I could have great confidence in myself if I wanted to. I grew up in a missionary family. My parents (two of the smartest people I know) left everything to train local leaders in foreign countries. I accepted Christ at the age of 4. I performed great at church. I was the apple of my Dad's eye. I earned straight-As in school and teachers loved me. I always obeyed the rules (or skirted around them enough to be considered good). I led Bible studies in high school and in college. I was a leader among my peers and I was going places. After college, the corporate world challenged my faith and I sinned with the best of them. I abandoned the teaching of my youth for the taste of being a success. I excelled in my job, getting raise after raise. I had money, friends, position, and everyone liked me.
I once thought all these things were so important. My Christian activities and my secular ambition. But now...now, I consider them all worthless because of what Christ has done for me. Seriously, everything is worthless when compared with the actual truth of Christianity. We get to know Christ, our Lord, our God, our Savior. So, I have trashed everything else. I look at all of my striving and wandering as garbage. I must do this so that I can have Christ and be one with Him. My own goodness, my own "holiness," my own church-going, people-helping ways are not what will save me. I trust (and want to trust more) Christ to save me. For God has a truer way of making us His children and it doesn't depend on us at all. It depends only on faith. All the time I was growing up, striving to be good, deep down God had placed on my heart a desire to know Him. The ironic reality is that Christ is known not through my striving but through faith. And as crazy as it sounds there is the real opportunity for us to experience God's power (which is not at all like human power that we all hunger for). God's strength raises people from the dead. If I can experience that (and I believe that I have!), somehow that means that the dead things inside of me can be raised up to life. I can have life that is true and eternal. And the ugliness inside of me, that includes self-righteousness, arrogance, and selfishness can finally die. And my truest self (who God wants me to be) can be resurrected and used for His glory.
I don't mean to say that I've arrived or that I've already achieved any of this to perfection (or anywhere near it). But, this is my aim. I will keep working until the day I die not on becoming a better, more moral person but on becoming the woman Christ Jesus wants me to be. For this is the reason he saved me at four years old. Not so that I could boast in my own righteousness but so that I can boast in Him.
Family, I am definitely not all that I should be (and if you know me at all, you know this), but I seek to put all my energy into this one thing: Forget the past. Forget the striving, the school achievements, the self-importance. Forget the sin, the wandering, the laziness. And forget trying to go places where I will be considered important. And seek Christ only. Go nowhere He isn't. Seek out places where I'll be humbled. Find Him in serving others. I'm 100% focused on reaching the end of my life and not just dying but living. I want to live life the way Christ wants me to live. And one day to get my prize - to see God face to face and to live in His presence for all time.
I once thought all these things were so important. My Christian activities and my secular ambition. But now...now, I consider them all worthless because of what Christ has done for me. Seriously, everything is worthless when compared with the actual truth of Christianity. We get to know Christ, our Lord, our God, our Savior. So, I have trashed everything else. I look at all of my striving and wandering as garbage. I must do this so that I can have Christ and be one with Him. My own goodness, my own "holiness," my own church-going, people-helping ways are not what will save me. I trust (and want to trust more) Christ to save me. For God has a truer way of making us His children and it doesn't depend on us at all. It depends only on faith. All the time I was growing up, striving to be good, deep down God had placed on my heart a desire to know Him. The ironic reality is that Christ is known not through my striving but through faith. And as crazy as it sounds there is the real opportunity for us to experience God's power (which is not at all like human power that we all hunger for). God's strength raises people from the dead. If I can experience that (and I believe that I have!), somehow that means that the dead things inside of me can be raised up to life. I can have life that is true and eternal. And the ugliness inside of me, that includes self-righteousness, arrogance, and selfishness can finally die. And my truest self (who God wants me to be) can be resurrected and used for His glory.
I don't mean to say that I've arrived or that I've already achieved any of this to perfection (or anywhere near it). But, this is my aim. I will keep working until the day I die not on becoming a better, more moral person but on becoming the woman Christ Jesus wants me to be. For this is the reason he saved me at four years old. Not so that I could boast in my own righteousness but so that I can boast in Him.
Family, I am definitely not all that I should be (and if you know me at all, you know this), but I seek to put all my energy into this one thing: Forget the past. Forget the striving, the school achievements, the self-importance. Forget the sin, the wandering, the laziness. And forget trying to go places where I will be considered important. And seek Christ only. Go nowhere He isn't. Seek out places where I'll be humbled. Find Him in serving others. I'm 100% focused on reaching the end of my life and not just dying but living. I want to live life the way Christ wants me to live. And one day to get my prize - to see God face to face and to live in His presence for all time.
