The apostle Paul wrote, \u2018I don\u2019t want what you have\u2014I want you\u2026 I will gladly spend myself and all I have for you, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me.\u2019<\/i> (2 Corinthians 12:14\u201315 NLT) Paul found his greatest fulfilment in giving, not receiving. For him, giving was its own reward. For him, being successful meant making others successful. For him, being joyful meant bringing joy to others. That\u2019s because he didn\u2019t look to people for his reward, but to God: \u2018Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do.\u2019<\/i> (Ephesians 6:8 NLT) <\/p>\n
The hardest thing for most of us to do is to fight our natural tendency to put ourselves first. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to continually examine your motives and make sure you\u2019re not sliding backwards into selfishness. If you want to check your motives, follow the example set by Benjamin Franklin. Every day he asked himself two questions. When he got up in the morning he would ask, \u2018What good am I going to do today?\u2019 And before he went to bed he would ask, \u2018What good have I done today?\u2019 If you can answer those questions with selflessness and integrity, you can keep yourself on track. Seeing those in need, and giving to meet that need, keeps your priorities and your perspective right. It increases the quality of life for both the giver and the receiver. The truth is, there is no life as empty as the self-centred life, and there is no life as centred as the self-empty life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The apostle Paul wrote, \u2018I don\u2019t want what you have\u2014I want you\u2026 I will gladly spend myself and all I have for you, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me.\u2019 (2 Corinthians 12:14\u201315 NLT) Paul found his greatest fulfilment in giving, not receiving. For him, giving was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}