It's seven months into the year and if you're like most people, your new year’s resolutions have long disappeared into thin air. Unless you're like me.
Every year, instead of making pointless new year’s resolutions about how I'm going to start working out every day, eat healthier, or go to sleep at 9 pm (instead of 1 am), I do something a bit different. I take some time to analyze myself and see what areas of my character need polishing (or major reconstruction!) and I choose one of these areas to work on that year. It's kind of like taping a sticky note to my brain for a year.
Then, throughout the year, I pray that God teaches me this character trait.
Last year, I asked God to teach me compassion. This year, I asked God to teach me humility.
And let me tell you, I sure got what I asked for! These past few months have been the most humbling months of my life.
Let me be completely honest. I like to be in the center of attention. I like when people compliment me, praise me for being good at such and such, and I like feeling powerful and important. But, I also recognize how this can quickly cause me to be proud, arrogant, and self-seeking.
Well God has been working on me lately, chiseling away the pride, the arrogance, the selfishness and bringing about obedience and humility. He put me in situations over which I had no control.
First it was the end of a relationship that I thought had a lot of potential. Then it was the lack of direction after graduation. Then it was a job in which I had to decide what was more important- how others see me or how God sees me. Then it was the complete uncertainty of unemployment and a quickly deprecating savings account. It was seeing my little sister get married, it was realizing my parents had shifted priorities, and it was eventually feeling like I had nothing and I was nothing.
All I had was God and I held on to Him for dear life.
This brings me to the Word, where Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”
You see, no matter what lows we are experiencing in this life, it will never come to a point where Jesus says, “Ok, this is a dead end. You have no way out.”
As Paul writes, we will not be abandoned or destroyed. Isn’t that reassuring?
What’s even more reassuring is that it is in and through these tough seasons of life that Jesus is most revealed in us!
As clay in the hands of a potter, our character gets pressed down, molded and shaped into a vessel that suits the potter. A vessel that reflects the creativity and craftsmanship of the creator.
So let me ask you, are you willing to be pressed down, crushed, and reduced to nothing? Are you willing to let go and let God? Are you willing to become the masterpiece that God is preparing for His good works?
If you are willing, let me challenge you to pray this prayer, “Lord, I acknowledge my pride, my selfishness and my desire to be in control of my life. I realize that if I hold on to these things, all I will ever become is a lump of clay, hard and useless. So Lord, I give myself into your hands - to be molded into a vessel for your glory, even if it means going through seasons of uncertainty, loneliness and darkness. Teach me obedience and humility along the way so that I may be transformed to reflect less of me and more of You.”
By nature, I'm a go-getter. If I want something, I try not to rely on other people to get what I want. I set goals and I reach them. I am constantly wanting to change, grow, experience, and risk. I am totally future-oriented.
Often we try to divide our life into pie slices. We allot a slice for work, a slice for family, a slice for recreation, and whatever sliver is left over gets allotted to God.
