Thank you Lord for our selfishness

Thank you Lord for our selfishness
By Rob Roath

Today as everyone bustles around and the kids play outside I sit and ponder the many wonders of life. As I was looking for something to do I picked up the many ads for this or that Black Friday sale. I have always thought this term seemed to fit the day.
  I looked at ad after ad and realized something that had come up in earlier conversation. I really have no need for stuff anymore. This sort of carnal pleasure just doesn’t do anything for me any longer. Not that I wouldn’t like the newest electronic gadget. My wife would call be a liar on such statements straightaway. More of the fact that it had been unmasked in my eyes.
  Just like the emperor from Star Wars stuff has over the years lost its gleam and shown itself for what it is. The pleasing on ones self, or worse the proof that we actually love those around us. We have indeed been duped by cunning marketers that the amount we love one is directly proportional to the goods we purchase for them.
  I thought about this long and hard over the hours before I opened my laptop to pen this article. I lived in what most would call “below the poverty line.” We had nothing more than a social security paycheck to fund my parents and 2 kids. Growing up I always said that I would get myself to the point in adulthood that I would never tell myself that I wouldn’t buy what I felt I wanted to have.
  The young Rob enjoyed all the delights a human hedonist could ever want. All the stuff, girls, drugs and the like that I could foster up to fill the lusts of my insatiable appetite for whatever pleased me. The funny thing is that as those of us that have done such carnality it just starts to satisfy less and less. This usually results in increased depravity. Luck for me my life took a turn for the worse.
  A divorce broke out in my reality and unexpectedly destroyed the heart of that pleasure seeker. Who knew that this sort of man had feelings..right? Well I guess he did. This point of life really changed things for me in ways that would end up changing the entire course of who I would become.
  I remember clearly the day I met a man that I truly wanted to become. His wife was truly amazing. His kids almost seemed to gleam with radiance. He had the charisma that would win anyone that came across him. I wondered what on Earth this man could be possibly doing to have such an existence.
  I looked to my own family now in ruin. My wife had left me and I was alone. I remembering asking this guy what made is family end up as it did. His answer was just something I couldn’t accept. He said he was a Christian. Growing up catholic had destroyed my want of anything to do with God, much less Jesus.
  I remember telling this man at the time that I just couldn’t accept that being a Christian could foster these results. However here is the funny part my insatiable selfishness actually lusted for what this man had. Thank the Lord for selfishness, it saved my life!
  Now before we get into this to far let me tell you that selfishness is still a mountain that I fight to resist. No doubt the residue of my childhood never resolved. However I need to tell you the strange things about this. As I continued to grow in Christ the very one I had looked to as the reason for me coming to Christ started to reveal his secrets.
  As I continued on living life and moving from one trial to another I found out that this family that I had looked to as the pinnacle of Christianity dissolved into almost Jerry Springer like scandal. One of the many times I have seen the hidden layer of selfishness that resides just below the surface of what seems to be “perfect Christians.”
  Selfish indeed seems to have no respect for your religion. As it look me in my youth so has it taken Christians I have known throughout the years, even to the point that they end up renouncing their faith. How could this be that someone that had what seems to be everything a man would want get taken out by the enemy? Well the answer is the same for us all. The enemy is an expert in what you struggle over.
  The thing that we must all keep in mind though is this. Sin and selfishness are synonyms. The meaning of the words are the same. We can always trace a sin to someone not choosing God in their life’s choices. We only indeed have two doors in our life’s many decisions, that of choosing God or choosing for us to be the God of our own lives.
  Please my friends do not get me wrong here. I never would possibly proclaim to have it all right. I would be the first to admit I am what I call “the world’s worst Christian.” What we do need to bring to mind however is what we must all keep in mind in our walk. We need to understand what we struggle over and do whatever we can to make sure we avoid the very things we know can take us out.
  Just like the enemy tries to get us around the things he knows we have a hard time resisting, so we need to make sure we are not 1000 miles from it. We must understand that our selfishness is God’s unexpected gift to man. For without us knowing what we could do to ruin our lives we would not see how we need to be saved.
  You could look at the event at Eden being the worst thing to happen to mankind. With my life as it has been I see this as exactly what humanity needed, proof that they cannot handle the role as God. We just do have not have what it takes to die to ourselves and give it all for another. Sure we may have days of goodness, however how many days is it really?
  So on this day when we are supposed to consider what we are thankful to our Lord and Savior for consider to add in two every important things. One would be my lost friend that didn’t deal with his selfishness and it over took him. Do you have any sins that you need to come clean with and bring into the light before they kill you? The last is our gift of selfishness. For it makes all things clear that we indeed need a savior to help us from what we ourselves want to destroy.