I asked myself a very simple question a few weeks ago. Not a very inspired-sounding question, since I've heard ones like it my whole life. But one I don't think I'd ever seriously asked myself.
What is my primary motivation for acting?
Is it what God wants me to do and what gives glory to him?
Or...
Is it what I want to do and what I think is calculated to reflect well on ME?
It was very shocking to realize the second one was the right answer.
Now, we get in trouble all the time for our dramatics around here, so the use of "shocking" may seem a little overdone. But it isn't. I was deeply, seriously, and fully shocked. I thought I was a good girl with a few rough spots here and there needing some polish. It never was plain to me that most of the outside was decent but all my little "slips" were because right down at the beginning of every thought or action was me. Making myself look good. Avoiding things that might make me look bad. Pretty selfish, huh? In fact, it's the definition of selfishness.
So all the outside decency was more or less just a coverup for the wrongness inside. Because you can't have your whole life centered around making yourself look good and truly be good. Because being good is about God taking the spot of "me".
We've all talked a lot about arrogance and what it is and does. In me, arrogance is that I've taken God's place in my own mind. If everything at it's core is about me, of course I'm going to "slip" into trying to let everyone know how great and smart and top-notch I am. That's what I really think. If everything were about God, I wouldn't care much about me except as a product God made to be a reflection of who God is. "Me" would become nonexistent.
The Bible talks a lot about the absence of self in a Godly person's considerations but hearing them was hard to do when I was already good enough and didn't need that kind of admonition. Like the rich young ruler, reading the Bible for me was an exercise in, "Yeah, I know all the stuff and I've always done everything I was supposed to - so what do I need to do to be saved?"
Well, maybe not that bad. Because I acknowledged I had some little faults, see. Just some little trivial problems like being too bossy now and then and being arrogant once in a while.
But looking to what God wants first is such an alien consideration it's almost impossible to comprehend. Take every thought captive to God? Huh? Not my will but yours? You mean I don't get any say? I am nothing except what God made?
It's all there. It's all in black and white. Godly person after Godly person has described this whole "death to self" idea. Life is at it's core supposed to be all about God in every single facet of being. Reading the Bible is good because it helps to learn who he is and teaches a lot about what it means to put him first and what pleases him most. It's not a rule book to be memorized and checked off. There's no State test at the end to score 95% on; but that's the way I was reading it.
If I want to be a Godly person, there can't be any room left for me. Because all I am, all I have, and all I can ever be...is what God made me.
How can arrogance survive that?
2 comments:
Thats a really good thought there!
Its funny, but I was thinking pretty much about the same thing tonight, and wrote a email about it to a group of friends.... Here is what I wrote.
"Hello again!
Well I had some more verses I was thinking about today, so I thought I would post them on here, for all of your input.
Eph 6:5 Servants, be obedient to them that are [your] masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;
Eph 6:6 Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; Eph 6:7 With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:
That part about "as unto Christ" Is something I have a really hard time with. Its hard doing something like installing a water heater, when you got your customer standing right there watching you, but doing it as unto Christ, because you are always thinking about what your customer/boss is thinking of what your doing. :-)
I think a lot of it is just having such a relationship with Christ, and a willingness from the heart to please him, that everything you do, is done with the attitude of " What does Christ think of my job".
So I was just wondering how the rest of you deal with that? or what your thoughts are on the matter?"
Yall have a wonderful day!
-EL
Hey, I've not thought about it like that before, good job Michelle and Ward!
I'm a pretty shy person around strangers. I find it completely intimidating to be in a room with fifty people and only know a few of them, but I've been thinking about this and if you've got God as the person who is the one you think about first, you're not going to be feeling intimidated about people talking to you and you not knowing what to say because you will be too busy trying to look for what God sees in the people around you. If I have a purpose like that, I'm not nervous.
Now this could be completely wrong, or even sort of skewed, but it seems to make sense to me. :D
I thought the WWJD bracelets were a dumbing down of something that is supposed to be held in high honour, but it's the same idea, I think.
=Anne
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