Know Yourself, Know God

Ephesians 4:17–24 ESV

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Becoming Your Authentic Self

I grew up in a large family—six kids. I’m number 4. I felt like I was invisible, so I did what I could to stand out. God gifted me with smarts and musical talent, and these things helped. My dad loved it when I had a solo in church or the school concerts. But those things didn’t happen all the time. So I worked hard to show how good I could be. I was well-behaved. I was courteous. I did favors for people. And people would be impressed with how good I was. But then they came to expect that level of goodness from me. If I volunteered for something, then I ALWAYS had to volunteer. If I had been generous about sharing my stuff, then it became assumed that everything I had was fair game for sharing. I felt like I had no boundaries that anyone respected. I felt taken advantage of, unappreciated. I was so kind to people to their faces, but deep down, I resented them. I resented pretty much everybody.

Do you know what the real problem was? I had created this image of myself. I told everyone, including myself, that this is who I was. I was the guy who was always available with a smile and willingness to help. I was the guy who made everything better.

All that came to a head when I went overseas for my first long-term missions work. I was part of a ministry team that traveled all over Eastern Europe. The first year, everything went pretty smoothly. We all got along. God was doing powerful things wherever we went.

But then we had a changeover of team members. Half the team was replaced with new members. And there were conflicts. Of course, I get along with almost everybody, so I was determined to help everyone else get along. We talked about unity. We read scriptures and prayed together. We ministered together. We received prophetic messages. And we continued to have conflict.

Eventually, I got sick from the stress. I was developing an ulcer. I had to go home. Six months after I left, the team broke up. And I carried the guilt of that breakup for 10 years. It took 10 years before I was broken enough to hear God’s voice. Ten years before I was ready to face the truth that I was carrying a burden that was never mine.

I was suffering because I had a wrong idea of who I was and why I was put on this earth. I thought I was supposed to fix things and fix people. I said I was doing it for God, but the fact is I did it to feel important. My value was in helping others. When those team members refused to resolve their conflict, I took it as a personal failure. The fact is, it was never my job to fix them. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job. I was so busy focusing on everybody else’s issues that I failed to let the Holy Spirit work on my issues.

Each of us was made in God’s image. Each of us is a unique representation of God’s glory.

The prophet Jeremiah shared what the Lord spoke to him:

Jeremiah 1:4–5 ESV

Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” Those words are not just for Jeremiah. God designed you. He gave you skills and abilities. He gave you certain interests. He knows exactly who you are meant to be.

The problem is, we have so many other people telling us who they think we are supposed to be. It starts with our parents and our family. Our teachers. Our friends and peers. They tell us who we need to be in order to fit in and be accepted.

Then we get labels thrown on us. The good kid. The rebel. The lazy one. The one who will never measure up. The pride and joy. The one who is going to do something great with their life. All these labels—including the ones that sound good—distract us from learning to see ourselves the way God sees us.

There are three powerful temptations that threaten us. Each temptation, in it’s own way, screams, “God can never fully accept you. You are not lovable. You are not good enough.”

Temptation 1: I Am What I Do

Matthew 4:3 ESV

And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

At this moment in time, Jesus was at the very beginning of his ministry. He was thirty-something years old. He had no followers. Nobody believed in him. He was alone in the wilderness, hungry. What contribution had he made to the world?

That’s the question our culture asks each of us. What have you achieved? What have you contributed? What do you do? Most of us measure out worth in our successes in work, family, school, church, relationships. When we feel like we haven’t succeeded, we feel worthless. So we work harder to prove ourselves, or we turn inward in depression, or perhaps blame others.

Striving for earthly success tempts us to find our worth and value outside of God’s measureless, free love for us in Christ.

Temptation 2: I Am What I Have

Matthew 4:8–9 ESV

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

At this point, the devil was basically telling Jesus, “Look what you are missing out on. Everybody else has it so much better than you. Submit to me, and I will give you everything everyone else has. I’ll make you somebody.” The devil was challenging the source of Jesus’ security.

Our culture measures success by what we own. Marketers now spend more than 15 billion dollars each years targeting children and adolescents to convince them they HAVE to have certain toys, clothes, electronic devices. They tell the kids that their very identities depend on it.

As adults, we measure ourselves through comparisons. Who has the most money? The most beautiful body? The most comfortable life? What do we do for a living? What company do we work for? What is our position? How much do we earn? Who has the best education from what school? Who has the most talents and awards? How desirable is our spouse?

