{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Christ Community Church - Brookside Campus - SUNDAY MESSAGES","title":"Matthew - Choose To Be Last","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2847,"description":"Matthew 20:17-28 \nChoose To Be Last \nRecorded August 28, 2016 \nBrookside Campus\n\nMichelle Campbell's Poem\n\nTime and time again, I made a name for myself...and not necessarily one that I wanted to be called by 'cause my actions had set the stage for performances that I was beyond ashamed of, but there was no turning back.\n\nI called myself climbing this ladder. You know the kind that's fashioned after self-glory and fortified by pride. It's funny, I had long since lost interest in what it was made of. I was more fascinated at what was at the top...the spotlight, recognition, fame of some sort. A mission that seemed impossible to abort because I was in too deep.\n\nIt had never occurred to me how the things we aspire after can transform themselves into our secret identities if we aren't careful. Especially in ministry...because \"ministry lives\" matter, right?\n\nThe struggle becomes putting the ministry first and allowing everything else to come after and even though God was the author, I was the co-author of that chapter at least once if not twice in my life. I owned some of the rights to this greatness I possessed.\n\nI mean really, how long are you willing to pause for the applause of my longing to be accepted to gratify my ego?\nA question that most times took too long for an acceptable answer to surge, so I sowed where I wanted with no expectations of reaping the benefits of my selfish antics. \n\nI was simply planting the foundation of my future.\n\n\"In the meantime, I was on the road to my own Damascus, asking questions that suggested I knew the answer to something I didn't. \nIf I had to admit it, I was the murderer who had been acquitted for the persecution of my righteousness on a journey that left me hell-bent to be converted to myself.\nIf nothing else, this is why my entourage of conceit, vanity, and stubbornness slung our ways high above the heavens because we deserved to be first. After all, we knew best. As for the rest of you, your compliments only pacified my...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/VYn5Og1mwTyegDrVOsalhynQzmal1exBXZRKaNoeHjU/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzIzMDMyLzE2MzIy/NDc5OTQtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}