Sunday, March 27, 2011

death to... beth.


Lately, the Lord has been actively at work in convicting me of my own pride and selfishness. You may be asking, Why would you post something this personal on here? Well, in a nutshell, because I feel the Lord prompting me to be honest and transparent about life, and in this that He may use it to bless or encourage someone.

I'm always proud and selfish, and I'm often reminded by the Holy Spirit, but especially lately as I've considered my life in various aspects and thought of my motives behind my actions. Introspective? Yes. Happy? Not really. The Lord is ever effective at bringing my motives to the surface and revealing the ugliness in them to me, and I've been humbled and thankful for His faithfulness in doing so. I am reminded that He truly is the reason I live and breathe; I am in Jesus... and saying goodbye to Beth and all of the snares and entrapments that consume her. My life exists soley to bring glory to my Creator.

Reading in John this week, I came across a passage where John writes about the unbelief of people in Jesus' time. Even with Jesus' many signs and miracles, people would still not believe in Him. Some, as John quotes from Isaiah, because the Lord has not yet opened their eyes. But there were definitely some among the authorities ("many even," John says) that believed in Jesus, but out of fear of the Pharisees, they kept quiet about their faith... "for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God" (John 12:43). This cut me to the core as I acknowledged how much I love glory from others, and how terribly I fail to love God's glory. It hurt... deeply.

And then there's grace.

"And God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved."

(Ephesians 2:7-8)


And I am so very thankful. To be reminded that my God is merciful... rich in mercy, in fact. Even when am I so lost in myself, God's love reaches beyond to restore my life in Christ... simply through grace. Overwhelmed? Yes.

The Lord has used this to cause reflection of various parts of my life, and it has been incredibly helpful and refreshing to refocus my life around His glory... to once again bid my own pride and selfishness farewell with God's strength.

All of this led me to think of blogging, and how it can be the perfect outlet for self-glory. Right? I mean, who really cares what we ate for dinner on Tuesday and which mountain we climbed last weekend? Is sharing the random details of our life serving to bring glory to us, or to the Lord?

When Ben and I started a blog, it was with great hesitation, simply because we both had read blogs that had served to be helpful and beneficial, and those which had been an outpouring of information, either too personal or too purposeless. We identified that blogging could potentially result in narcissism. With all of this in mind, we still decided to start for the purpose of keeping our families and close friends informed while we live overseas, and as a way of recording our adventures and memories for ourselves in the future.

But, as the Lord has been teaching me, if at any point something in my life becomes a means of attracting self-glory or leads to prideful thoughts, I had better be ready to rid myself of it. Quickly. And for that matter, if anything in my life becomes more about my glory than about God's glory, I need to either choose to eliminate it or purposefully refocus it.

So this is me refocusing our blog. We still aim to keep our families (my mom has begged me not to give it up) and close friends included as much as possible in our lives here. And we are increasingly thankful for the cool photo journal we have of our experiences this past year. But, more now than ever, I (and Ben as well) desire that whatever we do here, it be solely for God's glory. Much less about our lives as Ben and Beth, and much more about our lives as lovers of God and His glory.

1 comment:

  1. thanks for that beth!! what a GREAT reminder.
    (i do hope that you still keep us updated and posted about everything you all are doing over there) I love reading about it.

    ReplyDelete

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