Hello everyone! Before we begin, I wanted to say that I will be on vacation for the next week so there won't be any posts. Also, I know I haven't kept up with my "posts on Monday and Friday" so I will just focus on getting AT LEAST one post out a week.
Let's get started.
Lately, I have been having trouble with pinpointing who I am as a person. I've felt numb to my genuine core and disassociated from the world around me. I lose myself in my friends and family. Not to say that they are bad people, I just use them as distractions from facing the fact that I don't know who I am anymore. I hope that taking on one of their identities will fill the void that is a blank canvas in my heart and mind.
I don't think I ever really knew who I was. I can't remember who I was in high school and yet I am trying to grasp a sense of who I was before I attended college.
As you can probably tell, I've had enough (as seen by me writing this post). I am tired of being meek and playing dumb. I want to be confident in myself and decisive in my actions. And the only way I can do that is trusting God to mold me into the masterpiece He made me to be.
Before I get into discovering what an identity in Christ is, I would like to point out some distractions that I've noticed that discourage us from finding purpose and person.
1) Discovering some of your personal flaws and ugly parts of yourself.
- Since attending college and getting into a new relationship, I have witnessed some real terrible sides to myself. I often tried to bury them and force my "good side" to shine through. Burying your flaws only amplifies them. So, take strength and courage in God and face them head on. Communicate with God about what you are feeling and pray that He give you the strength and wisdom to shut down any of those nasty habits. Only then will you come to peace with yourself and with God.
2) Finding purpose and person in the people around you.
- I want everyone to like me. Knowing that there are people out there that don't really like me, rubs me the wrong way. Therefore, I spent most of my life trying to mimic the mannerisms of my friend groups. I did this at the expense of my genuine self and my relationship with God. I enabled certain behaviors that did not honor God and I started to adopt those behaviors. Proverbs 13:20 says, "Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm". I had rejected some of the moral foundation God had placed in my heart in an attempt to gain friends. To combat this, know that you will never be fulfilled if you place your identity into the identity of others. Pray for guidance and for God to show you your standards.
3)Fear
-I wrote a piece that touched on fear a little bit so I won't go into huge detail. BUT, fear is the ultimate weapon against genuine humanity and individual person. The fear of pursuing the purpose God has placed in your life denies the chance to discover the masterpiece that God made you to be. Fear of losing friends, fear of facing the ugly parts, fear of falling on your face in the pursuit of purpose and person, fear of literally anything that God has placed in your life can and will stunt your growth as a person. More importantly, it will stunt your growth in your relationship with God.
See if you can identify any of these distractions and let me know if you can find any more that seem to distract you from finding your identity in Christ.
The only thing that I am certain about in terms of who I am is the fact that I am a writer and Child of God.
When these two pillars of my identity start to shake, I go into a spiral. Sometimes, I lose the wonder and awe that comes with being a Child of God. I think that experiencing and knowing this wonderment of being one of God's children is one of the most important steps to take when finding your identity.
First, God knitted you together in your mother's womb (body, soul, and all) so that you could make a difference in the world. God created you to be different and unlike the world around you (1 John 2:17). He created you to be unique, not to be like everyone else.
Second, God sent His ONLY SON to die so that we may have everlasting life (John 3:16). If that isn't what true love is, I don't know what is. God thought that every single one of us was worth dying for. Every. Single. One. Past, present, and future. If we do not think we have a purpose or individual person in this world, we are forgetting that Jesus died because He thought we were worth it. That's part of our identity, we are worth it.
Lastly, God made us to be strong and rooted (Isaiah 12:2). We were not given a spirit of fear. We were made to be strong in our Lord. Without Him, we are nothing. We have no purpose. We have no drive. We have nothing without our Father, our King, our Friend. Rooting ourselves in Him will bring blessings that we never even dreamed of having (James 1:17). God placed in our hearts the natural desire to seek Him because He knows that we need Him. We need Him to be ourselves. We need Him to be at peace. We need Him to be strong. Without Him, we are nothing.
Now that I am writing this, I am realizing why I have been struggling so much to find who I am. Just trying to be a good person won't bring me the satisfaction of being fulfilled in who I am in Christ.
I encourage all of you to spend real, put-aside time for God. I am guilty of just powering through a devotional and calling it "time spent with God". DON'T DO THIS. Don't make my mistake. By doing this, you are denying the chance to hear God's loving and guiding voice. I promise you that God will show you who you are if you take time out of your day to communicate with and listen to Him. He is our Lord, God Almighty. There is nothing He can not do. If he can create You within your mother's womb, create this entire universe, send His son to die for us, and instill in us a spirit of strength, what makes you think He can't help you find who He made you to be?
I challenge you to set aside at least two hours of time to spend with God (I will challenge myself to do the same thing). You don't have to use the entire two hours. If God calls you to move, MOVE. But out aside two hours so you have time to get everything out. Everything that is holding you back, all of your fears and transgressions. All of your worries, all of your anger, sadness, or even happiness. And then listen. Listen to what God says.
I promise you He will show you the way.
Comments