In my last post I posed the question, “What holds you back from serving Christ the way you want to, from serving Him the way you know you should?” I offered the two reasons why I am held back. Today I will look at the second reason, which is selfishness.
I’m sure we can all agree that selfishness is never pretty. It’s like a cancer that infects our soul and spreads rapidly. We want to hold onto things, whether those things are physical objects, time or ideals. To be a follower of Christ requires that we have no “stuff” of our own. If we will call Him Lord, everything we have belongs to Jesus.
Time is a big one for me; I often would rather do my own thing (or nothing at all) as opposed to serving others, praying or studying the Bible. Any of those things can be draining when done without the proper attitude. Doing those things with a humble heart of love, however, is actually incredibly invigorating. The interesting dichotomy is that if these things are so invigorating and fill us with such life, why are we so hesitant to engage in such activities?
The common thread running between the things we should be doing is that we are doing them with another in mind. That provides much less instant gratification than just doing things for ourselves. These days we are all about the instant gratification. Information can be had with a just a couple of keystrokes, advertisements come at us a mile a minute and the opportunities for entertainment are absolutely mind-numbing. It’s simply easier and more pleasurable in the short term to serve ourselves rather than others.
We must not lose sight of who we are and more importantly, whose we are. For we who swear our allegiance to Jesus, there is no turning back. Our lives will never be the same. We will never again be about instant and short term pleasures. Instead we will bask in the long term tranquility of serving our Lord. May we never lose focus of our calling; love God, love others. It’s simple, eternally gratifying and absolutely selfless.