I love to make things about me. I’m narcissistic. I like to be the center of attention. Sometimes I do thing just so I have a good story to tell. Ask most of my friends and they would agree.
I have been feeling the past few weeks that I have been making my fundraising for the World Race about me and not about the Lord.
I do this with lots of things.
When people used to ask me 6 months ago where I worked I would tell them, “Great Harvest Bakery and the Teahouse…but I am in the process of leaving for the Peace Corps” or “I do some amatuer photography stuff on the side.” As if to say what I was doing wasn’t enough. Why did I feel like I had to add those last parts? I felt like I had to validate myself through what I was doing and that for some reason the two wonderful jobs that many people I know would have loved to have weren’t enough
.
So I went about my work missing the point. Sometimes I was so concerned about looking for what was next that I missed what the Lord was trying to teach me now. And so I missed the point.
Why am I bringing that up now. Because I am doing it again. I am making fundraising about me.I am missing the point to make a name for myself.
I have no idea how the heck the Lord is going to raise that money but he will. My sister Megan believes this stronger than anyone I know. She says the Lord will raise more than enough and the rest can go to a fellow team member. Can’t help but chuckle a little when she says that, let alone begin think about my next two months rent up here with my hit or miss salary covering shifts and the this’s, and that’s, and the other thing’s I sitll need to get for the trip.
But she’s right. And the Lord will provide.
Please pray that I wouldn’t make the World Race about my story. I realize that yes, this is my life, but its also not my life. I love a good story but I am used to making it about me. Pray that I would simply be a subplot in God’s greater story for my life.
If you have made it this far into my rant I thank you, but get comfortable I am almost done. Cub Scouts Honor. (insert picture here of me with my fingers in the air).
Anywho, I was talking with my good buddy Jonah (which everyone in fort collins should meet at some point, and yes ladies he is single, good looking, a raft guide, and will probably punch me very hard after reading this) about Donald Miller’s latest book. It talks about writing a great story with your life, but it also talks about how we can miss the little things too. Donald Miller states that “I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given — its just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral”
This is what I had been doing my last year. Missing it. Missing what the Lord gave me. So I became complacent and used God as calling card with limited minutes on my plan to use only when I was sick or in trouble for positions I put myself in.
I, like Donald Miller, want to write a story that someone will want to read and cherise and tell to others. But what I love about Donald Miller is that there is a point to his stories. And the point is, I am not the point.
“There is an instrinsic feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect if you only had such-and-such a car and such-and-such a spouse or such-and-such a job. We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It’s written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn’t, and if only this and if only that, it would be beautiful again”
Let me be clear on my last point. Do I feel like Christians put greater values on jobs just as much as non-Christians.
For sure. My example is that when someone says they are going be gone for a year doing outreach that makes them suddenly a Missionary. That these are the only true Christian example of following God’s will by going to the mission field.
Well thats bogus.
A true missionaries live everyday being faithful in the little things.
You don’t have to travel the globe to find someone in need of love. Thats why the Bible talks about loving your “Neighbor” as yourself. Some people feel led to release the kingdom in this way. I am one of those people. Do I believe that this makes me a better Christian. Not in the least. What makes someone great is being faithful in the small things and loving on the randoms in the everyday.
So this is me telling you that I don’t want to make “this” about “that.” The fundraising is not about me. The trip is not about me. Will this trip change my life? Well in the words of a modern day philosopher Will Ferrell, “You bet your balls Neil Diamond!” But that change can only come when I start trusthing that the Lord is my provider and when I stop making it about me.
You stay classey San Diego, (those last two jokes are not for everyone sorry)
Nathan Salley
