Living a Poured Out Life

One of the great tragedies of American Christian young women is our total preoccupation with self.  God has not called us to build our lives around the pursuit of our own selfish desires, but to be poured-out sacrifices for His kingdom.  In my book Set Apart Femininity I wrote about the dangers of the popular self-esteem message for women, which teaches that our own heart is good, and encourages us to live to our true self and inhabit our own beauty.  Not only is this a non-Biblical concept (we have no true eternal beauty outside of the beauty of Jesus Christ, and we only bring Him glory by dying to self, not living to it) but the real danger is that it keeps us consumed with me, me, me while the rest of the world is sick and oppressed and dying and impoverished.  We in America are wealthy and comfortable beyond what most people in the world can even imagine.

But all too often, we don’t use our advantage for that cause.  Instead we sit around complaining about petty concerns and evaluating our own emotions.  We attend retreats that are all about how we can feel better about ourselves and live more fulfilled lives.  We read books about how we can somehow find the right guy.  We spend hours online frittering our time away in endless social networks.  We waste countless hours at the mall, snatching up the latest trends and trying to become more appealing to the opposite sex.  We live a life completely focused on self.  Meanwhile, children are starving, women are being prostituted, and countless families around the world are ripped apart by disease and poverty.

Remember the evil city of Sodom in the Old Testament?  The one that was destroyed by God’s fury with fire and brimstone?  Few of us are aware that God’s anger toward Sodom was for something beyond immorality.  As it says in Ezekiel:

This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.  (Ezekiel 16:49)

I don’t know about you, but to me that description couldn’t fit American Christianity any better.  We are proud, focused on self, consumed with our wealth and comforts, we live in an abundance of idleness and shallow pleasure, and we are indifferent to the plight of the needy around the world.  And once you see the end of Sodom, it makes you a bit uncomfortable to realize that America is on the very same path.

In the past few years, God has challenged me at a whole new level about what it means to be a living sacrifice for Him.  He has asked me to get uncomfortable by going to the least and lost around the world.  He’s awakened me to the 143 million orphans, the 27 million human slaves, and the 25,000 people who die each day from hunger.  He has led my husband and I to adopt a little girl from Korea with no fingers, and a baby boy from down the street in need of a loving home.  He’s asked us to give sacrificially of our time, energy, and resources for the destitute and dying.

I encourage you to take some time to prayerfully consider the direction and focus of your life.  What is God calling you to?  How can you practically become His hands and feet to those in need?  American mentalities train us that this life is all about our dreams, our goals, and our ambitions.  But that’s not true Christianity.  How might God be asking you to forsake all, take up your cross and follow Him?

You don’t have to be amazingly gifted or highly educated to pour your life out for Jesus Christ.  You don’t have to have been seminary educated or groomed at Bible college.  You just need a heart fully surrendered to Him.  Just this week, I talked with a twenty-eight year old single woman who has chosen to joyfully pour out her life for needy children in the foster-care system.

Gladys Aylward was an uneducated parlor maid when she set off, against the advice of the Christian system, to give her life to the people of China.  Amy Carmichael was merely one simple girl in feeble health and with very few supporters when she left it all to rescue endangered children in India.  Throughout history, simple women like these have changed the world for the Gospel.  And it was not because of them.  They were merely vessels willing to lay down everything for the Kingdom of God.  Are we willing to follow their triumphant example?

© Leslie Ludy