“Here’s something I want to expose as much as I can. What you are being pelted with all day long is your own unhappiness.
Did you know about that?
Everybody trying to get you to buy their product is selling to you that you’re not happy. Every image you see on a magazine, every commercial, everything on your Facebook screams, “YOU’RE NOT HAPPY…but this will make you happy.”
“So work harder, go into debt and get this thing that’s going to make you happy.”
And when that’s the air you breathe, you start to approach church that way.
“What’s going to make me happy? What is here that can satisfy me?”
But the Bible says that’s the completely wrong way to approach the body.
In fact I’ve said this for more than twelve years now – the more that life is about you, the more miserable of a human being you’re going to be.
The more you are uppermost in your own affection, the more miserable you are going to be.
You will use people rather than know people.
You will try to manipulate people rather than love them.
Everything will be personal.
Across the globe, every time on the road, when someone honks at you, they’re just trying to let you know that they are there. In our country, that’s a sign of personal disrespect and can get you shot.
Why?
Because we’ve made world about us.
“The world is about me, and I will go as I please.”
We think that way, we believe that way, and it erupts in anger when things don’t go our way, because we are uppermost in our own affection.
But the church isn’t about you. It’s about us.
And if this is true, it gives you a mission every time we come together.
The questions shift to, “how can I speak life into this man or this woman? How can I bless them?”
And you realize something so powerful.
That you’re not a spectator. You’re in the middle of the arena.”
-Matt Chandler
