Sunday, November 15, 2026
“Watch against yourself, my soul, / Lest with grace you trifle; / Let not self your thoughts control / Nor God’s mercy stifle. / Pride and sin lurk within, / All your hopes to shatter; / Heed not when they flatter.
“But while watching, also pray / To the Lord unceasing. / God protects you day by day, / Strength and faith increasing, / So that still mind and will / Shall unite to serve Him / And forever love Him.”
The prophet Isaiah mocks the idol-maker who cuts down a tree and with half of it “kindles a fire and bakes bread … and the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol” (Isaiah 44:15b, 17a). How foolish is that, to burn half of a tree and make a god from the other half! We know that God commands us to stay away from such things, but the sad truth is that we always have an idol close at hand: the idol of self. Sin causes us to turn inward on ourselves, and we are tempted to follow our own sinful desires.
This idol of self, unlike a carved figure of silver or stone, is deceitfully active in our lives. Our hymn warns, “Let not self your thoughts control.” Even Jesus’ disciples sometimes listened to the idol of self. James and John requested glorious thrones for themselves in Jesus’ kingdom, unaware of the suffering that would come first. Peter boasted of his willingness to die with his Lord but soon after, as Jesus had predicted, the disciple denied that he even knew Jesus. But we do not have to look to Scripture for examples of this idolatry of self. We only need to look at our own lives to know that “pride and sin lurk within.”
The Lord Jesus faithfully followed His path to the cross. Setting aside all thoughts of self, Jesus obeyed His Father’s will and bore our idolatrous, self-centered sins in His body on the cross. In Baptism we are buried with Jesus and raised with Him to new life. The idolatrous self sinks into the baptismal waters as God clothes us in “the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10b). When the old idolatrous self rises again within us, we repent and receive the forgiveness that Jesus won for us. The Holy Spirit turns us outward again in love and service to God and others. As we struggle each day against the idol of self, we keep watch and “pray to the Lord unceasing.” As Jesus told His disciples, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). We pray that the Lord would help us to lay aside idols of all kinds and lead us to unite mind and will “to serve Him and forever love Him.”
WE PRAY: Lord Jesus, forgive my love of self and lead me to love others as You love me. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Carol Geisler. It is based on the hymn, “Rise, My Soul, to Watch and Pray,” which is number 663 in the Lutheran Service Book.
Reflection Questions: