Thoughtful Thursday: Junk Drawers and Dreams

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Matthew 16:24-26
I've been thinking lately about the whole concept of dying to self...that it's sort of like cleaning out my junk drawer. You can't just clean the junk drawer...cuz the stuff that you are sorting out of it...then has to be put somewhere else...that area then needs to be organized itself. And it just moves on...the craft closet, the linen closet, the medicine closet, the garage...

I cannot share Christ's cross in a simple separated kind of way. He doesn't just want part of me...He wants all of me...and as He cleans out one section He quickly moves on to the next...and the next and the next! This requires continual surrender to God's will.
There are parts of my personality that pain me...where I shout like the little clay pot at my Potter, "Why'd you make me this way? What am I supposed to do with this part of me...it doesn't fit!!" And sometimes He says, "I'm the Potter...I will mold and polish...and break you if necessary...to make you the best tool of service for me."

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? Rom. 9:20-21
What's funny...is that those things (my big mouth, unbiblical feministic tendancies, bad attitude) are things that I want changed. And yet, I fight...and worry...that it looks as though I will lose my individuality. Or...*gasp*...what if it stifles my personality. Uh...am I trying to stay like ME or become like CHRIST??

Thankfully, God knows much better than I do...because I'm finding that surrender to God's will results not in losing but in finding life. It's the only way to a Godly personality in the image of Christ instead of my present image...the prideful, self centered me!!

Sometimes...when I really get this straight in my mind...I wish he'd move faster from my junk drawer...to my coat closet...cuz when I'm united with Him...in that same proportion...
His thoughts become my thoughts...
His emotions become my emotions...
and His will becomes my will.

Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. Col. 2: 6-7