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Finding Ourselves

Who Does God Want You to Be?

Who does God want you to be? Who do you want to be? Wouldn't it be nice if both answers were the same?

Most of us have no idea how to answer either question . Thinking about the sort of life produced by not knowing can be disheartening. This existence is lacking in purpose, direction, passion, and power (efficacy)-a life by default. Confusion, bitterness, regret, frustration and alienation are the hallmarks of this remarkably "lifeless style."

Those who've given even fleeting thought to the issue assume that God must want them to be radically different than who they now are. And most of us, wishing things could be different, are profoundly dissatisfied with our lives.

So here's the good news: God wants you to be just exactly whom and what He made you to be! After all, He made you in His very own image. The problem, however, is that we have taken that wonderful, warm, loving, positive, creative soul God endowed us with and loaded it up with, shame, insecurity, inferiority and other negative emotions, until we're virtually unrecognizable as God's magnificent creations.

Of course, we don't do any of this intentionally, and we do have a lot of "help" making it so. Family members, schoolmates, teachers, co-workers, and others sinned against us when their words, attitudes or actions denied that we were created in God's image, complete with special gifts and a glorious destiny. And we sinned both against God and ourselves when we integrated these misrepresentations as part of our "true selves."

What did God create us to be like? Jesus talked about this subject at great length. He knew that people had not only lost touch with who God had created them to be, but also with how to actually manifest God's love. He also knew that people seeking after God needed 'guide posts," not so much to help them change or "improve" who they were, but to re-discover their original identities as children of God.

Jesus often summed up all of God's expectations with the word love , meaning, we are to truly care for one another. Jesus taught this important principle in His famous " Golden Rule " parables. So basically, God wants us to "be" love, by loving God, others, and ourselves, and by caring for God's world.