Sometimes we are so caught up in life we lose sight of who we are. It is astonishing how easy this is to do. Life gets going – and we become something we never intended to be. Sometimes it is out of convenience, other times it is a conscious act. I remember in middle school everyone called me a dumb blond, so that is what I crafted myself into. That dumb blond mask I put on did not display who I was, or who God intended me to be, but rather what I thought others wanted me to be. At times we put on masks of confidence, energy, knowledge, pride, and many others. Often we shape ourselves into how we want to be perceived, or how we think that we should act, and eventually we lose sight of our true self.
After years of these charades, we arrive at a point where we are unsure of our true identity because we have caked so many false selves on top of it. I am not just talking about acting happy when you are sad, but rather shaping yourself into what you want to be or think you should be. God has crafted us as individual, beautiful, capable human beings but through life we work diligently to reshape what God crafted into something we think might be better. Only to figure out that God got it right in the beginning.
Paul is a shining example of creating a false self and exchanging it for his true self. Saul – a Jew – worked hard. He learned all the laws and the actions, living them out through persecuting Christians. Soon Jesus directly intervened on the road to Damascus, changing Saul’s life for eternity. Saul became Paul, his true self that he was intended to be since his birth. In Galatians 1:13-16a Paul is writing to the church in Galatia and states:
13For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it;
14and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.
15But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased
16to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles…
Due to the death of his old false self, Paul was able to take on the true life God intended since his mothers womb. We have been set apart from our birth just like Paul. God is beckoning us to know Him more so that we can come to know our true self.
So what do we do? I do not know about you, but as for me it is excessively difficult to peel back the layers of my false self to find the glorious creation God intended. I believe that throughout our lives we are supposed to work on discovering this true self, an identity found only through the lens of God. Through solitude, prayer, and listening we can begin a journey filled with the undulations of life – a journey to discover who God truly intended us to be.
