Fill me up, Lord

"You will seek me, & find me when you seek me w/ all your heart," God says. But that is not the whole story. I'm not just a searcher. I'm also a hider. You too. We have to come face-to-face w/ our tendency to hide, to get lost. ~John Ortberg, Love Beyond Reason

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Identity

from http://mindandsoul.typepad.com/ (Christian psychiatrist from the UK)

One of the biggest issues in mental health at the moment is considering your identity. If you can work out who you are and can be happy with this, then it is a major force in achieving self-esteem, avoiding depression and coping with what life has to throw at us.

I have been really struck by these verses from 2 Corinthians 5v16-17 recently:

[16] So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. [17] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Verse 17 is more widely quoted, but verse 16 is key - there are two ways of looking at someone: with the eyes of the world or the eyes of God. The example given is in the second half of verse 16 - do you see Jesus as a simple carptenter's son or as the son of the Most High God?

Likewise, do you see yourself as how gossip magazines see you - fat, overweight, in need of a pamper or the gym or agony aunts - or do you see yourself with heavenly eyes - as a new creation in Christ.
Donna Crouch, put it, "we need to put away the magazines of lies and open the Book of Truth - the Bible - to see who we really are."

Who are you?
And where are you looking for the answer: heaven or earth?
And when you find the answer, do you put it into practice?
What would this look like for you?

~Just another reminder not to get caught up in my "Christian Living" or "Self-Help" books, and go to the book with real spiritual food. I really need to work on accepting myself as a single, Christian, female educator. I need to be able to define what my likes and dislikes are and how to put a plan into place that allows for these preferences.

1 Comments:

  • At 10:35 PM, July 04, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Thank you Very much for sharing this. This is something that I have been thinking about a Lot lately. I can be very, very hard on myself. I need to learn to see me as God sees me, not as the world does or even as I do. Stuff from the past and present make my vision... extremely cloudy.

    Any good, loving God would not judge or compare me in the harsh, unloving way I can judge myself. It's very easy for me to get caught up with the things of the world. I'm still new to all of this. It's something I definitely need a Lot of help with. Funny coincidence- reading Exactly what I needed to right now. Thanks again Literacy Girl :)

     

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