My wife and I had the privilege of attending Family Life’s “Weekend to Remember” conference over the past couple of days. We had a wonderful time of rest and relaxation, away from the normal “busy-ness” of life and the seemingly endless list of chores to do, people to see, planes to catch, and bills to pay. One thing that stood out was the speaker asking each couple to turn and face each other, and then repeat the following words: “You are now looking at the second most selfish person in the world.” Of course, the implication was that the spouse doing the looking was actually the most selfish person in the world.
If you’ve lived as someone’s spouse for any length of time, you understand the truth about our selfishness. When you get married, many blessings come with this incredible, God-ordained relationship, but one of the negatives is that you discover just how self-focused and self-centered you are. You seek to “win” the argument and you prefer that the household chores be done your way and you want the toilet paper roll to be loaded in the “right” direction. Generally, you expect your spouse to meet your needs and desires in just the way you want. We human beings have been this way from the time when people first walked the earth.
When Eve ate the fruit in the Garden of Eden, the fruit that God specifically commanded her not to eat, her primary temptation was what the serpent said: “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Eve wanted to be like God; in reality, she wanted to be God in her own life. Then she also gave some of the fruit to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it (Genesis 3:6). As a speaker noted during the marriage conference this past weekend, “Those are three of the saddest words in Scripture: and he ate.”
I want to be done with this selfish thing. I’m tired of living—more often than I would like to admit—for me, myself, and I. Lord, help me to live for You, according to Your Word:
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (Luke 9:23-25).
Lord, give me Your power and Your strength to “get rid of myself.” Lord, enable me to lose that ugly part of my life that’s selfish in nature. Lord, save me from myself and grow me into the likeness of Your Son, who made Himself nothing and took the very nature of a servant and humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:7-8).
Troy Burns