Acts 20:24 · World English Bible
But these things don’t count; nor do I hold my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to fully testify to the Good News of the grace of God.
A man can hear that chains and hardship wait for him and stay unmoved, because the part of him that could be frightened is no longer where he lives. The threats still come.
From the Ego v. Being reading below.
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
EGO & BEING
A man can hear that chains and hardship wait for him and stay unmoved, because the part of him that could be frightened is no longer where he lives. The threats still come. When someone stops clutching his own small life, they lose their target and pass through empty air.
His work is not a burden he carries but the shape his aliveness takes, given to him and now given through him. The freedom in him has nothing to do with safety. It comes when a person no longer needs the story of himself to survive, and so keeps nothing back to protect.
SELF-HELP
What you are willing to lose sets the ceiling on what you are able to finish.
Every exit a person takes was priced beforehand. A life held dear is a lever anyone can pull, and once the finishing of the course sits above his own survival, threats lose their grip; chains and hardship become information about the route rather than reasons to leave it.
Joy in a race like that is not temperament. The emotion follows the standard, and a standard received from the Lord Jesus does not reopen at the next city gate, so testifying to the grace of God stays the must while everything else gets demoted to weather. Hold life dear enough and there is always a reason to stop one city short, and the reason will sound excellent for the rest of it.
Ego v. Being lens
How much of your effort today is going into the work, and how much into protecting your reputation for doing it?
Do the work that is yours to do and release your grip on how it turns out. The doing is yours, the outcome was never your property.
A man is not free while there is anything he cannot bear to lose. Hold your life, your name and your comfort loosely, and no one has a handle on you.
The empty boat drifting downriver angers no one. It is the man at the oars people shout at. Be empty and the shouting finds nothing to land on.
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Ego v. Being
Self-Help