Less Self

I just experienced perhaps the most challenging week of my life. It was awesome.

Has anyone heard of Crossroads Summer Camp? Well, if you haven't, let me school you: it's a week-long youth camp on the campus of Gardner-Webb University that includes a workshop and activities on campus during the day and a wicked-awesome worship service at night.

I went as a chaperone this year, for the first time (officially) ever! Which made me nervous. Because, though I am CPR and First-Aid certified, I was pretty sure that wasn't all that it took to be a youth helper.

Turns out I was right. I had to practice being selfless, too, and the lesson couldn't have come at a better time!

To be selfless means that you don't concern yourself with what you want to do (or "your own interests," as the Bible puts it), but consider, instead, what would be best for those around you. This may have meant, for me, going to activities with my girls that overlapped with the activity that I would most have enjoyed. Or, maybe it meant that I needed to give someone else the last dessert on the dessert bar and settle for something less exciting. And, the biggest challenge for me: instead of talking only about myself and always guiding the conversation into a direction that I wanted to go into, I've discovered that sometimes selflessness means asking genuine questions about my conversation partner, listening to their answers, and letting them say more than I do. It's not all about me.

If that were all I had to learn, though, the lesson would have been easy. But it wasn't; the best is yet to come! Selflessness is not only in our actions, but in our motivations as well. If I go to an activity for the sake of my girls in order to show off my deep spirituality or to brag about how I'd far rather be somewhere else--well, what's the point of that? To show off, of course, so that people will notice me and my "selfless" action. The focus, in other words, becomes myself again. If I surrender the dessert I really wanted so that some handsome, godly guy will notice and think that I'm a selfless, godly girl, then I've ruined the effect and brought the focus to myself again and taken it away from God, and my earthly reward (the attention I've received for it) is the only reward I can expect for it. Do we get the picture? We can even make our "selfless" activities selfish if we're doing them for our own benefit or praise. Remember 1 Corinthians 10:31?

Finally, you may wonder why we would ever want to be selfless anyway, if not so that others will notice. There are a few answers:

1. When we became Christians, we were made completely new so that the old way of looking at things (i.e. "It's all about me") was transformed by Christ

2. As Christians, we're not living for ourselves, but for the glory of God (as 1 Corinthians 10:31 reminds us)

3. Jesus gave the ultimate example of selflessness when He surrendered His very life so that we could live through Him.

Remember that it's not about us and what we can do, because we are nothing without Christ; it's all about God, and only He deserves praise, honor, or glory. Don't try to take what is rightfully His.