Soul Ambition

The thing about our personality is that it is so marred and distorted by sin we don't even know really what it is.  We have an idea that we are funny or quiet or rambunctious or generous or thoughtful but what can we know of it as long as we are warped with sin.  Most of us tend to think the best of ourselves; we aren't lazy, we are deliberative, we aren't mean, we are discerning, we aren't perverse, we have an expansive libido.  The free reign we give to self-aggrandizement is startling given the ability we have to see right through the mental tricks others play on themselves.  We say that we know who we are better than anyone else but that is just one more lie of the devil we have swallowed hook, line and sinker.  Just think about your dreams.  They say an awfully lot about yourself and what you harbor within but you can't make heads or tails of them.  It is easy to shine off our dreams as just biological gibberish, white noise of the brain, but they are there within us each day, giving us insight into ourselves and we are just as likely to  blow right past them and roar into our day as notice the stain they reveal.  The human soul is corrupted through and through and the only way out of what we are is to take the Cross of Christ fully and unconditionally.  The crucified death of One meant for the crucified life of the other is in the end a total resurrection for both.  You cannot just get past your sins; they have to be killed off completely and you must if you want to live let this happen.  By faith we receive the death of Christ and make it our death to sin and that is what will happen fully and thoroughly as we give freedom to God to work His way through us.  The Crucifixion of Christ works two ways.  It destroys the work sin has achieved in your death and it crushes your will to live in sin any longer.  The more you accept the cross Christ bore for you, the more you will willingly lay your life down for Him to raise up again.  Mary poured out the perfume on the feet of Jesus because this was intuitively hers alone to grasp as the disciples lounged about.  We pour what is ours out of us for one reason only.  Not for something God might give us to pay us back for our sacrifice but that the warping of sin might be straightened as all we once had gains the life of Christ fully.  Your talents, skills, mental  acuity, personal attributes and disciplines are of no use to you because of the corruption of sin upon them.  Like filthy rags, they are finally in the end worthless.  But give them to Christ and lay them at His feet and you will find them free of the perversion of sin and good for your life and good for all those people about you.  The perfume was never wasted; it was lifted up into heaven and returned back again as a living sacrifice free of selfishness and pride; of use to both God and man. 

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;  you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.  1 Corinthians  6:19-20 NIV