Invest in yourself?

Last week an email dropped in from CIP.co.uk. They want to inform and inspire Christians and to do that even better they have developed 'challenges'. You are encouraged to "invest in yourself with these. "One person would like deepen one's prayer life, the other person want to experience the Holy Spirit more and yet another would like to learn to to love oneself more.”  If you also want one of these things, you can follow such a 'challenge' and then you only need a limited number of days, about 12 – 40, to reach your goal.

It is unbelievably sad. In the Bible I do not find all these things, because it is about Christ and Christ alone. From beginning to end. While all these 'challenges' do not bring you closer to Him, but rather take you further away from Him, despite the more or less familiar names of the people behind them.

The 'challenges'

The titles of the 'challenges' actually say enough about the content you will encounter.

‘you are valuable' – why do you have to talk to yourself about this? When you know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, then He valuable to you and if all goes well He will become bigger and bigger for you and you yourself will become smaller and smaller. Something John the Baptist was already aware of (John 3:30).

‘Become who you are‘ – in 12 days state delicately with it. Seems strong to me; a normal Christian needs his whole life and often you don't have enough time to become a bit like the Lord Jesus Christ. But with this 'challenge' you can fix it in 12 days. Furthermore, I don't think it's about really starting to resemble the Lord Jesus, but that deep inside you 'your real me' discovers. That you will discover that deep within you lies your real self, which you must reveal. Be convinced that this is no different from the old gnostic thinking, which leads you to the path of mystical experiences.

‘Learning to talk to God' – Of course you can say many things about prayer and our prayer life. But when I see a title like that, it often says in one way or another that you'God's voice must learn to understand'. And that is another access to inner mystical experiences.

‘Be filled with the Holy Spirit‘ – ‘in 21 days'. Typically such a title with many wrong ideas and practices behind it. We may well desire to be filled with the Spirit, but that only becomes reality when we deal with the Word of God and its protagonist, our Lord, Jesus Christ. That's the only way.
Seeking so-called experiences of 'the Spirit' opens the door wide for demonic influence and the consequences are disastrous.

Invest in yourself?

According to CIP.nl you can participate in the challenges invest in yourself'. But I suspect that with the challenges you are more likely to invest in CIP.nl. In that respect, it is a simple revenue model.
Everything you 'tinker' with yourself will not last and will not take you further in your life of faith. Only knowing—and getting to know more and more—of the Lord Jesus Christ is what alone is worth doing. Paul knew it must be for that alone. In the letter to the Philippians he says:

“But what was gain to me, I have counted loss for Christ's sake. Yea, verily, I also count all as loss because of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered all this as loss. And I count it as filth, that I may gain Christ (…) and know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings (…)” (Philippians 3:7-10).

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