Risking Selflessness

One of the things that I have been thinking about latley is the risk. When I read through the book of Acts or the Old Testament or the Gospels or just the whole bible, I get a great sense for how much the people of God were used by God to do amazing things. And I started wondering why. And I think that some of it was the fact that they were willing to risk all that they had to accomplish the work of the kingdom. They were willing to risk themselves. And because of that God was able to use them. I mean, start to thingk about some of the things that people were asked to do in the bible. Moses standing up to pharoh, jerimah preaching naked, hosea marrying a prostitute, peter preaching to all the religious leaders, and so on. They stopped thinking about what they wanted and started focusing on what God wanted for them.

Yet that is probably one of the biggest struggles that I face, letting go of my own desires and clinging to the desires of God. The Bible says that God wishes that none would perish, and that my mission is to go into the world making disciples, but when I go and talk to people, I mostly just want to be liked and accepted. God says that we should rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those that weep, that we are a part of a living organism and when a part of the body hurts, we all should hurt and yet its so much simpler to stay on the surface with our relationships. The Bible says that when we gather, we ought to be supporting and encouraging each other with scripture and prayer and singing and yet its more fun to play games and goof off.

And a lot of the time, all those things that I thought Id rather do leave me feeling pretty empty afterwords. And I need some sort of fix to get me going again. Seven nights in a row hanging outwith people doesnt do anything to fix lonleyness. Its prayer and seeking God and reading the scriptures and fellowship that is about encouragement and admonishing. Letting the Holy Spirit examine us, taking that time to say okay God, what do you want to work on now is a good thing. But for some of us, including myself, we start to focus inward. We start to look at what we dont have, what we need, what we want for our own lives to go down the path that we have chosen. Some people call this introspection- looking inward. I have come to realize that its more than just looking inward, its focusing inward. Call it what you want, its self-focus, self-centered, and ultimatly selfish. The world is self-focused. Media and school and sports tell us its all about us but its not. We as Christians ought to be others-focused and ultimatly Christ-focused. Its interesting to me that at mental institutions the treatment most often utilized treatment involves getting the patient to serve others. It is in the service of others that they often loose that self-focus on their own problems, starting to see that the world is much bigger than them.

Jesus says if any one wants to follow Him, then they need to deny himself, take up his cross and start following. Everyone here, at some level, has the first part down, the desire to follow Jesus. But its just so hard for us to do the next step: deny yourself. Theres a couple of things that help me with this and if you are having trouble getting over yourself (which is the highest mountain youll ever climb) try these or seek out your own ways.
The first is Prayer. I keep a record of people that I pray for. Its a reminder to me that as a Christian, we are to pray for one another. So often I can get caught up in my own needs that I forget to pray for other people, I forget that the primary work of the ministry is prayer, that above every thing we need to be people of prayer and people of one book. So the first is commiting to pray, and then regularly praying for others.

The second is Fasting. Fasting helps us cut the fat in our lives. We give up things which we are so accustomed to, which have attached themselves to our lives, and fasting helps us dientangle ourselves. We tend to think of food only when we fast so maybe I should use a different word. Maybe we need to learn the art of Simplification. Of reducing all the distractions that point us back at ourselves. I love music and I got super connect to the White Menace that is the Ipod. No seriously, Id carry it every where and used it as a means to block people out. So when it broke it was a good thing, even though it eventually got fixed. When it got fixed, I gave it away cause I no longer wanted that attachment and I knew it would bless the person I gave it to. There was a list of things that Dave gave a few years back about how to simplify our lives. One of them said make a habit of giving things away. So I did. So fasting and simplifying our lives from all the things that we just cant live without.

The third is Service. Jesus did it. He said if anyone wants to be great in the kingdom of heaven then he must serve everyone. Theres a subtleness that goes on right there. Did you know that we are supposed to serve people. That ultimately our service is towards people. Even if we clean toliets, our service becomes a service to the next person who sits there. You want to get out of a self focused funk? Then go find somebody to serve. They are out there. In church, at the well, at school, your friends, your teachers, your parents, your family. It was Jesus vission that leaders would be the biggest servants. MacDonalds got it right with their question How can I serve you today?

Are we willing to change? To deny ourselves and follow Him? Then get ready to see him move in amazing a powerful ways in our lives and in the lives of our community.