I've got it all wrong

I am so selfish.

I can't count how many times I look at a situation or relationship and ask, "What's in it for me?"

The more I get to know God and His unselfish nature, the more I come face-to-face with my own selfishness. What can my wife do for me? What can I get out of my ministry? What will this person or that person do for me? What will I get in return if I (fill in the blank).

I hate this part of me. It reeks of sin. It drives me crazy. It makes me angry.

I don't think I am a horrible person. Or, maybe I am. But I am a sinner washed by the blood of Jesus. I was really convicted today by something I read for my grad class:

Stanley Hauerwas has argued that we always marry the wrong person. That is, we never marry the one we thought we were marrying - because marriage changes us. So you wake up one day and realize that the person next to you is not the person you committed your life to five years ago. Of course, you are not the same person either... Nobody ever chose to marry a person who is addicted to alcohol, or who develops a terminal illness. But sometimes you wake up in a marriage and that is the person you've got. Being a parent is like that too. Parents never get the children they thought they were giving birth to... What we need, when we marry or have a child, is some means of turning our fate into our destiny. As Christians, our faith provides us the means to live together as parents, children, husbands, and wives. Just as we didn't choose Samson or Sarah to be our grandparents in faith, so we didn't choose Jesus to be our savior. He came to us, not the other way around. (John 15:16) (W.H. Willimon, 1996)

Why do we so often convince ourselves that life is about us? What makes us arrogant enough to believe the world revolves around us? In a word, sin. More specifically, I believe it's pride.

It started in the Garden of Eden, continued at the Tower of Babel, and hasn't ceased yet. It is a disease human beings suffer from constantly.

We may not always get what we bargained for in life. I know I haven't. I didn't sign up for the deal where my mom died in a car accident before her grandson was born. I didn't expect to lose my mother-in-law to cancer four months after that.

There are very few things I am 100% sure of in life. But I am convinced that life is more about how I react to the situations I encounter than complaining about them. God never guaranteed a life without problems. He called me into a life where I bear the burdens of others and they do the same for me. He asks me to join Him in the plan of redeeming creation. He demands my allegiance to something bigger than me.

The more I realize that I am created in the image of God to join His work in this world, the more I realize this life is not about me; it's about helping others find the peace and joy that often gets lost in the midst of a sinful world full of darkness.

shine!
Jason