self-importance

Opening Prayer: Forgive me, O God, when I start thinking more of myself, and my efforts, than I ought.  Remind me that you are the only one who can change lives.  Help me to pit my hope in you, rather than in my own gifts and efforts.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 131:1-3

Journal: Where in your life are you trying to grow larger and higher?  And where are you content to be small and lowly, so that God might be lifted up?

Reflection: Self-importance is one of the great pitfalls of the life of ministry.  I think that’s why I love Psalm 131 so much; it keeps my ego constantly in check.  It reminds me that it is possible to overestimate my own importance in the grand scheme of things.  And it helps me to realize that when I do this it can lead to some really dark and desperate places.  Places that have much more to do with my need to be needed than with God’s need for my involvement in his work and his kingdom.  It can leave me breathlessly running around trying to do everything for everyone because the world simply cannot exist without me.

     The tricky part is that it’s a very subtle thing; something I am slowly drawn into.  Somewhere along the line, as I become more and more involved in the lives of people, I become convinced of how essential and necessary I am to all that God is doing in and through them.  I begin to see myself as indispensable to that process, and begin to see myself as way bigger and much higher than I really am.

     Psalm 131 brings my eyes, and my heart, back down to earth.  It helps me to see things as they really are.  It helps me realize that I am really not that big a deal.  In fact, I am a pretty little deal.   It lets me know that God is God and I am not.  It helps me to stop, and become like a weaned child in the loving embrace of its mother—content, dependent, at peace.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to always be about lifting you up, not lifting me up.  Amen.