In a world where many people want to be normal, God is looking for a peculiar people. He wants people who will be originals not copies of something special. He wants the real thing. And the devil tries to make us believe that we will ourselves if we trust God and become who He wants to make us. But isn't God the master designer anyway? Doesn't He alone have the right to say what the real me should look like?
C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, "And if Christ is one, and if He is thus to be 'in' us all, shall we not be exactly the same? It certainly sounds like it but in fact it is not so...The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of 'little Christs', all different, will still be too few to expresss Him fully...It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own."
The journey for self discovery lies at the feet of Jesus. As I understand who Christ is, I begin to see my identity - who God designed me to be. As I deny myself (the old man), I take on the new man, which is who I was intended to be all along. Instead of take my cues from the world, I should be looking up to see the heart of The Father.
The men and women who have made the biggest impact on the world were originals - people who dared to be different. They lived for something greater than themselves and were willing to go against the flow if it followed their passion and purpose. I have recently been listening to an audio CD about the life of former President Ronald Reagan. Michael Deaver, who worked closely with Reagan during his political career, said on the CD that one of the things about Reagan that made him special was that he had an incredible sense of who he was. This helped him standup despite criticism. Reagan's strong sense of self identity gave him the internal fortitude to go against what 'the experts" had to say. He marched to a different drummer.
I believe that many so-called Christians are not living a victorious life because they have failed to discover who God really is on their own. And if they don't have an accurate understanding of God, how could they ever really know their true identity?
