Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 32. The Original Image.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 32. The Original Image.
Other Subjects in this Topic:
The Original Image.
Self-mastery means holding one's self and one's powers steady to their true use; not lack of use, deficiency; nor over-use, prodigality; nor misuse, the inappropriate, the improper; nor abuse, the injurious; but nature's true, full use. It does not mean repression but control, full expression through control. It recognizes that what is not controlled goes to extremes; weak, bad, wrong extremes.
Nowhere is the hurt of sin seen more than in the unsteady, uneven swing of the pendulum of life. Sin is a sort of magnet pulling it unduly over to one side and holding it there, or giving it a wobbling movement. Mastery is holding things steady to their true use. One needs to know what their true use is, and then to have the strength of purpose, and the greater strength of discipline—tested purpose—and then something more, to hold him steady to the high aim.
Mastery of self through mastery by God, and in order to be of service to one's fellows, is the ideal one should steadily strive for. A man should not be afraid of that fine word ideal. It is held up to ridicule quite a bit. It is sometimes used for something impractical, up in the clouds, quite out of reach. It should rather be used for that towards which a man aims. The ideal is the perfect natural standard towards which one should be ever reaching and stretching up. Jesus said, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." He wouldn't have told us to do it, if it couldn't be done. There is not only an ideal, "be ye perfect," but the highest possible ideal, "as your Father is perfect."
It is a peculiar quality of the true ideal that it is never reached; for when reached it grows under the reaching touch into something finer and higher and yet more attractive. True ideals are wonderfully stimulating. They grow as they are touched. And while there is a sense of gladness and content in the touch, that very touch itself gives a yearning for a higher yet, and a new ambitious reaching on and up.
The closer a man sticks to the Original the nearer will he come to self-mastery. The original of man is God. To know God is to come to know our possible selves—the men we should be, and the men we will be. God is all the time revealing Himself to us in nature, in the wondrous Bible, in our own inner spirits. We should be eager to know Him, for so we come to know ourselves. And if we will know Him in the deeper sense of friendship's intimacy we shall come to be like Him again. That is self-mastery. Our greatest Teacher said: "This is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ."