Sorry to my legions of fans who have breathlessly awaited my next post. I have been on vacation for a few days in Boone, and it has reinforced my desire to move the city of Greensboro up 421 North.
My last post was kind of a downer, and I think that God has shown me some things about that load roar. As you can see in the title, the roar I was hearing was "ME!" After two weeks of intense pouring out at Rockbridge (and drained, I think, from the amount of prayer we did in our track) and then moving right into a week of intense class work for my Grace Life training, I was zapped. Zapped, plus spiritually spent, plus physically spent means that I was trying to find life anywhere I could, and that made life all about.... ME. MY needs. MY wants. MY feelings. MY tiredness. And the harder I looked inward for satisfaction, the more I lost the life I craved. I didn't want to admit it. I put the blame on everyone else, judging, finding fault. But it was ME that was the problem.
Thankfully God broke through, as He usually does, and revealed the backwardness and brokenness of my heart. And when I saw it, I was surprised (though I shouldn't have been) and saddened. Of course there is always grace and mercy when sin and self are revealed, and my Heavenly Father was good to me in His revelation.
So many lies to fall for. Such a crafty teller of lies that wages war against us. Sometimes with bold and obvious lies that we just buy into anyway. Other times with subtle, smoother lies that we fall for bit by bit. But he's so good at it because it's his native language. The father of lies knows how to communicate.
Thank God for the truth and the freedom that comes from realizing that the way out is to consider ME dead and to live in the reality of Christ as life. The more I try to save and find my life, I lose it. The more I lose my life, I find it. Crazy.
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3 comments:
and, more, in my experience, thank God for His grace to cover my lack of understanding about the dead old ME, my failure to give up the old man.
i learn more about grace as i plumb the depths of my own depravity...
I preached on Sunday ... and my message was how the "me" life under the sun ... the worthless one that Solomon talks about is terrible because we never accomplish anything, when we try we fail, and every mundane moment of life sucks. Then I said that we need to remember that "your life is not your own, you were bought with a price" and touched ont the contexts in I Cor. and how that statement is further reaching than just those two contexts. When it's about Jesus, and we're slaves to him, then going through the tough and mundane moments are worth it. Good post ... guess I didn't have to rehash my whole sermon ... oh, and I started with a Dumb & Dumber quote, of course (Lloyd to Harry "You are one pathetic loser.")
Anytime Dumb and Dumber can be used in a sermon, I am all for it.
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