Lord, it is 12:22 on President’s Day and I come to you confessing that I have once again made it all about me. It’s not. It always has been and always will be about You. What matters is not my own happiness or fulfillment, but Your Kingdom advancing and taking over.

Help me not to ask you to bless my plans and my activities, but help me to find out what Your plans and activities are and join in, because Your work is already blessed. You invite me to be a part of what You’re doing in the world and I so often choose my own little plans instead.

I am selfish at the core. I want to be noticed and liked and admired. But You want so much more from me. You want me to be a vessel You can pour Yourself into and overflow through me to those around me. You want me to be a mirror that reflects Your glorious image to a world that is waiting and watching (stole that one from Pete Wilson!).  If the world looks at me and sees me, then there’s nothing grand about that; if the world looks at me and sees You and what You can do with one simple, surrendered life, they will have to stop and take notice. You can’t help but notice a miracle.

Like Jim Elliott, I want to be a fork in the road that people come to and have to choose one way or another about Jesus. Jesus Himself made neutrality toward Himself an impossibility. Either we are for Him and we are gathering, or we are against Him and we scatter. Hopefully, as Your love takes me over, people will be drawn to You in wonder for what You’ve done in me.

So thank You that after so many times when I’ve made it about me, You remind me gently and tenderly that it’s not about me. You show me in a thousand different ways that You are so much bigger than I imagined and so much better than I ever dreamed You could  be. Your love for me is extravagent and wild and is changing me.

Thank You for not giving up on Me. Thank You for the people who love me and who inspire me to be more like You. Thank you that one day I will look back on all the good the bad and the ugly and it will all have been so beyond worth it, because You will be my reward!

Amen and amen!