On Being Selfish and Selfless

One of the things I love about being a writer is digging deep to give wisdom and meaning to my characters in dialog and action that's not trite or expressly something I would say or do.

While I'm pro life, I had to write convincing pro choice dialog for the book The Sweet By and By when my heroine was discussing why her Mama took her for an abortion an sixteen.

I am good at seeing multiple sides. Which is helpful yet frustrating.

Anyway, writing a scene yesterday, the heroine challenged the hero on being selfish. I can't remember what she said exactly at this moment but it sparked something in me.

Selfishness comes from what we want to do or be. Our desires and dreams energize our focus on self and where we want to go. We wind up comparing ourselves to others and feeling like failures for no good reason.

Perhaps a friend is a CEO for a major corporation while you're still at lower level management. Or another person you know started his own company but you're still working for "the man."

A friend is good with finances while you can't seem to save a quarter. So we get dissatisfied and grumble. We start to turn in and think of ourselves. If we don't succeed then we must be failing.

Selfishness is really about "me." And the "me world" is really rooted in fear and pride that I might just "lose myself and become nothing." That if I don't toot my own horn, chase my own dreams, do what I got to do, then I'll die in the dirt and no one will remember me.

This is why I follow Jesus. I can give of myself freely without losing myself. Granted, it's hard and I'm FAR from perfect but I don't have to toot my horn, He will.

If I focus on loving others, He will see to my needs. If I ask Him to increase in me so I can decrease, He'll accomplish the works of my hands.

See, we think if we surrender God automatically sits us on the bench. But the opposite is true. It's when we surrender, become selfless, He gives us a job to do and calls us into the game.

The best part? We don't have to worry about success or failure because He takes care of us. We don't have to worry about dying in the dust forgotten because He remembers us. We don't have to worry about leaving our mark in the world because this life is a vapor.

It's an internship for the Life to come. That is where we will really see and be rewarded. Did you work an internship in college? I did. A couple of them. I'm glad I did. Glad to have worked hard and earned a good grade, but it was not my ultimate career.

Can you imagine if I worked in internship with the force and drive of a forty year career?The intern people would throw a party when the school quarter ended. An internship is to die to self, to learn, to prepare for the work place.

That's this life. To die to self. To prepare and learn for the age to come.

Eternity is a long time to make up for anything you lost or didn't get in this short 70-80 year life.

Be selfless. Trust me, it will pay off in the eternal run!

Eternity On Our Hearts

The summer I was fifteen, life opened up for me. I was no longer in the geeky, chubby young teen stage, but a lean, older, trying-to-be-confident teen.

I'd completed my first year as a cashier for Publix and finally, I was allowed to leave the Express Lane and work a big register. Woo hoo. You do not know how much this meant to me! I no longer worked 11 - 2pm but 5 - 9pm. I'd arrived.

I'd also caught the attention of two part-time stockman, Pete Ramirez and Kevin Rattigan. They flirted and winked, smiled and complimented. My unsure confidence about my potential beauty or lack there of, soared. Other started to notice me too. (Pretty funny stories ensued, but later.)

I'd kind of been dating my brother's friend (and mine) but when these older "men" turned their attention to me, the other guy didn't have quite the same appeal. Fickle are the emotions of a fifteen year old.

I fell pretty hard for the dark eyed, dark haired Pete with his amazing smile and muscular frame. And he played hard to get for a really long time. He'd lure me close, then push me away. The entire store was involved in our drama. From the manager on down. Pete liked me but never asked me out.

I've blogged about that ordeal on these pages before, so I won't bore you with the recap. But finally, I'd turned sixteen and after lo so many months, he asked me out. We had four months together before my family moved from south to north Florida.

But I thought I was in love, thought he was the one. Then he wasn't the one and I met someone else. And another someone else. I went to college and met lots of guys. Though I didn't think any of them were "the one" I was looking, waiting, wondering.

When I met Hubby, all the waiting and wondering stopped. Recurring dreams about running out of my wedding, ended.

