I find that so many times in life we sit and we ask ourselves “who am I?”, and as I was sitting on the deck the other night I sat and I wondered who am I, and as I asked that question I began to think of who I’ve been and the question who was I began to form. The question who was I, is a much easier question to answer, because as Winston says “hind sight is 20/20”. I can look back and label myself, which is the beginning of the answer who was I. I was the Christian, or I was the jock, or I was goody-goody, or the team captain, or the hard worker, and the list can go on and on, even though it would make answering these questions really, really easy, we aren’t a label.
Sometimes we walk in a label, but it is easy to see that walking in a label is just hiding who we are. As I continued to look back at who I was, I found that I was a decent person, and I prayed, and went to church, and had the opportunity to be a co-leader in small groups, and I got to play sports and play them well. I wasn’t perfect, and now I’m seeing that there were times when I was mean, and times when I was lacking in patience and I didn’t have to swear, because I could make words that were strong enough to cut open the wounds of people’s hearts without cussing at them. And I asked who am I, and I found that I was who I wanted to be, so I changed, to who I am, and now I come back to the same question, who am I? Now I see the question in a new light with the idea that it doesn’t matter who I am, what matters is who I am going to be. It is an interesting revelation for me because when I talk to non-Christians this say things like “well I’ve made a lot of mistakes, God can’t love me” or “My past is pretty dark”, and my answer to them is it doesn’t matter who you’ve been because your future is writing a new page, it doesn’t matter who you are, it matters who your going to be. So right now I sit and I look at who I am, and I find that I’m not the person I want to be, I’m not living a life that is full heartedly following after God, I’m holding back, my faith is so little. Now as I sit and ask who am I, I find that the answer is easy, way easier than anyone has ever made it seem. It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter where I am now; it doesn’t matter where my path is currently leading. What matters is who I’m going to be, where I’m going to go from here. Even if I’m heading south and I’m supposed to be going north it doesn’t matter, because I can turn around how hard is it to turn around? I think a lot of the time we get too deep in where we are that we feel that we can’t move without going deeper. But let’s say you’re driving down SS and you receive a call that your mom just got rushed to a hospital they don’t know how long she’s going to live, are you to keep driving away? NO, your going to whip a u-turn on the spot because you want to be there to see her even if just for a minute, a single glimpse of her is worth enough to last a lifetime, so why is it any harder to turn to God? Even if just a minute in his glory, a glimpse of his power, isn’t god worth a turn around?
It is time to stop asking the stupid question “who am I”, and make the decision who are you going to be. So who are you going to be?
1 comment:
I liked your post. And I like the idea of moving forward and "forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead" pressing "on to take hold of that for which Jesus took hold of" us. I like the idea of not being stuck and asking the same question over and over and not progressing until we find an answer. These are cool things.
However, I do think the answer to the question "who am I?" is an important one. It's difficult to determine who we want to be and how to get there until we determine who we are. The key to answering this question is to ask the right person. Not yourself, not your friends, not your perceptions of what people think about you, but God. Him alone. We have to trust His words and their truth. We have to trust that He will tell us what reality is.
What's interesting in what He tells us is that it is difficult to believe what He says. Because our past doesn't matter anymore, even if it was yesterday. He has cleansed it and forgotten our sins. Our titles from others or ourselves become void and impotent. And He tells us of our strength, beauty, power, love, passion, ambition, joy, purity, holiness, and worth. He separates us from the sinful nature in us, condemning it to death, and then shows us who we really are without that mess. The crux is that it is difficult to live up to who we really are, but we can. It doesn't seem that God typically tells us to be someone different, but tells us who He created us to be and who we are as redeemed creation, then asks us to live in a way that is congruent with that. Moving forward, in my perspective, is living in a way that is more and more in line with who we really are. And so, knowing who we are seems to be an important question.
Love you.
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