Who Am I?

Who am I? That is a cry I hear from many people. The problem begins when they expect someone else to tell them who they are.

Why is this such a problem? How can people not know who they are?

When you live your life in such a way that you draw back from being tested and run when God is tempering you in fear that the process may be painful, you will never know your own capabilities. You will also never understand your own strengths and weaknesses.

Why? Because knowingly or unknowingly you decided to stay comfortable.

It is much easier to stay comfortable than to challenge yourself or allow another to challenge you. We want to be safe, we want it all without it costing us.

Many lose their identity as they swim in the ocean of 'niceness'. They have lived so long trying to be nice to everyone that oneday they awake and wonder, who am I? Where did I lose myself?

To some extent we confuse 'niceness' as being christian spirited. Many think that in order to be a good Christian we have to be nice to everyone we meet. That is not what faith is about, 'niceness' is not gentleness.

If anything a longing to be perceived as 'nice' is actually a distorted form of self love. A person who is needy begins to live a lie. They become the image of how others see them, this then leads them to live the image and lose themselves while doing it.

The difference with niceness and gentleness is this; niceness wont speak the Truth(God's Truth) in case it causes offense. Or the nice person will remain silent even if they know another is in serious error or in danger of losing their soul. This is self love. A gentle person speaks the Truth without judgement even if it means losing a friendship, the gentle persons focus is on God and not themselves. This is selfless love.

When did we think that in order to be seen as 'nice' we have to be agreeable to just about anything?

A failure to speak the Truth to one who needs to hear it is a failure of love.

Until you have been tested in the Fire of God's Love by living and speaking His Truth irrespective of your own popularity, you know not love. We learn who we are when we have gone through adversity and when our mettle has been tested, but if we keep running, we wont grow. It is that simple.

Unless you are willing to accept that Discipleship costs, you will have thrown away the Pearl of Great Price for the shell.

If you spend your life running from difficult situations, you will remain a shadow of who you were born to be.

Would YOU prefer to hear the hard Truth or a nice lie?

The Butterfly

A man found a cocoon for a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther.

The man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the small opening of the cocoon are God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through all our life without any obstacles, that would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. Not only that, we could never fly!