{"id":2506,"date":"2012-08-18T06:38:22","date_gmt":"2012-08-18T13:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=2506"},"modified":"2012-08-18T06:38:22","modified_gmt":"2012-08-18T13:38:22","slug":"choose-self-pity-or-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2012\/choose-self-pity-or-thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Choose: Self-Pity or Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Self-pity is one of several <em>self-<\/em> things from which I ask God to deliver me.<\/p>\n<p>Strangely enough, though, I don&#8217;t remember considering that a thankful spirit sweeps away a &#8220;negatively self-focused&#8221; spirit. Oh, sure, I&#8217;ve known (and even taught!) that gratefulness can lift us out of depression and discouragement. But, somehow, I must have missed what being thankful can do to kill being self-pitying.<\/p>\n<p>Then I read Andr\u00e9e&#8217;s piece <!--more--> from yesterday morning, shown here only as the first parts of each of her paragraphs:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An old Christian man said to my friend, &#8220;Our biggest problem is self-pity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Self-pity must be one of those &#8220;designs&#8221; Paul had in mind by which Satan &#8220;outwits us&#8221; (2 Corinthians 2:11).<\/p>\n<p>Name any sin you can think of and it is a seduction into abiding in unreality&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Self-pity is such a delusion that people can even prefer it to joy.<\/p>\n<p>It is only when you have come out of the land of self-pity that you are able to look back in horror at how much time you wasted in unreality.<\/p>\n<p>Let us catch every whiff of self-pity and promptly replace it with thanksgiving.<\/p>\n<p class=\"alignrightsmall\"><a href='http:\/\/online.worldmag.com\/2012\/08\/17\/living-in-reality\/'>Living in reality<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now to choose today: self-pity or thanksgiving.<\/p>\n<p>If I choose correctly, it makes even more sense to ask God to help me <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2012\/self-resistance\/\" title=\"Self-Resistance\">resist myself<\/a>.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-pity is one of several self- things from which I ask God to deliver me. Strangely enough, though, I don&#8217;t remember considering that a thankful spirit sweeps away a &#8220;negatively self-focused&#8221; spirit. Oh, sure, I&#8217;ve known (and even taught!) that gratefulness can lift us out of depression and discouragement. But, somehow, I must have missed &#8230; <a title=\"Choose: Self-Pity or Thanksgiving\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2012\/choose-self-pity-or-thanksgiving\/\" aria-label=\"More on Choose: Self-Pity or Thanksgiving\">Read more<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,12,704],"tags":[706,894],"class_list":["post-2506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-101","category-lessons-for-living","category-thankful","tag-gratefulness","tag-inspirational"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-Eq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}