FINALLY the last thing you do is REPEAT! What do I mean by that? I mean you literally repeat steps 1-3, over and over and over. Until when, Davey? UNTIL YOU DIE AND GO BE WITH JESUS!!
Killing the “Selfie” is a life-long process! It is not something that you will ever retire from! The amount of JOY you experience in life is determined by the ferocity at which you kill the “Selfie.” Remember, the enemy is out to “steal, kill and destroy.” He WILL use your “Selfie” to aid him in that process if you don’t continually kill it. You and I have to put the “KILL THE SELFIE” song on REPEAT on the iPod of life!
Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross DAILY and follow me.” The key word there is DAILY!!
This reminds me of marathon training. When Amanda and I ran the marathon in San Diego 5 years ago we had to train on a DAILY basis. For 18 weeks our life was built around training for this marathon. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday we did training runs together. Every Monday we did strength training, and every Thursday and Sunday we did cross-training. There were several times we wondered WHY we were doing this much training.
We had some friends who had run a marathon before, and they kept telling us that the training would pay off. They told us every “wall” we would hit in the race and that our training would be the saving grace that helps us push through those walls. Since they had been there before we trusted them and kept training every day.
Amanda’s brother, James, and sister, Amber, ran the marathon with us too. Amber trained daily as well, but James didn’t. He trained once a week. He thought that if he just did his long runs on Saturdays he would be just fine. What he didn’t factor in was all the intangibles of a race environment. The spikes of adrenaline you experience because of all the people around you, the difference in weather climates, the weaving in and out of crowds you have to perform.
We all ran together for the first 13 miles. Everyone seemed to be feeling just fine and we were having a blast! But that all changed at the 13 mile water station. As soon as we hit that half-way point, we all got separated running through the water station. Amanda, Amber, and I joined right back together once we got through . . . but James was MIA! We thought he might be up ahead of us because he seemed to be feeling so good the first 13 miles. Thinking we would catch up to him soon, we just kept running. Little did we know he had pulled over to the side of the road out of gas!!
He told us after the race that he hit a MASSIVE wall at that water station that slowed his pace down immensely!! The first thing he said after the marathon was, “That was miserable! I should have done those daily training runs!”
We all learned an important lesson that day. If you want to last for the long-haul, you have to put in the daily training that’s required! The same thing is true in your relationship with Jesus. If you want to last for the long-haul, you must be willing to DAILY kill the “Selfie.” If you retire from killing the “Selfie” it will grow back and destroy you! Killing the “Selfie” is a constant, cyclical process of (1) RECOGNIZE, (2) REPLACE, (3) REPORT, (4) REPEAT!
- Davey Blackburn
Davey Blackburn is the lead pastor of Resonate Church. You can find him on Twitter at @daveyblackburn.