Skip to main content

Whose My Master Anyway?


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

Popular posts from this blog

Starting a Journey

September 3, 2010 Originally posted How to Begin a Journey 1. Pick a destination or simply start. 2. Plan a detailed itinerary or just take the first step. 3. Pack everything or travel lightly. I am choosing to just begin. To leave behind the baggage, pick up a day pack, and go. Several nights before we moved to Ogallala, I was praying about the transition when I heard that still, small voice of God. In that moment, I knew He heard my Heart's Cry. He hears every whispered plea, every unspoken longing. If I truly sit with that truth, it humbles me. What courage, boldness, passion, and decisiveness I have when I remember: He never leaves or forsakes me. He provides for my every need according to His riches in glory. My hope is to encourage you He hears your Heart's Cry too.
2 comments
Read more

1940 Canned Apple Butter: Family Root Cellar

I loved exploration as a child.  From opening the door and going down the stairs to get something from my Grandma's root cellar or exploring old homesteads while checking cows.  I credit my Mom with teaching us to appreciate those things that represented the people who had gone before us. When I moved with my husband and boys to a house on the family ranch-I began exploring immediately.  This was the house my Aunt and Uncle lived in during my childhood.  My Grandparents had lived there and many other families dating back to 1900 when it was built.   With two little boys in tow, I made my way to the root cellar and found a treasure cove.  Old text books belonging to the original family who had been a teacher, the original medicine cupboard, tools, trash and memorabilia.   I felt like an archeologist sifting through layers of debris representing generations and culture.  And I was.  I hauled truckloads of trash to the dump (some...
4 comments
Read more

Diabetes-Opened to Disease OR Open to Connecting to my Strengths

I've tried living in denial for two years after the big D diagnoses was handed over.  Honestly, I just don't want to talk about it.  Outwardly seemly calm and disconnected from it.  Inwardly terrified. As a plant that is stressed is open to disease, injury and death so to our bodies are.  I opened myself up to this.  Stress, lack of sleep, bad nutrition, overweight and lack of exercise.  For some reason I believed that if I ran fast enough and worked hard enough, I would outrun my family genes.  The tiny room in the back of my brain locked with a key has kept the fear of this disease at bay even though I could hear its screaming when life quieted down. My Aunt died piece by piece to this disease.  First a heart attack and quadruple by-pass.  Then a toe.  Next a foot.  Legs came next along with more heart attacks.  Kidneys shutting down.  She died very young. When I was little, my Aunt Ally gave herself s...
4 comments
Read more