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If you only focus on your wants and needs and to-do’s today and I only focus on mine, we’ll pass like ships in the night. If we choose you-first and thank-you instead, we’ll see (and enjoy) each other instead.
“[S]elf-centeredness destroys relationships.” Tim Keller
Father, please create in me a clean, other-centered heart. From Psalm 51:10
A little child doesn’t know much about denial and repression and muscling through on his own.
“Allow the little child . . . (in you) to come to Me. Don’t restrain or hinder or forbid [him].” Mark 10:14 (parenthetical added)
“Pour out your heart to Him.” Psalm 62:8
Hard times (and never enough time) would hurt a lot less if we remembered the shining answer to is-this-all-there-is.
“What if life is a dress rehearsal? What if the real production is about to begin?” John Eldredge
“[T]he sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed to and in us.” Romans 8:18
If self-denial meant slowly giving up everything you enjoy, who would want it? If it meant slowly growing vibrant, who wouldn’t?
“[T]o see things as He saw them, to feel things as He felt them, to be hearted, souled, minded, as He was – [t]his it is to deny self. . . .” George Macdonald
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself. . . .” Luke 9:23
When you start to think you’re not worth the trouble, imagine being pursued and carried and rejoiced in.
“So He told them this parable: ‘What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one, doesn’t . . . go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.’” Luke 15:4-5
“My God, what is a heart? That Thou should’st it so eye and woo, pouring upon it all Thy art, as if that Thou had nothing else to do?” George Herbert
I-can’t-bear-it feels scary and hopeless and shameful until you begin to see that God can (and will).
“Neither must we be discouraged . . . that we cannot do or bear any special thing. . . . [W]hile of ourselves it is impossible, . . . through Him we can do whatever He may require of us.” Jean-Nicolas Grou
“I can do all things in and through Him who infuses me with His strength.” Philippians 4:13
