Sacrifice and Servant - Motherhood, Sisterhood

The truth is I do not know the first thing about sacrifice and servanthood. I like to pretend I do. I talk like I do and I can give accounts in my life when I have both sacrificed what I wanted and served others. And in fact, it is true that I have done both at times in my life. But it is not natural for me. In the moments when no one is looking but God, I often am irked that I am asked to do something that is not what I was hoping to be doing.

Being asking to do something can be a literal pain in the neck!

I want my own time and I want to do what I want to do. 

This core desire run complete perpendicular to God's desire for me and my life. So when I am interrupted, cutoff from my intended direction, asked to wait because someone else needs or wants something, who am I fighting with? What am I fighting with?

Selfishness is a core sin that compels us to do so much. In a survival sense, selfishness can be lifesaving, but only if you are alone. In life on earth being alone is a rarity. So everyone all day long gets opportunities to make a choice, am I going to sacrifice and be a servant to God and others or am I going to do what I want to do.

And I do not know about you, but I can get angry, really ticked off, by the simplest thing that I might be asked to do. Matter of fact, big things can be motivating; they can stroke our ego that we are needed or wanted to tackle a job that others are not able to do. But not emptying the cat litter, or folding a load of laundry or cleaning a toilet! Even preparing dinner night after night gets very mundane for me, especially since I have a very limited number of items that I can make that please my family.

I want to be free. I just sang songs at church this morning about being free. Jesus sets me free. And then I walk in the back door and get asked to do a menial task and my insides crash. I want to explode because I was already planning how my next few hours were going to go. And taking 15 minutes to do something for someone else was not calculated into that plan.

What a hypocrite! 

Is God using this to show me that I am not all that I think I am. Or even worse, now I remember something I prayed at church today. I asked God to show me my sin. Oh, boy, I knew how horrible that felt the last time I asked God to do that about 25 years ago. What in the world... that is just it... it was not of the world. That prayer was Holy Spirit inspired, because I would never have asked God to do that!



Ugh! So is this what it is going to be like? Is God going to once again, show me my sin? I didn't like it before and now it will be even worse, because I am suppose to be a pretty mature Christian and my sins are going to show me just how unlike Christ I really am.

"Be gentle with me God", I say to Him in my spirit. "I know what you can handle", I hear Him say back to me. "I know", I resign.

If you have been reading my blog posts, you know that this year God's theme for me is "Rise". Never in my wildest imagination did I think it could mean that like in the refining process of silver when dross rises to the top to be removed by the silversmith, that God is going to begin 2015 by rising my sin up to the top. But here I am, and the process has begun. I have been set free, but I am set free to grow to become Christlike. Alone with God is the crucible of where and how I grow so that I can joyfully serve others.

I am set free, and alone with God is how I grow, to joyfully serve others.

God, forgive me for being selfish. 

Help me to find ways to sacrifice and serve others in little ways, even if they never realize what I have done. Help me to me a silent servant--one that does not need a spotlight in order to "perform" but one that is satisfied to act with you alone as her audience--an audience of one, for you alone.