Looking back, I'm so glad I didn't commit my life to my sixteen-year-old female emotions. I know it's worked for many, many couples, but life still had a journey for me.

At sixteen, that journey was hard to see, hard to imagine. Sometimes we commit to a person or a job, or a way of life because we just can't see beyond the moment.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us God has written eternity on our hearts. In other words, it is within our very core to believe, know and trust that there is a life after this one. Eternity. In our hardest moment, on our toughest days, we can look up and believe God that an infinitely much better life is coming.

Based on the understanding I would one day be married to the man God had for me, I calculated my choices and my actions. I modified my behavior for the life I wanted to live not just in the moment, but five and ten years down the road.

I wanted a career, so I studied and went to college. I wanted to earn a good living, so I worked hard on my jobs.

We must apply the same to the Next Life. Don't live just for today, but for the era when this age will end and Jesus will come again, ushering in a new era, a new age, one that goes on for Eternity.

So what you're not rich in this life. You have all of eternity to become rich. So what you've given up a few meals for fasting, or a few television programs to be on your face before the Lord in prayer. Those heart motions will be rewarded by Jesus.

Hollywood will not take any of us into eternity. McDonalds, and y'all know I love McDonalds, will not fix my ills, or fix my place in the next life.

But a postured heart toward the Lord will. Look, I'm not saying go all religious and not live this life. Please. LIVE IT! I am. This life is my internship for the next. And frankly, I want a good showing.

I am not saved or justified by my works, no, no, hear me, it's all on Jesus and the work of the Cross. But what I do with my time, words, money and emotions IS on me. Those are the things I can "take with me."

I write because Jesus put it in my heart. I'm writing out of both love and obedience. I want to be a writer in the Kingdom, you know?

So, consider your thoughts and emotions? Are you too wrapped up in the "now" to consider the future? Are you in love with your "fifteen-year-old boyfriend" and truncating all your possibilities and potential?

Hear: fifteen year old boyfriend is a metaphor!

Pray to understand the beauty and value of eternity being written on your heart. Then walk in it.

Living a fasted lifestyle

A friend and I've been emailing back and forth about a fasted lifestyle. What does it mean? Why and how do we live "fasted?"

Can we look around our lives and see what we don't need, what we can do without and take the time and money we spend on them to give to the poor, or aid a family member or friend?

My friend wrote to me: "There is an entitlement mentality that exist in the church and we're devoid of self sacrifice. Once we do a little bit of sacrifice we buy into the lie of "well I've sacrificed, so I deserve some me time." The latter bites me in the rear all the time and gets my soul in some kind of trouble. We need to preach the good ole fashion self denial again with clarity and without apology and or prefacing."

I'm often bitten by the "me time" bug. Are you? Man, that's a hard one. But I feel it when I focus too much on "me time."

The fasted lifestyle is about the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle. It's about being meek and humble, compassionate and lovers of God and others. Being gentle, not getting revenge when people revile and slander us because of what we believe.

Take some time to read Matthew 5 and let me know your thoughts on Jesus's sermon.

There are promises to all His conditions. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you'll be satisfied.

How often do we hunger and thirst for pleasures of this world, and not the righteousness of the kingdom? I'm guilty of that, I know.

Because living a Sermon on the Mount lifestyle, a fasted lifestyle isn't about giving up for giving up sake. We see many in the world who don't know Jesus who live meek and lowly, not pursuing money and things, but that is their god.

Giving it up now as an act of voluntary weakness shows our devotion to the Lord, turning our hearts toward wholeheartedness. When I fast food, I'm weak. When I give sacrificially of my money and find myself in need, I'm weak. I need the Lord to intervene. When I don't speak up or defend myself by checking my words, then I am vulnerable and weak, standing only because He sustains me.

And the rewards will come. If not in this life, in the one to come. This life is an internship. What we do now with our time, money and words has repercussions for all of eternity. Can we wait a few minutes to have "things" so that in ETERNITY (Ecc 3:11) we have ABUNDANCE?

I'm wrapping my mind about it. It's my hearts desire. What about you?