It's all about me

Let me start by saying that some of you won't get anything out of this post. For those of you that don't struggle with thinking about yourself first, stop reading. For those of you who don't take the biggest slice of pizza stop reading now. For those who have never gotten upset by not getting what you wanted for your birthday or Christmas please stop reading now, and you make me sick. Now that we have eliminated all of those nasty "good" people let me talk straight to those of you including myself that have the sickness, the sickness of selfishness. Oh yes I am gonna go there, my blog followers just went from a whopping 4 to maybe 1, my sister in law can't drop me because then we would have massive family drama. I will come right out and say it, I am selfish, and so are the rest of you, the people who stopped reading this post are just in denial. We all have been saddled with this instinctual impulse to only think about what we need and want. I call it a sickness or an infection because I think it can take over who we are. I have been noticing how prevalent this issue is in my life lately. I love my wife to death but there are times I find it very very hard to put her first and frankly sometimes I just don't. I am not proud of that, I am just being honest. My questions come from some deeper thinking. Why is it so easy to take care of myself first? How do I break this pattern of selfishness? The thing is, sometimes I am not aware that I am being selfish. How do we stop doing something that seems like a part of our human nature? Well I think that is exactly the right place to start, our human nature. Our flesh calls us to fill the me, me, me voice inside, but I know God is calling us to something different. Jesus says in Mark “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." Oh crap….how many times can we say we have tried that? I mean I try to be the greatest all the time, I haven’t as of yet been very successful at it, but that won’t keep me from continuing to try. But when was the last time I pursued true servanthood? Our culture is built on getting ahead of people and taking what is “yours”. I don't think God is calling us to be wimps, but I think if we were all servants things would look a lot different. What if the greatest leaders and church leaders were all amazing servants, because at the end of it isn't that what we all are anyways? How easy is it for us to pray and ask God to help us in our money troubles or marital conflict or other everyday issues. But then think of how many times we pray for God to take away our selfish desires. I know I don't pray that as much as I should and I am struggling with it! I think at least for me something inside is afraid of giving up my selfishness. There is a unknown with going out and being a servant and reaching out, if I just think about myself I can avoid that. If I just think about me I can stay safe in my little bubble, but I am missing out! So giving lip service to unselfishness is really easy but moving to action is much more difficult, almost like fighting our own human nature. Jesus gives me hope because he accomplished true servanthood. And if our Savior was willing to get on his hands and knees and wash his disciples feet, I think I can pursue servant hood as well. I know God can heal us of this sickness of selfishness, I think we just have to find the will to say yes Lord.