I Came Here To Lose Myself

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 - 3:48 a.m.

Have you ever felt like your day had creshendoed into one ginormous Epic Failure?!  Don't feel like the Lone Ranger...I many times look back on my day or a particular moment and think...oh boy you really blew that!  Could've handled that in soooo many other ways than the way you chose...but, you didn't...failed again...sigh.

Ah but Grace!  The grace of God that for moments like those above, God is prepared for...He's so magnificent in His ability to forgive and present us time and time again with the proverbial "do-over."  Grace, God's unmerited favor, is that indeed, a manifestation of His power, exceeding what we could achieve or hope for by our own labors.  And not only is it mightily in effect at our salvation, it is also a God given resource that makes possible "holy living" when our life, circumstances, or character is under fire by the Adversary, God's grace becomes His enablement or empowerment to achieve His plan, endure hardship, or access Him.  His grace facilitates our abilities to conquer every weakness as we yield to an absolute trust or reliance upon God, trusting His heart even when we cannot trace His hand.  "And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9.  He thought every little nuance of our lives out and realized that His creations would need help, divine help.  But for the grace of God we would be lost. 

The "epic failures" of our days and thinking on my own brought me to this realization that I need Him!  I need Jesus every day, every moment, every second of every moment of every day in my life.  In order for me to have less and less of these regrettable moments, I needed to lose myself, lose myself into the pools of His warm springs of life, love, renewal, forgiveness, faith, hope, forgiveness, pools of His Character.  The scripture says "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever looses his life will preserve it." Luke 17:33.  Jesus required His disciples to leave all that they had and follow Him.  So as the Lord woke me up this morning with losing myself, I began to just meditate on that and why that's so hard for so many of us...We're Control Freaks!

We live in a complicated, messed up world that is "self" driven.  Driven by greed, vanity, power and anything else that will inflate and build "one's self" up.  No where will you see an ad that's focus is losing yourself unless its for selfish gain.  Lose yourself in the bath with this decadent soap...Calgon Take Me Away....Pudding, indulge yourself in this little cup of gelatinous goo that while it will take you to a place of rolling hills, soft breezes and a hunky shirtless strange man running towards you with his long weirdo hair flowing behind him...uh ok?!  Dude! Its PUDDING!  Silly analogies but just turn on the TV and within seconds of flipping through a a few channels you'll be bombarded with self elevation ads.  But Jesus calls us to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves, just the opposite of the worlds definition.  I don't know about you but I much prefer Christ to the worlds. 

As a woman, I probably look in the mirror 900,000,000,000,000,000 to infinity and beyond times a day....and I can promise you our of those umpteen times there will probably, literally only be, maybe 2 or 3 times that my reflection will result in me thinking, "oh, that looked good!"  We're never satisfied with what we see....but if we allow the Lord to come in and totally "take over", fill us up with Him, His personality, His character, His desires, His mind...the change that takes place in us then becomes our "REFLECTION!"  And what we will now see in most, hopefully all of those 900,000,000,000,000,000 to infinity and beyond glances will be beautiful, perfection in the making, because we're now looking at Him and now ourselves.  But for that to happen, we must lose, relinquish our selves, our control to be in trusted to a precious, loving, compassionate, understanding, ever faithful God.

My realization of my need and dependency on Jesus grows daily...I can't make this uncharted journey of Sarcoids without Him at the helm....I can't do it alone, I can't, I can't I just can't.  The path is too rocky, it's too full of unknown twists and turns, but He knows all the in's and outs and round-abouts of this road.  I love being in His presence, I never leave His side that I'm not changed.  Have you ever been around someone that was so wonderful and each time you left their presence you were better for having spent time with them..well...where do you think that comes from?  It comes from them being saturated with Jesus and all of the "who" that He is...I know that sounded weird but just let that soak in for a minute, you'll get it.

From the beginning of this journey, one thing that has kept my emotional nose above the tide was the worship music that I literally saturate my atmosphere with and there is one song that I'm teaching our worship band is called "Into Your Presence" and the lyrics are so powerful....

"I came here to lose myself, to give all I am away, offering all I have, to give, oh Lord, and I will take nothing, and I will take nothing, but You.  So take me into Your presence, into Your glory, I am surrendered to You, there you can change me and rearrange me, I need You.  Oh I need You Lord."  Powerful! 

If you want to really love yourself, give yourself a gift that money can't buy, do something decadent for yourself...give yourself away to Jesus today and let go of the control, let Him take over and take you to a place you long to be but can't get there by yourself.  Allow Him to treat you the way you really should be treated.  Allow your loving Father, Husband, Friend, Brother, Sister, Son, Daughter, to take "You" out of the equation and replace with "Him" and you'll never, ever be the same.  Truly to lose oneself is to gain life.

What will you seek to gain today?

"Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
Philippians 3:13, 14

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus..." Philippians 2:5