Culture says my source of security only comes from sufficient possessions, talent, and acceptance from other people. God wants us to define ourselves, not by what we have, but by the fact that we are his beloved children.

Temptation 3: I Am What Others Think

Matthew 4:5–6 ESV

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “ ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ”

The devil took Jesus to the center of the Jewish religious community and dared him to show off his power to everyone. Then everyone would think Jesus is important. They would believe in him.

Most of us care more about what other people think than we realize. We worry about the right thing to say to certain people. We worry about how our choices in school, who we date or marry, the career we choose, and so many other things will affect our social standing. Our self-image soars with a compliment and is devastated by criticism.

The result is that we create this version of ourselves that fits the mold of other people’s expectations. We live a pretend life out of an unhealthy concern for what other people think. Even worse, we end up more concerned with impressing them that we are concerned with them as human beings.

Joe DiMaggio has a reputation as one of the greatest baseball players to ever live. He was a larger-than-life hero in American sports history. He was talented. He was charismatic. Plus, he married Marilyn Monroe! After his death, a biography of Joe’s life was published, revealing in detail how Joe spent his entire life in “image management.” He was committed to show nothing but a shiny surface that hid an egocentric, competitive, greedy, selfish man driven by power and money. Nobody, not even his wife, was allowed to get too close to him. Any attempt to penetrate that shiny surface was met with silence, exclusion, or rage. How sad that he spent his entire life afraid to let anyone in? Imagine if he could have seen himself the way God sees him?

Jesus’ True Self

Mark 3:21 ESV

And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”

Everyone had their expectations that they wanted to impose on Jesus. The religious leaders, the crowds of people. The disciples. Even Jesus’ family had their ideas of what his roles was, and thought he was crazy for not falling into their idea of who he was. The more he sought the will of the Father, the more he disappointed other people.

But because Jesus was secure in the Father’s love, he was secure in himself, and thus was able to withstand enormous pressure.

Jesus was not selfless, living as if only other people mattered. He knew his value and his worth. He had friends. He asked people to help him. At the same time, Jesus was not selfish, living as if nobody other than he counted. He gave his life for us. Because Jesus understood his relationship with his heavenly Father, Jesus had a mature, healthy true self.

In the same way, we need to reject the voices of the world around us to hear what God has to say about who we are and who we are not.

I am not who others say I am. I am not who my emotions say I am. I am not what society says I am supposed to be. The only one who gets to tell me who and what I am is my Creator. He made me. He knows me. He loves me, flaws and all.

Finding Your True Self

So how do we learn to find our true self?

Learn to Listen

This requires learning the value of silence and solitude. The world is constantly distracting us from listening to what God is trying to say to us through our own feelings, dreams, likes and dislikes. People around us are pushing to make us into their image for us. Solitude gets us away from those other voices. Silence quiets our own voice so that we can hear God’s voice.

Silence is uncomfortable, and it takes real effort to learn how to shut up and listen. But the end result is being able to clearly hear God’s voice and sense his presence as he affirms the value he sees in us.

Find Trusted Companions

The people we surround ourselves with need to be those who will encourage our journey with God. We need people we feel safe with, who won’t run away when they hear the dark stuff going on in your life. We also need people who will tell it like it is and hold us accountable.

Move Out of Your Comfort Zone

As we learn to embrace our true self, it can be frightening. We have learned to go with the flow, to play a role that keeps everyone happy, even if it means we are lying to everyone. We have to get to the point where the pain of living a life that is not God’s will for me is greater than the pain of change. If we risk the change, we will find that a life of complete surrender to God brings freedom as we learn to embrace the life and identity God has for us.

Pray for Courage

As we make that move to becoming our true self in Christ, the change always elicits a reaction from those close to us. And that reaction is almost always “change back.”

So we need the empowering of the Holy Spirit to overcome the discomfort in your life and the resistance from others.

Lord, help me to be still before you. Lead me to a greater vision of who you are, and in so doing, may I see myself—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Grant me the courage to follow you, to faithful to become the unique person you created me to be. I ask you for the Holy Spirit’s power to not copy another person’s life or journey. God, submerge me in the darkness of yoru love, that he consciousness of my false, everyday self, falls away from me like a soiled garment. May my deep self fall into your presence know you alone, carried away into eternity like a dead leaf in the November wind. Amen.