Living Life for Christ Alone

I hope that I have begun to convey to you just how incredible the love of God is, and just how staggering it can be for God to love other human beings through us.  The love of God alone is powerful enough to break down barriers that human logic, wisdom, money, or power can never penetrate.   But what if we are gazing at the world through a lens that is incompatible with this love?  What if we are trying to mix our own perspectives with God's? You see, my natural human nature coldly recoils when asked to suffer loss of any kind on the behalf of another human being.  From birth, selfishness reigns.  We love ourselves too much to care about others.  We fight for the best things. We cry when our needs aren't met, or our wants aren't given. We only think of ourselves -and others are barely on our radar unless we can gain something from them. When it comes right down to it, we will save our own skin before laying down our own lives for someone else. We ...

Have you ever felt like life's many troubles, pains, challenges and pressures line up at your bed to greet you the moment you wake up?  This has been me the last couple weeks... I wake up in the morning, and there they are clamoring for my attention. I think through one and come to a conclusion about it, and then the next one takes its turn. And then, when I have thought through them all, the first one comes around again with another side to the issue to get me thinking again. Fix it mode is a very real thing, and not just for men. We want control, we want to see wrongs made right, we want our world to be put back in order, we just want peace. And before long, we become consumed.  Have you ever been here? It comes in many different forms... You could call it worry. You could call it fear. You could call it anxiety. You could call it control. You could call it a search for stability. You could call it a desire for things to be fixed. You could call it a pity party. You could ca...

Discouragement often comes on the heels of high emotions and great encouragement.  Ever noticed that?  I recently heard mentioned in a podcast the saying: "What goes up must come down," and  I was struck by the fact that this very much can be referring to spiritual, emotional and physical highs.  A busy and fun weekend is often followed by a dull Monday.  A good day with little ones full of laughs and good behavior is quickly followed by another one with way less of both.  An exciting, energetic trip is often followed by an exhausted crash and sleepy, grumpy days to follow. A spiritual high can quickly be followed by spiritual lows, clarity by fog, joy by sorrow, confidence by faltering.  We so easily get discouraged once that high is replaced with a low simply because we secretly hoped the high would keep going on forever.  I experience this way too often, but I hadn't thought to expect it and even prepare for it.  If we are riding on the hi...