Much of the angst that comes from this life is because we are living for ourselves. We want something, and cannot figure out how to acquire it – financial stability, love, respect, and more. There’s a part of us that is always longing to fill our needs.
When we focus on those needs and those people or circumstances in our lives that we want to fulfill those needs, we can become anxious, stressed, frustrated in our relationships and more. It’s not that those wants, needs, and desires aren’t real, it’s just that there is a higher focus.
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again (v. 14-15)
We live for him.
“So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it” (v. 9)
His love for us is what compels us. If we truly know we are loved by Him (read more here), then those other things will fade. They are there, but their significance and power over our lives will diminish.
We make it our goal to live for his pleasure, not our own. We live for Him, and not ourselves.
This really does shift our reality. And as I said earlier this week, this truth helped redirect me from a difficult place.