Blaze of Glory

Pastor K's (aka Quick-draw) message today was on dueling topics, both of which I have a difficult time handling. First, as a Christian am I willing to forgo everything and everyone else and willingly give my life for Christ? The ideal answer is yea, sure, of course, you betcha, yes. However, this is reality, not fantasy. As PK stated, for most of us (ME) the answer is probably not. Having admitted that, I've got a lot of deep thinking and praying to do. Obviously my priorities and beliefs aren't where they should be. At least not if I'm going to call myself a Christ-follower and, as the song goes, "giving it all back to you, all back to you, I surrender." That's the point: I haven't surrendered and have a difficult time doing so. Major reasons for this are pride, ego, self-centeredness, individualism/loner, "coward?" A lot of soul-searching to be done.
The second part, going hand-in-hand with the first, is the question: are you living your life for yourself and your glory, thus wasting it, or are you living for God and Christ? Are you concerned about your earthly legacy or your future heavenly legacy? Should you be concerned about a legacy at all? (Being concerned about a/any legacy makes one seem to be very selfish and self-centered, IMO.) I've given some thought about this and come to realize that I don't plan too far in the future. Being older than PK, you would think that I've given this more attention, but I haven't really been overly concerned about a legacy. While I've thought about my mortality, I believe that I'm still in a state of denial (not Egypt) about my eventual death. While I acknowledge that it's going to happen, I haven't dwelt on it or attempted to change my life in a way that would be more Christ-like or beneficial for my salvation and hope for rebirth. I'm not trying to say that everything that I already do is great or that I'm perfect. Basically I think that I'm just too selfish and my life centers on me, not God. The really disturbing part is that I realize these things and still I haven't changed.
Pastor K is raising great questions and the answers I have I don't like. (Or maybe I do but realize that I shouldn't.) You're not the only one in the sinking boat, PK. Maybe through your "Gunslinger" sermons we can find the lifeboat together. I think we all know what and where it is. It's just acknowledging our faults AND THEN doing something about them that will be the hard/difficult part. I've often found that it's easy to uncover sin/waste/fault. It's going further and actually doing something about it that's difficult and rarely done. I hope to someday earn my chaps and be a gunslinger because, as Pastor K said this morning, he's "fueled by the passion of God's glory." It's for the glory of God, stupid, not your own.