Life is Not About You

Eric Sipe, a pastor from whom I learned a great deal, is fond of saying, "Life is not about you, life is about God." Now, one can take this many different ways, and it is sure to offend those who cling to the notion that God is man centered. Let it offend, for it is the truth. But let's be precise here. When I say, "Life is not about you," I am not saying that you are to deny yourself happiness. In fact, once you discover the meaning of "life about God," you will indeed find true happiness - yes, you will find true life. Christ puts it this way in Matthew 16:24-25,

"If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."

There are those people who see this word from Christ and feel a tremendous burden because they think Christ is saying you can't have eternal life (salvation) unless you somehow manage to deny yourself and all your fleshly impulses. After all, Jesus does say we have to deny ourselves, and he says we must bear our cross, which is quite burdensome sounding, and so all the evidence seems to point to this interpretation. They may even attempt to live their life according to this interpretation for a while, only to meet with failure. Well, there will be those who will succeed, or think they have succeeded, but in reality have only blinded themselves to their own failure. To make matters worse, some prominent Christians have seen this very real problem, and go to the extreme of trying to explain away such teachings of Christ. They might say He was speaking this only to the specific disciples sitting around Him at that point, so it doesn't apply to us today. This is a terrible error, and adds yet another misunderstanding of truth. Jesus Christ said a great many things that God decided not to record in the eternal scriptures. What scripture holds, then, are those few choice words that God selected in His infinite wisdom to include in scripture and defend for all eternity. Am I to believe that God would forever defend, protect, and preserve words from the mouth of Jesus Christ that have no meaning to me today, other than some kind of historical record? No, I believe in what Christ said here, and I believe it applies to me today. Let us unpack this, then, and see what it holds.
Oh, you want to unpack this now? Well, one advantage of a blog is that I can get some much-needed sleep now, and unpack this in installments. So, meditate on this truth and join me again tomorrow (or the following day) when I post my first follow up.