The Role of a Lifetime!

Do you struggle with anything on a regular basis? I do.

I have a serious daily struggle.

I love attention.

I want to speak and have others listen. I want to tell a story and hear others laugh. I want to share an insight and leave others inspired. I want to share a poignant moment and know that others are moved.

The most likely reason I write is that I’ve always had a lot to say and writing is the best way to do that without being interrupted.

I’m not much of an extrovert but I like control and I want to be the star of my own show. This brings me into constant, daily conflict with my desire to follow Christ.

Life, for any of us, is only correctly aligned when Jesus has the starring role on life’s stage. I know this and yet, I’m constantly shoving Him out of the spotlight and attempting to steal a glimmer of His glory for myself.

On Monday nights, I’ve been watching the NBC show Smash. It’s a drama about what goes into writing and producing a Broadway show.

But really, it’s about what life is like when we all want to be center stage.

It’s a story full of jealousy, mistrust, envy, greed, changing sexual partners, infidelity, lies, egos, arrogance, and continual disappointment.

I don’t think the writers intend to present a Biblical worldview but I believe they have. In a world where everyone wants to be the star attraction, the worst of humanity rules the day.

Too often, that’s the inner terrain of my own heart and mind because I compete with Jesus for center stage. I, too, want to be a smash and I’m an impatient understudy to my Lord.

Even at my age, I’m still a student of love. I strive to produce, through my own efforts, little love projects to present to Jesus but they never measure up because I’m always at the heart of them – me and my desire to be loved back or to be noticed or to be in the right.

If loving is the right thing to do, I want to love in order to be right – not for the sake of love.

How I long to learn how to love for love’s sake! Can you relate?

The good news is that I don’t walk around feeling hopeless about this.

Jesus loves me perfectly and His love is a perfect love. I have access to that resource.

Learning to allow Him to be the star of my life, willingly placing myself in a supporting role, is a process and takes continual effort. The effort of reading His word to face myself with the truth. The effort of prayer throughout the day to reinstate Him to His place in the spotlight. The effort of listening to trusted believers when they say hard things about where I need to grow. The effort to die to myself and put others’ needs above my own without expecting return.

Love is a four letter word. Like work.

Want to be a smash? Acknowledge the true star in the room – Jesus – and do exactly what He does. Yield to others for the sake of love.

It’s not easy but easy isn’t what it’s about.

It’s about Jesus.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’” Acts 17:24-28