Monday, December 5, 2011

The Kingdom of Me - Pat

Wow! I can so identify with Kay Warren’s struggles in chapter 2. I loved how she taught about surrender and identified practical ways surrender looked in her life. “Voluntary surrender is the key…He only assumes the leadership of my life when I voluntarily yield to Him. Every other moment of surrender to Him grows from His initial invitation to join His kingdom.” (pg. 43) “Your ‘cross’ … an attitude of radical obedience to God in which you willingly accept any consequence for Jesus’ sake.” (pg. 46) Kay said that dying to self was not easy and took years of practice involving all the details of our life. This morning my daughter asked me to curl her hair. While curling it, I told her when she had free time she needed to practice curling her hair and she would get good at it. That goes with anything in life, even dying to self. The more we do it the better we get.

Her marriage confessions were meaningful to me. She shared that she had wasted too much time arguing about meaningless stuff with her husband. Ditto. I am a slow learner too, but my husband and I are also realizing loving each other is more important than being right.

I too have been put on a shelf by God after a profound encounter with Him in which He showed me I had been called and appointed to full-time ministry. The season of sitting on the shelf was the most difficult of my entire Christian walk. I am a doer. I want to make a difference. I want my life to have significance and make an eternal impact on those around me. But, when God sits you on the shelf and says, “not now,” you will question everything that you know is real. How many times did I point to someone else in ministry and say, “What about her? What about him? Why do they get to do and I don’t? Did You decide I was too big of a mess? This last question has been one of the greatest hindrances for me in ministry and in life. I guess that goes along with the bad past, but I am learning more and more to remember that life and ministry is not about me – that I have been bought and paid for and given a robe of righteousness simply because God extended His glorious grace to the least of these! Praise His name!

I want to leave you with a challenge. Go to http://www.kaywarren.com/ and type in “ego assessment.” Listen to her 42 second message. Download and print the ego assessment. Take the ego assessment into your quiet time and ask the Lord to reveal, redeem, and restore your attitudes that are not His kingdom focused.

4 comments:

  1. Wow I too can identify with Kay in chapter 2. I read and wonder how does she know so much about ME?

    Isn't God good to have us in this book at the same time Bro Greg is preaching on taking up the cross and following HIM? I am a little dense and God knows I need to hear and study things several times to remember it. LOL.

    I pray God will forgive me for being so selfish, help me to pick up that cross and follow him daily, I submit today LORD, use me.

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  2. This has been so far my favorite chapter! I'm reading it again, I need the FULL effect!!! I too feel and have felt the same way as Kay! Protecting myself, and how dare someone hurt or offend me! Don't they know what trials I've suffered in my life? This is so very selfish on my part!! I also can strongly identify with the part of feeling envious and bitter towards her husband and his successes!! I too think why me God and why not me? Haven't I suffered and been through enough!? Don't I deserve to have the very best and good things to happen to me?? I can't believe how after reading this chapter that I've become so absorbed with what's best for me and what I need and not more of what's best for God and what He needs from me! I can honestly say that I can feel as though my heart has become hardened to some extent and I dont want to become that person!! A bitter envious person!!

    My prayer is God I want to give up the Kingdom of Me in exchange for your kingdom!! To wake up each and every day filled with His peace and that He is in control of my life!! I PRAY to totally let go and Let God!!!!

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  3. I knew before I read the first word of this chapter that it was going to be all over me! God has been dealing with me about this since last February when my husband was gone on a mission trip to Nicaragua. While he was gone, I realized how self-absorbed I am! I spend so much time thinking about my time, my work, my money, my responsibilities. Like Kay, I would take an assessment at the end of the day; did everyone else give me as much as I gave them? Boy did God open my eyes while my husband was out of the country for a week! Not only did I realize how much I expect from him, but I also came to the realization that most of the things I think are important aren't important at all! I would find myself thinking about the people he was working with in Nicaragua and then comparing my "needs" to their needs. Mine weren't needs at all...........selfish wants, mostly. God is definitely working on me constantly in this area. On a very regular basis I find myself thinking, "Why are you being so self-absorbed? Snap out of it! It's not about!" I'm so thankful God does not give up on us!

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  4. I started this study late, in fact, tonight I read the first two chapters. I had to finish "Not a Fan" which I did just yesterday. I have seen the same words repeated in 48hours - Die daily, Take up your cross, Whatever/Whenever/Whereever...
    Isn't it against everything in us to surrender ourself to Christ every single day? It is an exercise to be practiced everyday and I have sooo far to go. I feel very inadequate at it actually. What I have experienced is that the spiritual results are not big and dramatic as they were when I first turned my life over to God completely and developed a truely life changing relationship. Instead, it is a silent, private daily decision that I often fail at just moments into it. They are'nt the big changes I found had excited and completely enveloped me in the beginning. I have even began to question if my growth was becoming stunted and reaching a plateau. But I believe there are changes still - and they are quiet and slow (and possibly the most important and long-lasting). Recently it seems that if there are any changes to be noted externally, they come only after endless internal/personal interactions with God.
    ....Thankfully My Lord is patient and persistant and forgiving.

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