Whose the movie really about?

This week started out good. I slept in Monday morning, got all my Christmas shopping done, and had dinner with a good friend. I was feeling pretty good and was looking forward to the rest of the week. Then Monday night as I was working on some of the Christmas gift I had bought, I started feeling weird. I figured I hadn't drank enough water that day (sometimes if I get caught up doing things I'll forget to drink something) so I got myself a class of water. After I got the glass of water I still wasn't feeling too hot. By 9 o'clock I had a bad feeling about this sick feeling that had hit me and my bad feeling was correct. Close to 10 o'clock I met the toilet in the one way we all don't like to meet it. I continued to get sick all the way until 4 in the morning. I haven't thrown up or had a stomach bug since my sophomore year in high school but I'm pretty sure I made up for all that lost time within those 6 hours. I was absolutely miserable. The next day I thought I was feeling better but as the day went on I gained a mild fever and my stomach felt as if someone had hit it at least 10 x's. It's funny how your week can change so quickly. I also realized how much I take for granted my health. When my health is not together, I'm not together. Lesson learned about my character (funny how you never seem to stop learning new things about yourself).

Thankfully, I'm feeling much better. I can keep food and liquids down, I just have to eat bland foods, therefore my diet has consisted of Jello and crackers.

I've been meaning to blog lately about something I've been struggling with. I've been struggling with the concept that ultimately, everything is about God and everything we do needs to glorify him. I haven't doubted this and I believe it is true, but I've struggled with how to live that out. How do I prepare myself mentally for this kind of commitment? How does this work? What does this look like? How do I know I'm living a life that glorifies Him? The one scripture that I've read that really got me thinking and to be honest with you, scares me to death is Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.  On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’  But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’" Just the thought that in the end the Lord would say, "I never knew you" terrifies me! We can follow what we believe is the right way of doing something or we can use the name of Jesus to help other people, but if we don't do His will, He will say he never knew us. Really, just the thought of this shakes me to my core.

If you read scripture, God's ultimate will is for us to bring him glory. So this leads me back to my question... How do I do that? For starters, I know I have to be willing to let go of a lot of things. I can't physically tell you what those things are, but my spirit knows what they are. If I knew how to word it I would, but I don't, I just kinda know what that means for me. But to help myself gain a better mental picture of the situation I feel like the Lord placed an analogy in my head to help better understand what he means (you might think this is a crazy idea that the Lord would give me this kind of analogy but hey, Jesus spoke in parables the majority of time in scripture, in ways that helped the people at the time understand. Why wouldn't he do that for us now?) I pictured this much like a movie and we've been asked to be apart of this movie. After the movie has been filmed you go and tell EVERYONE about the movie. Of course you mention that you got to be apart of the movie. You're not the main character, you're not even a side character. You're just an extra, that just might show up in the background of a scene. So, as you're telling people about the movie, you're not just talking about your 5 second appearance (though of course your going to mention the experience and the excitement of it) you're talking about the over all impact of the movie and the message the story is telling. Therefore, you encourage people to see the movie, not just because your in it, but because you know that it could change their life forever.

We've been asked to be apart of God's movie. He wants all of us in it. We might be an extra, the sounds person, the costume designer, or any other part that helps make the movie happen but despite your part, you're mostly talking about the purpose of the movie. When we find ourselves focusing more about the purpose of the movie and not on our little part in the movie, that's when we're living to glorify him. If you ever watch the credits in the movie, many people are apart of making the movie happen, but when a movie wins an award only one or two people are recognized instead naming and bringing every single person who was involved to accept the award and you know what..... there has yet to be an out cry or an uproar made my anyone (the extra person, the costume designer, etc) that they were not verbally recognized when the movie they were apart of was given an award. You wanna know why? because they  knew that the movie was not about them. 

I guess it's about time that we wake up and realize that this life is not about us but it's totally worth living for the main purpose of it all.