How many times did your parents, a teacher, a coach ask you to change? If you would just “Change” everything would be alright!
I believe that is why we are all so afraid of change. It means we have to finally get it right some how, and we know deep down, that we won’t… I guess we have to be okay with that, not being “Right”, before we can accept change.
I love the way Richard Rohr explains it, (Watch this 1 minute clip on Oprah), he says we don’t like change “Because it asks us to let go” – we are so good at holding on to bitterness, resentment, hurt, not forgiving, hatred, etc. and yet, we are very bad at holding on to joy, peace, forgiveness and life.
Your “Small Self” says, your life is all about you, which isn’t a very big life.
We make our whole identity about victimhood and how we were done wrong somehow, instead of allowing those very things to make us great.
Freedom only comes when you don’t need to play the victim or create victims. One of the hardest “Changes” for me.
Jesus calls our small self, our false self, “A single grain of wheat”, our “Small self” is our ego. This is the part of us that needs to eventually die so that our “True self”, our maturity, our seeing the world as something we get to serve (rather than then a place that gets to serve us), can come alive.
A single grain of wheat that must die, so that we actually contribute to the human race!
Hard for so many… I know many 60 and 70 year olds that still believe that life is about them some how.
One of my goals in life is to be much more compassionate, and much more forgiving. One of my prayers everyday is “Let me be a man that forgives, the first to forgive” I have to train my mind from the lies I have been told my whole life to get to that place. “It’s all about you, you are the best, you can have anything you want”.
Most of us, especially in the Church, have been lied to over and over.
Now, your “False Self” is not your bad self, it just isn’t real. The color of your skin, the country that you’re from, the car you drive, the cloths you wear, the school you went to; that is what is going to die, when you die, the false stuff.
And if that’s all you have, you have nothing.
When you find yourself in a room, a Church, any gathering really, and everyone around you looks just like you; you know you are living out of your “False Self” or your small self, you know you are living out of your ego… we gather in our little tribes that look just like we do and we believe we are superior some how, that we have it figured out and know one else does. And, in this place we don’t have to change, why would we? We have it all figured out!
What a dangerous and familiar place most of us find ourselves in…
Hospice workers are telling us over and over that people figure it out at the end of their lives; that it’s all about letting go and not holding on to anything… my prayer for me, my family and for you today, is that you could simply just see.
Take a look around and just ask God to allow you to see with His eyes, see with His heart.
When we “See” our world expands and becomes much larger, brighter and more abundant than we could of ever thought possible. It is not about just us anymore, but we are all about it!
What do you need to change? I know for me it is a daily question; let’s run to it and let go, I know there is freedom on the other side.
If you have 13 minutes, watch below:
