What's the relationship between selfishness and a heart full of hatred, loneliness, despair, bitterness, anger, apathy and hopelessness? It's all about who we serve. Who is the Master of my heart. Whom do I serve?
In our self-indulgent, self-focused and self-entitled culture-can we tear away from selfishness?
The Bible says that we can't serve two masters. We either hate one or love the other. It can't be both ways.
Gary Thomas stated in an article in Discipleship Journal that, "Selfishness is a form of slow suffocation, choking us on the limited air of our self-interest. It reduces our world, our focus, and our concerns to an almost unbearable degree."
Selfishness is choking the life out of our marriages, children, churches and communities.
Leaving a generation of children in relationship poverty and churches without laborers.
Communities struggle to fill the roles of volunteers. A black hole of apathy is sucking us into a vicious cycle.
Schools are filling up with isolated and unengaged students trying to survive the world they live in. Imprisoned in technology and self-protection.
And yet...there is a spark. The college student who comes back to spend time with "the youth group." The young man who offers to pay for a young person's camp. The neighbor who brings a deer to a family. The teenager who cleans up the widows yard. The child who gives away his favorite toy. The woman who rounds up baby clothes for a new mom. The Pastor who cleans toilets and eats last at potluck. The wife who sacrifices career for her family and the mom who paces the floor in prayer.
God wants us to be free. Wants to open the eyes of our hearts to see past ourselves. To be free of our selfishness and free to serve others.
He invites us TO KEEP NOTHING BACK!
"The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you'll find your real self.
Lose your life, and you'll save it.
Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life.
Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours..." C.S. Lewis
Comments
Post a Comment