I want to share with you the lesson I'm having to work on. I don't know if you are in the same boat. Maybe you have already mastered this one and if so God bless you! This is the lesson of selfless service. I wish so much that I was one of those people who can work and give and do for others and be totally content to serve no matter how appreciated (or unappreciated) they are. I know it is so easy for me to look at other people around me and start the pity parties of why am I the only one? Or doesn't anybody care? It's so humiliating to even admit. But as hard as I was trying to have a pity party recently God was working even harder on my heart. I wanted to just wallow in my self-pity and tell God the problems with everybody else. He wouldn't let me. Instead His Word kept playing through my mind like a CD set on replay.
"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."
~Philippians 2:3-4
I pray that these verses might encourage you this week. If you too are a follower of Christ then you know that this is the battle we fight. Everything in our human nature tells us to be ambitious, to put ourselves ahead of others. Trust me, the instruction of these verses does not come naturally to me. But because I am a Christ follower I desperately want them to.
I challenge you as I am challenging myself this week. What can we do to make life easier for others? How can we serve those around us? My goal is when I start feeling sorry for myself to pray and ask God to show me someone who could really use my prayers or words of encouragement. When I start feeling too busy I want to use that to think of what I would want someone to do to help me out and then offer that assistance to someone else.
As a Christian sometimes it is so easy to take for granted the blessings we recieve. It is easy to hoard the love that God has shown us. The truth is that those blessings and that love grow in us when we share them with others. How I pray that this week the Father would keep teaching me this hard lesson. I pray that I would follow God's leading in the same way Sarah follows me from the kitchen watching me cook to the bedroom watching me put on my jewelry. That I can learn from the best example, the one Christ set.
"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death-
even death on a cross!"
~Philippians 2:5-8
2 comments:
I've always thought that Phil. 2:3-4 are two of the most challenging verses in the entire Bible. And you're not the only one who struggles with this; I'd say Paul would agree that this is one of those struggles that is "common to man" (1st Cor. 10:13). By that I think Paul means to instruct us not to feel isolated in our sin. Sometimes we may think, "Gosh, I'm so pathetic. I must be the most pathetic person to be weighed down with THIS!" But Paul is saying that others have struggled with the same struggles that we now bear. We're not weird -- we're just human.
I'm no expert on this. And so what I say not out of having mastered this issue, but still trying to get a grip on it myself. But I found what you said here to be key:
"I know it is so easy for me to look at other people around me and start the pity parties of why am I the only one? Or doesn't anybody care?"It occurs to me that we ought to focus less on those dragging behind us & focus more on those ahead of us trying to tug on us to catch up with them.
I know that in my life I've been exorbitantly blessed with mentors who model for me what it means to be a Christian. People who have lived through the peaks & the valleys of life, and have done so faithfully and with perseverance. When I think about whining or pouting -- or at worst giving up -- the weight of those folks in my life spurs me on to catch up with them.
So I think it may be as simple a matter as what we fixate on. And we have a choice about where we direct our eyes. We can choose to fixate on stragglers; or we can choose to fixate on the sterling, perfect people who we'll never measure up to. It is easy to fixate on the people who discourage us; it is harder to fixate on the people who challenge us. But it's our choice -- we have a choice.
Whoever wrote that lyric "Turn your eyes upon Jesus" was onto something. It seems to me that that's the way forward.
Thanks for the reminder Emily. I pray so much that I will be sensitive to people God places in my path to serve. However, most of the time I am so wrapped up in my own little world, I'm afraid I miss opportunities to focus on and love others.
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