If you really want to ruin your perspective of the church or even your experience with church, make it all about you. The more you care about your own desires and views, the more you’re going to be dissatisfied in an organization that’s not, inevitably, centered on you.
Most of us have been told tens of thousands of times that we’re special and that we deserve all we’d ever want in life. While that sentiment makes for cute greeting cards and coffee mugs, it’s just not true. If you’re still living like “the world would be so much better if everyone would do what I think they should”… It’s probably time to swallow the harsh truth that you are, indeed, not the center of the universe.
You are loved. You’re not loved because you’re exceptional. You’re loved because Jesus is exceptional. When we realize that God loves us without the need to be exceptional, it allows us to live from a place of acceptance and not from a place of performance.
Even though you are loved… You, alone, are not the endgame for God.
The target of God’s affection is a “world” that’s lost, hurting, and broken. The mechanism by which He chooses to reach out to them is not the effort of one special person. God works through the collective of a “body” of people called “the church.”
You are not the church. Not alone.
We are the church.
There’s a vast difference between “me” and “we.”
One of the most subtle and, arguably, significant attacks we undergo is the over-inflation of our sense of worth and value. It’s simply pride. Pride will always make “me” more important than “we.”
Perhaps the genius of God’s choice to unite us together under one mission is that it forces us out of our individuality and selfishness to seek real, vulnerable, and intentional community as we lay aside our pride and submit ourselves to others.
It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s all about Jesus.