It’s All About…
How much of your life do you make about you? Which relationships center around you? Which settings center around you?
Then here’s a bit different twist…where does it not center on you, but you desperately want it to? You walk into rooms determined that this time, it’s going to be about you, even though the last thousand weren’t. Ironically, both of these situations create the same outcome. Making life about us or wanting life to be about us makes for a miserable existence.
Whether we are overt in our communication, passive aggressive, or fully disguised, many today, in the immortal words of Bing Crosby, adhere to this motto, “Everybody’s got a little larceny operating in them. Everyone’s working an angle.”
Walking through your primary environments of life—home, job, church, friends, hobbies, sports, etc.—which relationships and which rooms do you make the focus on you: what you want, what you need, what you expect, what you demand.
“And if you want to be right at the top, you must serve like a slave. Your attitude must be like my own, for I, the Messiah, did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many.” —Matthew 20:27-28 TLB
What would change in our world, if we truly believed and lived out…
My marriage is not about me.
My parenting is not about me.
My job is not about me.
My church is not about me.
My friendships are not about me.
My free time is not about me.
My is not about me.
You can fill in the blank with other situations in your life, as can I.
When we remove our expectations of others, eliminate our demands, and decide any engagement of another human is about the other person, we not only put our “neighbor” first, but we honor the God Who started this whole counter-cultural lifestyle to begin with.
He replied, “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor just as much as you love yourself.” —Luke 10:27
1 comment
Frankie Rainey January 30, 2014
Thanks for the reminder, Robert. Old self dies hard! Frankie