The Selfish Onion

In April on my anniversary, I shared these three thoughts

• I have learned how selfish I can be and how to die to self more.
• I have come to understand just how much joy there is in dying to self.
• I have learned how hard it is to die to self in meaningful ways.

This brings me to the selfish onion. As I get older and continue to grow in both the ministry and in my marriage, I continue to discover new areas of selfishness. I was thinking about this as I prepared for church. Just when I have learned how to better serve my wife or my family, something new is required of me and I fight it. I discover a new level of selfish demand that resides in my heart. God has told us that whoever would be a leader needs to be a servant.(Mark 9:35). This shows the difference between the way God views leadership and the world views leadership. Godly leadership is about serving, not being served. Authority and leadership is rooted in your ability to serve those under you. Jesus is the ultimate example, not coming to be serve but to serve to the point of giving up His life for those He would lead. All this service is really bad for my ego. My ego, my pride wants to be important, to be in charge, to get my needs met first. When I do serve and die to self just a little, my ego immediately gets very proud of myself and now asserts that it is time to be rewarded. Lost the outer shell of selfishness and underneath is another layer of even more selfishness. In fact, the more I serve, the more my ego retrenches and explains that now I have done enough and it is time for me to be served. So that's the facts. I'm a selfish onion. One layer of selfishness after another. I guess the trick is to not resist peeling. And if I can stretch the metaphor just a little further, yes, sometimes this much peeling can make you want to cry. :) I've got some more thoughts on this that I will post tomorrow.