Not my righteousness but Yours - dying to myself

<sup>My heart has been the expression of this great verse! :)

8</sup> Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; ¹⁰ that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death..

Philippians 3:8-10 (NKJV)

after meeting up with carms and mike wong yesterday, talking and praying over cc stuff, the idea as 'worship coordinator' and what that role entails finally hit home. scary at first.

A day later today, the idea 'dying to myself' hit me even more greatly. it was time to humble myself as i began realizing that God is looking straight through me. He knew that one of my greatest weaknesses has always been myself. don't get me wrong. i do realize it's something we all struggle with frankly. when God asks us to 'pick up our cross and following Him,' the battle with the self has already begun.

Allow me to share with you though. I'd tried many a times in the past including this time serving for cc to rely on my own goodness, pleasing people, my own self - righteousness to get the job done. Heart totally misplaced. It hit home real Hard.

pain is being felt right now as He painfully tears down my "impurity of heart" and the "thirst and hunger of self- righteousness" before He will begin to build good and fitting qualities to be his servant. Yet what I'm extremely thankful is that amidst the pain, I feel like I have become mindful of this God which helps commit to following hard after him no matter what he's tearing away from me.

knowing full well my strong and deep desire for excellence and righteousness in Him, He has in turn reminded me that there's no righteousness in me apart from the righteousness Christ's blood has redeemed me with. Therefore even light of excellence, there's none of that what so ever that can be strive for apart from conform to having faith in Him and humbly dying to myself allowing Him to lead me into excellence.

As I begged God to help me collect my thoughts and emotions, i felt enabled to connect with these really feelings of stress, fear, insecurities, lack of faith, pride, selfish ambitions, negativity I had in my heart. I felt a sense of peace and I prayed to lose my heart in order to gain His.