? I ought to be ashamed of being so far away from God, because I am pleased with my poor and ugly being."
Now we must ask for "eye salve" (Rev. 3: 18). What does that mean? It means that we ask God and other people to tell us what we really are like without sparing our feelings. That will hurt, but it will help us to see the truth about ourselves. We must also ask the Lord; "Prevent me from hearing anyone praise me, and bring as much of my sin as possible into the light, so that I can see it more clearly. Then I will have to be ashamed and will lose my conceit. Yes, I even ought to tell others what I really am so that I will be humbled and learn not to live from their favour, but from the forgiveness and mercy of God."
Another step to becoming free from vanity is to reveal our conceited thoughts, to confess them to another person. If we want to receive grace from God, we have to be free from conceit and vanity, because grace is only given to the humble and contrite sinners, who are no longer pleased with themselves. But if we continue to admire our supposed qualities in the mirror and let our left hand see what our right hand has done, we have already had our reward (Matt. 6: 1 ff).
There is One who found no pleasure in Himself, and He is the only One who deserved to find pleasure in Himself: Jesus (Rom. 15: 3). And in Him we are righteous, that is, we have been set right from every sin, including vanity and conceit. That is why we should praise Him in faith, saying: "Jesus will set us free from this sin. He will remake us into His image which is free from vanity and conceit. He will change our hearts so that we will no longer seek to be pleasing to men, but only to God."
-------
Copyrighted material. Taken from YOU WILL NEVER BE THE SAME by M Basilea Schlink and used by permission. Further information at: www.kanaan.org
Be the first to react on this!
Basilea Schlink (1904 – 2001)
She was used of the Lord to help found the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. The Lord has used her writings powerfully to help encourage the greater body of Christ of future sufferings for the Lord and how to endure them. Also one of the burdens of her ministry was to share in the sufferings of the Lord and share the sorrow that Jesus has for a lost world and a backslidden church."In heaven we will say, ‘Do you remember the time we celebrated a festival of heaven on earth with Mother Basilea?'" - Corrie ten Boom. "To visit one of the Kanaan sanctuaries that they have assembled around the world is to visit a taste of the kingdom on earth." - Greg Gordon
Recommends these books by Basilea Schlink:
My All for Him: Fall in Love With Jesus All over Again by Basilea Schlink
You Will Never Be the Same by Basilea Schlink
Ruled by the Spirit by Basilea Schlink
Basilea Schlink, born Klara Schlink was a German religious leader and writer. She was leader of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, which she cofounded, from 1947 to 2001.
Some years later Schlink was living in a badly bombed Germany with few resources, but it was important for her to repent for Germany's cruel treatment of other nations during the war, especially the Jews. She felt the temptation to marry like other young women did. Instead she gave her mission the first priority, and so she became a Sister of Mary.
On March 30, 1947, she and Erika Madauss founded The Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary in Darmstadt. In 1948 both the founders and the first seven sisters became nuns. From then on, Dr. Klara Schlink called herself Mutter Basilea and Erika Madaus called herself Mutter Martyria. Today, The Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary has 11 subdivisons all over the world, with in total 209 sisters, and about 130 of these are situated in Darmstadt.
Klara Schlink, religious leader and writer: born Darmstadt, Germany 21 October 1904; leader, Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary 1947-2001, taking the name Mother Basilea; died Darmstadt 21 March 2001.
Basiliea Schlink was the co-founder and spiritual leader for half a century of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a community dedicated to a Christian literature and radio ministry. She was herself a prolific writer, her devotional books, pamphlets and hymns being translated into more than 60 languages.
The Sisterhood of Mary, initially Lutheran but now interdenominational, numbers more than 200 women from 20 countries, with 14 men in the affiliated Canaan Franciscan Brothers. It has branched out from its centre in Germany, at Darmstadt near Frankfurt, to Australia, Israel and the United States, and has one community at Radlett in Hertfordshire. The Sisterhood publishes tracts in 90 languages and distributes them on all five continents, while its radio and television programmes are broadcast in 23 languages.
Perhaps Mother Basilea's most noted contribution to religious life was her work for reconciliation between Germans and Jews. As a young woman she had learnt with horror of the Nazi extermination of the Jewish communities of her homeland and much of Europe, and dedicated her life to seeking forgiveness and overcoming the legacy of this mutual bitterness.
As national president of the Women's Division of the German Student Christian Movement from 1933 to 1935, Schlink refused to comply with Nazi edicts barring Jewish Christians from meetings.
It was not until March 1947 that Schlink and Madauss were eventually able to fulfil their vision of establishing the Sisterhood.