Oh, Selfishness

God spoke right to my selfish heart with this one. I get super discouraged by "the world" & a lot of the time selfishly pray to be done working hard for Christ. I spend too much time thinking about myself, how tired I am, how hard it is to love my roommates and use God as a way to peace ("Lord, take me out of this rough situation, I'm done!"), rather than treating Him as Peace Himself ("How close can I get to you & still be ok? I'm never close enough!").

When Darrell explained that we are in the world for a purpose (that is not our own), I heard it with fresh ears. Oh, how often I need to be reminded that this life is not about me! Although it is clear that we are not promised an easy road, we are offered one full of joy!

As Darrell deconstructed the word JOY and how it's vital to living, it seemed to become synonymous to confession. We receive God's grace, give thanks, and as a natural consequence, experience joy. In order to experience the grace though, we have to need it aka recognize our need for it aka confess.

I've been learning a lot about confession the past couple of years and what it means to be found completely in Christ with no shame or guilt and this just reemphasized the importance of it to me. I have this preconceived notion that the closer I get to Christ (rather, the closer Christ gets to me) I should be confessing less and less because I should be messing up less and less. But, I've learned that the opposite is true. The more Christ invades in my life, the more he shines his light on the darkness in me & I almost vomit out confession after confession after confession. I find myself at his feet, vomiting out nastiness (like Caleb!), receiving grace, giving thanks & being filled with circumstance-defying JOY!