Becoming Less - Lindsay Puckett

“He must increase, and therefore I must decrease.” John 3:30

Over the past eight months of the Fellowship I have been learning a whole lot about myself.  A lot of which stems from pride.  I’ve never known how much I struggled with pride until this year.  I love to win, I’ve known that I love to win, but I never realized it’s because I can’t seem to get over myself.

This year I have been surrounded by people who walk alongside me in every single thing, the good, the bad, and everything in between.  They have seen me in some of my best moments and they have seen me in some of my worst moments.  Something that is so sweet about the fellowship is letting these people see me in my worst moments, and somehow they still love me even in the next moment. They encourage me, and they point me to truth.  They challenge me to seek the Lord rather than myself, for me to decrease, and for Him to increase. 

Something that I have struggled with for a long time, is arguing. I love to argue, I love to win a conversation, just to win.  But this year, the fellows have called me out on it.  This past month, the girls decided to hold each other accountable by putting a sign in our hallway that has John 3:30 written on it, as well as all of our names with different things we want to work on.  The idea being that we all strive to look more like Jesus, but what is it in our lives that doesn’t look like Jesus and what can we do to change that.  I wrote down communicating, I want to communicate my thoughts and ideas without a tone of judgment or arrogance, I want to work on my reactions so that I won’t come off as harsh.  Through this, we have learned a lot about each other, and opened up so much room for conversation. They’ll ask me in hard moments if I’m arguing or if I’m being prideful.   Every single time, it stumps me.  Because that’s exactly what it is.  I am a prideful person, who needs to die to myself so that Jesus may be made known.

Working at Sky Ranch I’ve learned that it never is truly about us, it’s all about Jesus being made known and God being glorified.  I’ve seen that in the way that the people who work here are constantly doing whatever it takes to be sure that a job gets done.  A few weeks ago, we were setting up one of our meeting rooms, Frontier, when we got there we realized that we didn’t have nearly enough chairs for what the group needed, shortly after we realized that there weren’t enough of those chairs on camp for what the group needed.  So we needed to move 250 chairs from the Legacy Center to Frontier, which is across camp.  In this moment, all the fellows dropped what they were doing to go move chairs.  Not only did the fellows do that, but one of the retreat coordinators, Daniel, as well as, Mike and Adam jumped into help too.  We had about 20 minutes to get this done, and somehow, we did it.  While putting out chairs seems like nothing, for three people to drop what they were doing to come and make sure that the job gets done is just what happens around here.

I’m learning that in serving this place well, it’s getting over ourselves so that kids and families may come to know Christ.  I’m learning that in obedience, it’s getting over ourselves and letting the Lord do the work.  I’m learning that in conversations, it’s getting over myself and listening to the other person.  I’m learning that in accountability, it’s getting over myself and accepting that I am not perfect, nor will I ever be.  This whole year has been a lot of getting over myself so that Jesus may become more.  Because at the end of every day, I want to look more and more like Jesus, and to do that, I have to get over myself.