Unpack Yourself

"For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control." - 2 Timothy 1:7

As I mentioned in my last blog, when you welcome Jesus into your life the game changes. You might've thought you were playing "pro ball" before when, really, you were just still on the varsity squad in high school...as a backup.  But now things get real.

You cannot box your life up into neat little compartments anymore, where rationalization provides the wrapping paper and logic ties the strings. Justifying who you are, asserting yourself in the world, demanding things, expecting things and judging things become exercises in futility. As Rick Warren famously says in his opening line of The Purpose Driven Life: "It's not about you."

Now it's about a spiritual awareness that's supposed to take precedence over reality itself. You begin to unpack yourself. It's not an easy process and there are no guarantees save one: salvation, which brings with it eternal life, and even that payoff is one based on a future principal. In a world of "me" and "I" and "now", the math of the soul is counter-intuitive; it says "you" and "them" and "someday".

Along the way your journey can prove itself amazing. You never realized what you realize when you truly turn to God; the stuff you're carrying around on your back, the pains and hurts you've buried and the fears that you've wrapped yourself up in. Suddenly you are given a spirit of power and love and self control.

From there it's up to you what you do with it.