Selflessness

Selfishness permeates both invisible and visible aspects of my life. I just googled: "how to become more selfless and Christian" and stumbled across a post called "The Pilgrim's Heart Part 6 - The Selfless Heart." Have a skim. In this post he talks about the importance of "sorrow and suffering". He writes about letting Jesus take the wheel of our lives, about being "Spirit-led", and when we are so led that "He will see to it that we will drink from the cup of suffering which will burn away everything in us not of the Lord." He includes the verse in Matthew 6 that talks about storing "treasures in heaven". So our hearts must be transformed through Christ. I suppose a Christ-steered heart would be much more selfless than a self-steered heart. I know what it's like to fall asleep at the wheel; it must be something like submitting to a self-steered heart. When I fell asleep, my memory is that I first allowed myself to relax. A case of momentary shuteye resulted in a loss of control and crossing of oncoming traffic (which thankfully wasn't so heavy during this little spontaneous nap). In a vaguely similar vein, relaxing (rather than grasping tightly onto the cross) my self-steered heart results in a lack of control and helplessness as I cross the oncoming temptations. However, if my heart was steered by Christ, I'd be able to stay in my lane of travel while the temptations pass me by while I wait at the signal light; my guide.

On the right part of the above mentioned blog is the following under the headline "The Key to Genuine Humility":

The key to self-denial, taking up one's cross and following Christ is to simply spend more and more time with God in prayer, worship and praise and Bible study. Religiosity is not a substitute for this. As we do this, God will work in our hearts with His good work. As we grow in grace through this, we will become more and more humble and less and less prideful. We will become more and more reliant upon God's grace and less and less reliant upon our abilities, our knowledge and our training. However, to simplify this process we must adapt the following statement as our focus in this life: I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all, But Jesus Christ is my all in all.

I like the line: "Religiosity is not a substitute for this." I like to be 'activity-ed up', but there are likely a lot of people who are not as involved in established Christian activities, but are way more spiritually involved on a one-to-one basis with God and in expressing selfless love toward Him and others. I want to learn to live and breathe selfless love to God and to everyone. But perhaps my sinful nature loves my selfishness more than the desire to be selfless in both visible and invisible ways...