Materialistic Selfishness

God am I lucky to have such an amazingly compassionate and grounded boyfriend. I wish I could see the world as he does every day, and I feel so selfish not doing so. I feel caught in the middle. Between wanting to give money to the needy and worrying about not having enough for my own expenses, between volunteering my time and renting it out for pay. It’s so easy to say that I want to get out of this materialistic culture and country, but the truth is that I desperately need a break from my materialistic mindset. It’s so easy to make excuses as to why I think this way, to psychologically dig in to my state of mind. I claim that it stems from the feeling of being ‘poor’ all of my life, regardless of how relatively untrue that is. I’m in the mindset of “I want to, but can’t afford to.” I know that that will soon turn into a careless and selfish “I don’t feel like it right now.” I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be another hypocritical Christian, a title that Adam disallows himself to be under. He doesn’t want to sit back and take the glory of the title; he wants to take action and do, as he believes Jesus did and wants us to do.

Adam inspires me, but I feel like it won’t be long until I fall back into the sad mindset of “When can I afford to take time out? What can I afford to give?” My pitiful thoughts remind me that all that I have, I have been blessed with by God. God has given me everything, and I am so lucky to have what I have. I am not in poverty. I am not starving. I am not homeless. I have an education. I have a family that loves me so much and has been so amazing to me. I have absolutely amazing friends.

Life is such a big test of “What will you chose to do with what God has given you?” And now I feel like the Bible screams to us, aching for us to get it! It screams it in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:12-30), in the story about the poor widow’s offering (Mark 12: 41-44), and the countless times that Jesus says, “Many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:30). So the question remains: what will I choose to do with what God has given me? Will I “Invest or squander” my time as Chris Rice sings? How will I repent from this selfishness? Lord, help me!