Posted on March 27, 2009 - by bj

It’s enough to make me go crazy

Jesus’s main concern is not that we stop sinning, but that we experience and live in His love and grace. He didn’t come to earth to make us stop sinning. He didn’t come to turn bad people into good people. He wanted to be with the people He loved forever. He was and is the means of an eternal relationship with the Father. We were hopeless without Him. He paid the price that WE DESERVED. So in knowing what we really deserve, why is it that we somehow get in the mindset that we deserve certain standards from this world–particularly from people. For example, we think we deserve to be treated nicely by others, we think we deserve a thank you after every good deed, etc… And when these things don’t happen, many times it effects us. This world is so corrupt and we expect so much good from it, which doesn’t make sense at all. And yet…..i do this far too often. Jesus was rejected his whole life, was beaten and spit on, and nailed to a cross–dying a criminals death to bring life to the world and here i am getting upset because someone didn’t thank me after i gave them a compliment, or wasn’t appreciative of my help. My gosh, who am i serving here?…..certainly not the Lord. The answer is myself. i know there’s a problem when i do something for someone and i let it affect me negatively because they didn’t act a certain way or didn’t say what i expected. i’m no longer serving them or God at this point and never was in the first place. We are a culture so insulated within our own selfishness and pride that we’ve lost what i means to wholeheartedly serve our neighbor. Our idea of service is, many times, based on the benefits that we receive as a result of serving……I want to do something for someone because it makes me feel good; I want to do this for him/her so they think highly of me; I want to give some money to my church or this organization so I can get a charitable contribution deduction on my tax return.  Here’s the thing……..when we make these our ends for serving, whatever it may be, that’s all we get—you might feel good….for a little while, but it won’t last. All these things are temporary fixes to a problem that is much bigger than we understand–our pride, which fights to have control over us everyday. i just think it would be so amazing if we could learn to serve the Lord first and allow His love to pour out of us into the lives of others. i feel like that’s what real service is–i mean, He loved us first and He is love. When we learn to serve the Lord, and only Him, we’ll find that all of the things mentioned above and so much more will be thrown in—yes, even the tax deduction. So i ask, what does it look like for you/for us to serve wholeheartedly?