checkout the dodgeball tourney pics. yeah, our team did the most embarassing dance b/c it was so uncreative that ppl scratched their head in confusion and laughed at us. in the pics, we were trying to integrate the essential elements of dodgeball - throwing and catching. hmm...so we struck those two poses in the dance, but nobody got it. oh wells, our subsequents dances turned out well. jon and i actually breaked? broke? dance! (what is the past tense of break dancing? not broke dance!)
gear
Pride inhibits worship. It obstructs the sinner from seeing his own falleness: the untidiness within, and the shallow foundation of his soul. When pride is surrendered, then only can the sinner truly receive and thus, truly give without limits.
Our culture leads us to believe that healthiness is founded on giving. But Christianity tells us the first and constant perspective of health is founded on needing. Before serving, before giving, the sinner must receive. He/She must come to come to place of a surrender: that he/she no longer needs to put up an image, no longer needs to prove himself/herself, no longer needs to be shameful of his/her brokenness, and no longer needs to derive worth through service. When the sinner comes to God with this full release, he/she can receive all that He is, and come to place of complete freedom. In doing so, the power of the gospel spontaneously erupts in worship, where God becomes everything, and service naturally spawns from a sense of gratefulness. Instead of being a “subcontractor” to God, the Christian, becomes both a messenger of the gospel, as one who is filled by it, and a partner of Christ, as a conduit that receives and gives the grace of God.
You want to avoid burnout, surrender and never stop receiving – that is, spend time with God and be consumed with Him…just Him. Do not strive; perform, to be what you want to be - what you expect to be. Give up all your ambition of this foolish approach. Do not get caught up in all the mechanics of achieving your identity, your significance. Rather, get caught in a relationship that gives you an identity, of being, which will naturally invoke a service of the truly righteous kind - that empowered by God transforming the heart.
Matthew 5:20
20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
True righteousness is not acquired, it is received in the heart. Therefore, strive not to achieve. Strive to receive!
gear