Got ego?

I have it. I recognize that it can keep me from partnering with others if I don't keep it in check.
Part of the reason I am so passionate about communities is because of a natural tendancy to separate and compete... ego is part of who we are, but if we can actually use our skills and ego to promote those around us in a collaborative manner.. we can literally change the world. One instance at a time.

There is a great poem/reflection written about this here...competition or collaboration
Below is an excerpt from that poem by Rev. Charles Hulin III.
" So we learn that the key to success is cooperation. We have to cooperate to win anything from ball games to wars. We have to cooperate to keep the peace. We have to cooperate to elect public officials that we hope will be honest. We have to cooperate to operate a business . . . To move a church forward . . . To keep a home together . . . To build great institutions."

I have been fixated lately on my inability to get churches to work together. I call it "politics", many other names... but in the end, I am not so different than them even personally. Are you?

Do I pursue my agenda or one set by God. Do I embrace a sense of lowliness in the midst of talent and ego, or I seek to prove that I am better than those around me.. tough questions.. without good answers...

Romans 4 ( The Message)
Trusting God

^{1 -3} So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we're given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own."

^{4 -5}If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

^{6 -9}David confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who trusts God to do the putting-everything-right without insisting on having a say in it is one fortunate man:

Fortunate those whose crimes are carted off,
whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
Fortunate the person against
whom the Lord does not keep score. Do you think for a minute that this blessing is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don't we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God?