The Green Eyed Monster...

Have you ever been jealous? Come on be honest. I have. In fact I felt the green eyed monster invading my thoughts just yesterday. I chose to eat. When I felt jealous I actually thought to myself, “if I am going to feel this way, if I am going to have this ugliness on the inside of me, I am going to eat, so I can enjoy something.” Wow that is so embarrassing when it is out there on the page. It is however, the truth.

I know I am not alone in this. I remember when I was in high school sports feeling jealous when someone else got to play while I was sitting on the bench or someone got the notoriety in the news paper for a well played game. If I was a singer I can imagine that I would be jealous when I listened to the radio or watched the Grammys.

Longing for the day when I would be noticed, when my voice would be heard. Luckily I am not a singer, except in the car or shower, when I am alone. I don’t think there is a Grammy given out for best in shower….

It amazes me how early on we begin to feel jealous. When my niece comes over to play,instantly Lilah Jane is jealous for my attention. She may not have paid me one second of attention the whole day, but as soon as I start playing with Riley, instantly she is jealous. It is a natural feeling that we are born with. It is in all of us. Each of us has to deal with our own insecurities and insufficiencies.

Through my bout with jealously yesterday God has revealed some things to me today that have not been easy for me to digest. This is what I learned in a nut shell,are you ready for it? Jealousy exposes our hearts. This feeling of envy shows us our true intentions and motivations.

It shows us the ugly, selfish desires that lie within each of us. I can see now that God has been trying to show me some areas in my life that need some work for a while but I wasn’t really listening. It was only through the ugliness of envy that I was awakened to my own selfish motivation.

I started reading a new book today, “For This I Was Born” by Brian Houston. So far it is reading my mail!! Don’t you just love reading books like that? The kind that seem to reveal your thoughts, the feelings you have not been able to put into words are suddenly laid out for you in a nice paperback version. Seemingly present just for you to read. As I have begun this book immediately God pinpointed those jealous feelings.

These are areas in my life where I still feel that it is about me and not the cause of Christ. Areas in my life where I want to be recognized, I want a pat on the back. It is so hard to lay down those feelings of wanting to get the credit, of wanting people to know what you have done, to know your name. All the striving and all that wanting has no power to actually get me anywhere. It is only through laying it down. Killing my own vision and taking up the cause of Christ that power begins to fuel the vision for my life. Ouch, right?

I mean this is a lot to handle for my morning coffee read! To live my life so that people know the name of Jesus Christ, not Carrie. To live my life so that people go searching for Him, not for me. So that He gets all the credit and uses me to bring people to a greater knowledge of a life with Christ. This is heavy stuff. This is the kind of stuff that changes the way we live.

This is where I am at today. Praying and believing that as I lay down my own vision, my own selfish desires that I will genuinely pick up the cause of Christ. So that I stop caring if anyone knows who I am or what I am doing in our little corner of the world. When it doesn’t matter if anyone ever knows what I am doing, the only thing that matters is that through my life,people, lots of people come to know Jesus.

So here is my encouragement for today. Let those feelings of jealousy lead you to a new revelation of your own selfish ambition, then lay it down at the feet of Jesus, He will know just what to do with it…