Tag: Inspiration

The labels we wear

labels Labels.  We all wear them.  The things people have spoken about us or to us have stuck to us and changed the way we live.  For some it is trying to outlive the labels, and others try to live up to them.  Everyone of us has experienced the labels our world puts on people.

As humans we love to categorize people, and have them fit neatly into a slot that makes sense in our minds.  The standard we use for people is usually ourselves.  When people behave the way we want they are great people, and when they don’t we usually get upset.  If people behave differently enough from us we categorize them as different and set them aside.   We have labels for just about everyone we meet, and we relate to people based on the labels they have.

Growing up there were jocks and geeks, preps and Goths, punks, metal heads and grunge.  But there are more than the social labels we wear.  There are a lot of things spoken to us over the years that have labeled us as well.  Useless, bum, jerk, loser, worthless, good for nothing, dumbass, and many others.  The struggle to be yourself is especially hard for young people still discovering who they really are as they grow into adulthood.  And the labels can be extremely hard to live with as evidenced by our teen suicide rates.more than a label

We are more than a label.  And we don’t have to be the labels that others have placed on us.  Even our parents placed labels on us as we grew up and were told to be something.  Part of the journey of self discovery is learning to discern yourself from the labels.  Under all the labels our world has placed on us is the real you and I.  An extremely valuable person to find.  One that Jesus thought was worth leaving heaven and dying for.

All of those labels have created ways of relating and interacting with our world, and many of them are learned behaviors and are not the real us.  The journey is to help us decide which ones are not us and which ones are.  As we discover ourselves under the labels we can then begin to express ourselves for who we really are.  It isn’t going to be an easy path to take because some of the labels we wear have a depth of pain attached to them that will take some working through.  But the rewards for doing so are incredible.  Don’t let the worry of what you may discover keep you from searching.  There is a great wealth inside each one of us if we are willing to look for and discover who we really are.

Know God / Know Yourself

Business people standing with question mark on boards

Knowing yourself is something that usually goes overlooked in our society.  It goes overlooked more often in our churches.  For years I was taught that we deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus.  These are the words of Jesus in Matthew 16 “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  And I have always understood it to mean that everything I am disappears and I follow Jesus.  I know many others who have had the same understanding.  I don’t matter, and I must follow Him.

It is a wrong interpretation of the words of Jesus.  Because the goal of Christianity is for us to know God.   The Westminster Catechism states “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”  But our ability to know God hinges on our ability to know ourselves.  Thomas à Kempis argued that “a humble self-knowledge is a surer way to God than a search after deep learning,” and Augustine’s prayer was “Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.”

God desires to be known by us.  The whole of scripture is the story of God reaching out to humanity and revealing Himself to us and calling us to know Him personally and completely.  He has gone to great lengths to show His love and character for us and to invite us to come closer and know Him more.  One of the major limiting factors of this is our lack of understanding of ourselves.  When God reveals Himself to us, He also reveals us.  The goal of Christianity is for the life of Christ to be made manifest in us, or for us to be like Jesus in what we do, say and think.  We do this by knowing God and allowing Him to show us the areas of our lives that are not like Him.

Which means that we need to know ourselves, and be willing to look at the things about ourselves that we often try to ignore.  “Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. Both, therefore, have an important place in Christian spirituality. There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God.  John Calvin wrote, “Nearly the whole of sacred doctrine consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Benner, David G. (2009-09-20). The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery

David Benner also wrote “Focusing on God while failing to know ourselves deeply may produce an external form of piety, but it will always leave a gap between appearance and reality.”
Unfortunately this is the state that most Christians live in.  We have an appearance that we work on, especially when we are gathering with other Christians, and only we know the taugustinerue reality of the condition of our hearts.  Which is why the world objects to Christianity saying that “we are a bunch of hypocrites.”  We can deeply know God, as promised by Scripture, and we can know ourselves.  Jesus thought you and I were valuable enough to die for.  As we grow in our understanding of ourselves, and allow God to speak into our lives and show Himself the transformation will be glorious, and people can say of us as they did Peter and John “The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13 NLT  The journey is never ever to late to take.

Discover Identity

who am iEveryone needs an identity.  It is something we search for from the day we are born.  And all through life we have opportunities to change our identity.  We are born and our identity is related to our mother.  As we grow we begin to relate with our father.  Then somewhere around two we begin to separate our identity from those around us.  We begin to look for our own identity.

Many people try to create their identity.  They adapt and mold themselves to be more acceptable to those they want to relate to, or those they think are cool.   All of us have had this struggle throughout our school years.  We find ourselves accepted by many of those around us, or not accepted by them, because of the way we act and dress.  And that changes as we try to make ourselves acceptable.  We all know someone who can change who they are depending on who they are with.  There is no sense of security build inside that allows them to simply be, and let the cards fall where they may.

The struggle to be accepted, and the struggle for identity can often seem to be in opidentity maskposition to each other.  If I am the way I want, they won’t accept me.  But if they accept me I won’t be the way I want.  Peer pressure is a powerful influence in our lives.  It causes most of us to live with masks that we change and wear depending on our situations.  Unfortunately this means that we don’t ever become who we were meant to be.  Our identity isn’t something we can create to fit our situations, or to fit our goals.  David Benner wrote “Identity is never simply a creation. It is always a discovery. True identity is always a gift of God.”

Identity is something we were born with.  Our passions, desires, goals and dreams arise from our identity.  And we discover and grow in our identity as we find acceptance for who we are, and for who we are becoming.  Without acceptance we fit the mold we are given.  Without acceptance we and our world miss out on who we are.  Finding those people who can accept us simply because we are is extremely valuable and necessary.  They can be hard to find, but they are out there.  Don’t let people fit you into their mold for you.  There is someone extremely valuable inside that is worth becoming if you will look for them.