(I started typing this up a couple months ago, and just got around to finishing it...it was good to remember some of these things. )

(From my journal on 9/30/10...)

"The foolishness in thinking that God won't be faithful to you is not just that this signifies a doubt concerning the character of God, but also that it reveals an idea concerning yourself that is false: that you are important. You are important to God, but that is simplly an outpouring of grace - you deserve none of it. And if your importance lies in the grace that exists because of the character of God, then you are important, but this is only because of God's mercy. This is why we can trust that God will care for us, and that He will be faithful: Our importance is rooted not in ourselves, but in His character. He can no more cease being faithful to us than He can cease being Who He is."

I was thinking about this a lot this morning. It's amazing how we can think that our trials are more important than the trials that someone else faces...because we are more concerned about what we could lose than what someone else could lose. And this is primarily because we have this idea that we are more important than they are. It is terrible when you actually get down to the heart of matters and realize how selfish you are. :-)

Clearly, though, if our importance is rooted in Who God is and not who we are, we are all equally important to God and equally instrumental in His plan for His glory. He will take care of us...so that takes a big weight off our shoulders and mind, and opens our hands and hearts for concern for others. The moments that have been easiest for me in the past months were moments where I was carried up in someone elses trial that seemed much bigger than my own, or when I was witnessing the suffering of another that made me completely caught up in compassion for them. I so often felt dry for compassion from others, and here I could stop thinking of myself and pour it out on others who were in need of compassion. Compassion is such a beautiful thing -- and where would compassion be without suffering? As Jesus wept for Lazurus, for Mary and Martha and their pain, when He knew He had all power to reverse the loss they were experiencing and even would do so very soon! But if He had not allowed that suffering and loss to be experienced, we would not have been able to see His compassion as He wept for those He loved, or His power as He raised Lazurus from the dead.

These paragraphs from John Piper's book "When the Darkness Will Not Lift" have made me think about this a lot:

“How Bill Leslie became a watered garden and a spring: He told of a near breakdown that he had and how a spiritual mentor directed him to Isaiah 58. He said it was verses 10–11 that rescued him from a season of darkness marked by feelings of exhaustion, burnout, and a dead-end ministry The text says:

'And if you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday. And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.'

What struck Pastor Leslie so powerfully was the fact that if we pour ourselves out for others, God promises to make us like a watered garden—that is, we will receive the water we need for refreshment and joy. But even more: we will thus be a spring of water that does not fail—for others, for the demanding, exhausting, draining ministry of urban self-giving. He saw that God’s way of lifting gloom and turning it into light was to pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted. This gave him a pattern of divine life that got him through his crisis and kept him going for the rest of his days.
God has made us to flourish by being spent for others. Jesus said, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Most of us do not choose against this life of outpouring, we drift away from it. We confuse pressure and family life and stresses at work with Christian sacrifice, when in fact much of it has little to do with meeting the needs of the hungry and afflicted and perishing.”