Our perception of Jesus is sketched on the canvas in a pencil swayed strongly by this point of view: do we see Him as a giver or a taker? Naturally, the only healthy inclination is to flee from a taker and run to a giver. It's not that Jesus has never taken anything from me because He has. He's taken shame from me, frequent defeat, paralyzing fear, debilitating guilt, and chronic regret. Well, and jealousy. There was that. And a ton of insecurity. That's not to say we don't lay some things down and make some sacrifices on the path of following Jesus. We do, but as they say, therein lies the paradox. Self-importance turns out to be self-sabotage and getting over ourselves turns into finding ourselves. Our true selves. The lives we were born to live. We'll never catch a glimpse of vision with our eyes rolled back in our heads. We'll slit the throat of our own satisfaction with the silky smooth feather of self-focus.
To live the life we long for, we want people around us to recognize with their chins dropped that we have something beyond what our education and training can explain. That goes for you even if you earned a doctorate. Our lives were meant to exceed what a natural course of events could explain. We want people to see that, what we have, we could only get from being with Jesus.
