One of the barriers that holds many people back from knowing, and being controlled by, the love of Christ is the idea that true happiness can only be found if we are free to live for ourselves.

Living for self is the default life of every person. So, unless something happens to bring about a change, we will end up living for ourselves. The Bible says this quite clearly: “All seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 2:21). What does it mean to live for yourself?

If you live for yourself, you make yourself both the boss and the servant. The demands you set are the demands you must meet. If you live for yourself, you will often find yourself in the strange position of beating yourself up because you’re unhappy.

You look in the mirror and ‘self the boss’ is not happy because she wants to have a better image, so she beats up on ‘self the servant’ for not being pretty enough. Or ‘self the boss’ tells you that you should have accomplished more, and ‘self the servant’ gets beaten for not measuring up.

Then suppose you say to yourself, This is no good, I’m living for myself but I’m not happy. I’m being too hard on myself. I need to lighten up, give myself a break. But then, when you lighten up as the servant, you end up being short-changed as the boss. You can’t win. And all around us is a culture that’s telling us, “Live for yourself!”

But if you live for yourself, who will reward you, embrace you, and rejoice with you when your work is done? Live for yourself and one day you will find that you’re all alone, because the one for whom all your work has been done is yourself.

Do you identify more with the unhappy boss or the unrewarded servant today?