It always comes back to this.

My current work (writing leadership curriculum) means that I spend hours a day reading and writing about, essentially, what it means to be a Christian (the more I learn the more I am convinced that leading really means loving God and loving others, like Jesus said)... and it all always comes back to the reality that I, on my own, am completely and utterly selfish, but that because of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, I am forgiven and that because of that I am called to love and serve others. It's always all about the cross, really... AND, it's all about what He does in me, not what I do.

I was reading again in Devotional Classics this morning and wanted to share with you a little excerpt from a prayer by Lancelot Andrews, a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth (the first) and apologist for King James I. In all of this decision-making, life-direction stuff, this should be my prayer.

I will lift up my hands into your commandments which I have loved. Open my eyes and I shall see, incline my heart and I shall desire, order my steps and I shall walk in the way of your commandments...

Grant me to worship you and serve you according to your commandments; with truth in my spirit, with reverence in my body, with the blessing upon my lips - bot in private and in public...

Hedge up my way, O Lord, with thorns that I may avoid the false path of vanity. Hold me steady with the bit and the bridle so that I do not pull away from you. O Lord, compel me to come to you...

Help me to receive faith from his miraculous conception, humility from his lowly birth, patience from his suffering, power to crucify the sin in my life from his Cross, burial of all my evil thoughts in good works from his burial. Grant that I might be able to meditate on hell from his descent, to find newness of life in his resurrection, to set my mind on things above from his ascension, to judge myself in preparation of his returning judgment.