mememe

SelfTalk is the natural language of every person ever born, except Jesus. It's the language of self-protection and self-sufficiency and self-absorption. It's the language of noble ambition and generous involvement and moral concern and life-improving agendas that tries to do high good without commitment to the highest good.

SelfTalk is our social language, our religious language, our political language, our business language, our relationship language. It comes from someplace other than our Spirit-saturated center. It comes out of our efforts to adjust to this world, to make it a better place, to get along comfortably in it, to keep ourselves happy and fulfilled and safe and to help others feel better about themselves and about their lives. It speaks death and smothers souls.

There is no power struggle in SoulTalk.

There are countless ways to speak SelfTalk. And Christians speak them all, every day. But it's all self-obsession. We want what we think will bring us the greatest joy, and we want it now. So we jitterbug while the Spirit plays Beethoven. We frantically chase after what we think we need while the Spirit is softly and tenderly calling us home.

excerpts from
Larry Crabb's SoulTalk