My Life is Not My Own

"Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness."
-Tolstoy

Okay, so I have a confession. A friend of mine posted this quote from Tolstoy on her facebook page and it got me thinking. I have forgotten to live by a lesson I thought I had learned. After a few years of college it has become clear to me that there is a problem I struggle with constantly. The problem is.... I love too many things. Now, that might sound really dumb at first, but let me explain. I often feel as though I am reaching and grasping, trying to accomplish lots of different things, and always wanting something more. Always desiring to do more, experience more, learn more, see more, help more, wanting to do everything I can. And I think that part of this comes from an honest desire of my heart to want to help and love people, and also from the way God designed me with a variety of different interests. But, I think that mostly the problem exists because I am selfish. I want to be able to do all the things that I want to do in my lifetime. I want to go places, to explore, to take risks, to go on adventures, to help people. Why? Although I think that God created us to yearn for adventure, sometimes I take it too far. Sometimes maybe I believe that going exciting places, and being able to do all the many things I long to do, will fulfill me.
Here's the thing: it never does. Instead, I am left frustrated and wanting more. I get angry at myself for making the wrong choices and for not knowing what I want. I get angry at God because I feel like He has left me alone to sort all this out. The truth is, in these moments, I am the one who has walked away from God, searching for other things to fulfill me and not even realizing that I am doing so. I focus on what I do not have and forget the many blessings and unique adventures the Lord has gifted me with. I look at that other person who has been able to travel more, study abroad or go on mission trips to Africa and done all sorts of amazing things that I want to do, and I feel jealousy instead of gladness for him or her.

How can I be so rude to be ungrateful for what God has given me? How could I have forgotten that it is He alone that can fulfill me? He is so good to me when I don't deserve any of it, when I have been rotten and acted like a spoiled child.

I claim that I want to live my life in service to God. I say that I want to live a life walking in the love of Christ and sharing it with other people. I pray that I will go wherever He takes me, that I will follow Jesus and love Him all of my days.
But what if following Him doesn't mean I get to travel to the ends of the earth? What if it means I don't get to have all those experiences I want, however good they might be? What if it means something more like being content with where I am and loving people from right here?

I think I need to re-learn this truth that my life is not my own. It isn't about what I want out of this life, and if I lived that way, I know that I would never be satisfied. I would continue to go through life more frustrated than joyful and grateful. So, it's time for a change of attitude, a change of heart.

My life is not my own. I do not live for myself, for my own gains, or my own purposes, or even my own happiness. My life is a SERVICE to the high King, my Lord, to be spent loving Him and others around me. My prayer is that God would direct me so that I can live my life in this way.