Monday 1 October 2012

"No Thanks, I'm Awesome."

One of my friends is awesome. Whilst carrying a heavy load of whatnots, she was asked if she needed any help. Her reply was, "No thanks, I'm awesome."
       She was attempting to say, "No thanks, I'm good. You're awesome!" She's the kind of person that uses hyperbole to describe how she feels about people and life, and anything positive that just happened. But I'm glad she jumbled her phrases. This time she got me thinking about how I live.
       No thanks, I'm awesome. Where do you draw the line between arrogance and confidence? (Not to imply that she was being arrogant when she made that accidental claim, it just made me think toward this end.) For example. I'm terrible at Basketball. However, if I ever make a basket, I walk away from it like it happens all the time, but, inside my head, I'm doing cartwheels and jumping up and down cheering, "This time I didn't make a fool of myself!"(I've made a fool of myself quite often playing basketball.) That seems to me like arrogance, but if I were to act out the scene in my head, wouldn't it also be arrogance. Jumping up and whooping about how glad I am that I made the basket would seem an awful lot like rubbing it in peoples faces that I, the worst player on the court, scored against them.
       Maybe I'm thinking too much about that particular situation, but what I'm getting to is this:
I'm a sinner. When I do something right (i.e. when I glorify God rather than sin), what do I do? Do I keep it to myself, waiting for others to notice but not bringing it up until they do, or do I rejoice with anyone and everyone that I'm not always as screwed up as I know myself to be?
       I bring this up because I had to come up with a lot of things to say the other week. I spoke at both of the weekly youth group events on Sunday, gave the staff devotional on Tuesday morning, led a Covenant Group (A.K.A. small group) on Thursday, led another on Friday, and immediately went on the Rossyln High School retreat to be the speaker, on which I did two talks. It was a long week. How many times can I stand in front of people telling them about the love of God and how to live, when I don't succeed in lasting one day without forgetting what it means to be loved by God? This seems to me to be almost arrogance.
       After I speak, lead a covenant group, or tell people to live in a way better than I do, I don't know what to feel. If it went well, am I allowed to rejoice in that? If I feel like nothing I said was heard or worth hearing, am I allowed to hang my head dejectedly and mope? People come and say that it was a good talk, I feel elated, like I did something important. People don't say anything, I feel small and unimportant. And on top of all that, who am I to speak about the truth of the gospel when I fail so often to believe and follow?
       I'm seeking confident humility.

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