For me, writing isn't something I can just sit down and do. The house has to be quiet. I can't have any background noise. I need things simple so I can hear what the Holy Spirit might say.
Background noise has made its way into the foreground. Planning bake sales, photography sessions, Soaring Wings Ranch fundraisers, two bridal showers...taking boys to practices, going to my own singing practices, reading up on four separate bible studies...things have been very noisy.
My ears hurt.
I just want to hear what Jesus might say. There is one passage that He seems to keep bringing up. I wanted to say "I get it already" when our pastor taught from it last Sunday. It is Philippians 2:5-8
"Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, He lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death--and the worst kind of death at that: a Crucifixion."
Those words reflect the beauty and humility of my Savior.
And, after pondering them, I wonder if I reflect Him at all.
The self is such an interesting thing. We have this innate desire for survival and blessing and well being. There is no room for selflessness when the self is involved. Perhaps that is why God calls us to die to our selves.
And so, when things are quiet enough for me to think and write, I wonder what this death should look like. I know I am dead in Christ, for it is no longer me, but Him who lives in me. But, I know that I fight the flesh of self on a daily basis. I wonder if it truly died what Christ would look like in my frame.
I think it would be a beautiful thing.
And so I find myself in a place of self loathing which can be a good thing since it can lead to repentance. But, what am I sorry for and how do I change? I want to know how to live like Christ did...voluntarily emptying Himself.
How do I go about making myself nothing?
That is foreign to me, and yet, the word says that I am to have the same attitude as Christ. I am to literally have the same mind on this issue.
I have so far to go.
CS Lewis says, "Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death."
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." John 12:24
It seems God's ways are full of irony. To be the greatest, you have to be the least. To live, you must die. To love your life is to lose it. To hate your life is to keep it.
Oh, God, give me the mind of Christ and invade my being by making me like Him. The inner part of me that shouts self-preservation doesn't know how to go about being like the One who emptied Himself of everything that He had the right to be.
Give me grace to crucify the "I."
2 comments:
great post!
Good word sista!
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