This is a topic that no one wants to talk about.  So I want to publicly thank all of you who faithfully stay with me on this blog that so often challenges us with hard truths God is teaching me – and you.  Just when you think God has dug deep enough into your secret places and cleaned them all out (kind of like my major cleaning projects lately), he finds another corner with cobwebs!

Let me explain how this particular admonition came about.  A few weeks ago, as I was reading a couple of devotions in my morning quiet time, a theme popped up in two places.  That’s usually enough to grab my attention and see if God is, in fact, speaking something specific to me.

I’m reading Paul David Tripp’s “New Morning Mercies” for the second year in a row and continue to be amazed at all the “new” revelations I get.  This particular morning, he wrote about how Jesus was constantly calling out the Pharisees for their false “religiosity.”  This is what Mr. Tripp had to say about those pious wannabees. 

“They did them (public acts) in allegiance to the kingdom of self, for the purpose of personal power and public acclaim.  They were acts of righteousness that were not righteous because they did not come from hearts of worship.  True Christianity is always a matter of the submission of the heart to God, something that only rescuing grace can produce.”

Lovely sentiment.  I’ll store that away for another day when I really need it.

One of the new devotions I started that day was a little disappointing to me.  I always appreciate the insights of other godly men and women in the devotions I read, and I realized this new one did not include that.  Instead, it encouraged the reader to spend some time meditating on that day’s scripture verse and see what insights God would provide.

Ho hum.  I’ve read all these texts so many times before.  What more could I possibly glean from them? Oh, trust me, those are always dangerous and extremely naïve thoughts!

That day’s text ended with a very familiar verse from Philippians 1:21 – “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Yeah, yeah, I got this.  Especially the last part.  While we’re still on the green side of grass, we should be dedicating our lives to Christ.  And then the real reward comes.  That’s where my focus always goes.  I totally understand the “gain” part of heading off to heaven.

But in fairness to this particular devotion, I decided to quietly contemplate what God might have me learn from this. 

Within seconds, the thought I was challenged with was this – Am I truly living for Christ?  What does that actually look like?  I can tell you what it DOESN’T look like because that’s what flooded my mind next.

• It doesn’t mean having ulterior motives in my dealings with others.
• It doesn’t mean putting a limit on how often I reach out to others because it’s now MY turn to be cared for.
• It doesn’t mean saying unkind things about others, even just in my mind.
• It doesn’t mean portraying a public persona that’s better than the real me.
• It doesn’t mean going down those infamous rabbit trails when someone has been unkind to me, and I want to give them a piece of my mind.
• It doesn’t mean making mountains out of mole hills and then dumping that mountain on someone.
• It doesn’t mean having pity parties when I feel unloved or invisible or unappreciated.
• It doesn’t mean always expecting gratitude in return for a kind act.
• It doesn’t mean being extra kind or generous or compassionate so that others would think more highly of me.

Need I go on?  In all these examples and more, I had to honestly ask myself, “Am I putting Christ first with me actions and attitudes?  Am I living for him?”  Clearly, the answer was no.

I’m not saying that every one of those bullet points is where I am 100% of the time.  But if that thought sneaks into my consciousness at all, then I’m guilty of putting the crown on my own head.

What felt so heavy to me as I was finding example after example was the fact that in virtually every gesture or thought, there was at least some element of my own self-promotion or protection.  I would say I rarely had a pure, 100% focus on living for Christ, or being a servant to others.

Honestly, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  So convicting.  And yet, I felt so inadequate as to how I could do a better job of this.  Of course I can’t. 

The real answer is included in the verse.  The second half where it tells us that to die is gain doesn’t necessarily just refer to reaching the glory of heaven someday.  It’s also one of the keys to unlocking this challenge.  We must die to self in order for our motives to be pure and Christ-honoring.

As with virtually everything in the Christian walk, the only way we can be successful is if we allow God to do that work in our lives.  God has to help us die to self, again and again and again.  It’s a daily struggle, but it’s the only way we can begin to tip the balance back to focusing our work on God’s kingdom, instead of our own.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,

but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

 Let each of you look not only to his own interests,

but also to the interests of others.

Philippians 2:3-4