Well, about a week ago at the dinner table Benjamin comes out of nowhere with this….”Dad, your job is to talk about God, not yourself.”

Ouch.  Actually when he said this I was not even listening to him.  Leslie helped me – “Did you hear what he just said?”  I replied…”No what did he say.”  And she told me…those words that I didn’t want to think were for me. (I was probably talking about myself at the very time he said it).

I came away from the table thinking, “Oh ya that’s cute, I’ll remember that story and share it with other people in a way to tell them not to be selfish and talk about themselves all the time.”  But the truth…it’s for me.  There is always the temptation to talk about myself, project myself, make myself great, have a good name, reputation, and play the image management game.  And I often cave into it.  It is here where Christ calls us to a new way…a new story…where we become less so that he may become greater.  We begin to live not for our own glory but for his.

Lately I’m discovering how much energy it takes to keep what is called the “false self” running (constantly projecting an image to the world as what I want and hope them to see me as).  It’s kinda like those dudes who are spinning all those plates in the air at the circus.  And I’m starting to get the guts to just let all the plates fall to the ground, slowly-  one by one, and me just stand there in front of the world with broken plates all around me…just me – the regular old real Josh.  This is a lifetime journey for me.  Shedding the false self and putting on the true self that Paul talks about.

Hope you come with me.  Need some company on the road.

“God loves you.”  Three of the most profound words we will ever hear.  But after all the billboards, trite little bumper stickers, TV evangelists and preachers shouting on the street corners, it’s become wrote and even tainted.  A numbness of frequency.  And something many of us really don’t fully believe, if at all.  I’m praying that we bring back the depth of these three words in these next 6 weeks.  I mean it…for real, that’s my prayer.  Imagine what our lives would be like if we really believed this and just flat out accepted God’s love.  It would change everything.  It could not change everything!  We would be radically compelled to live love…we couldn’t not do it.

God loves you?  Do you believe it?