Not Who You Think You Are

Have you ever realized that you are not the person that you think you are? This realization hits me occasionally. I might be thinking that I am getting better in an area of my life, just to have the Lord tell me that ten other areas have exploded all around me. I never get use to feeling the disappointment of not being who I would like to be in Christ, but I am no longer overwhelmed by it. I confess and start asking the Lord to show the truth about my heart and my sin so that we can deal with the areas that need to be dealt with. This process is a life’s work, that won’t be completed until I stand in Christ before my Father in Heaven.

This said, I am often times shocked when someone else does not think of me the way I think they think of me. I once had a friend that was struggling with this same idea. She said the realization had hit her that not everyone likes her. Now, my friend is a very likable person. She is warm, funny and fun to be with, so I can see her thinking that people like her. When she realized not everyone does, she was dealing with her concept of reality verses the reality itself.

I have never thought everyone liked me. I am a rather intense, passionate and divisive person, and all my life people have either really liked me or really disliked me. There usually is no middle ground with me. However, my concept of reality was rocked the other day when I realized that people who like me, don’t always like me the way I think that they do.

I am not an idiot. I know that even those closest to us have days where they just don’t like us. I love my kids always, but sometimes I don’t like their attitudes or behavior, and the same goes for my husband. I get that. What hit me last week though was finding out that someone I was close to and worked with for many years was bothered by me and I did not even know it.

This friend was missing a group of women, women whom we had both worked with. I discovered she liked the group more BEFORE I became a part of it. I honestly got the sense that she liked it better without me. I was surprised to say the least. I was not wounded or hurt, however. She was 100% right about the godliness of that prior group of women. I was just thrown back because I did not know that I had changed the feel of that group of women that much. She had never seemed bothered for six years.

After our time together, I had to step back from myself. I prayed and asked the Lord, “Really? She felt that way?”

I started to look at myself, and my idea of who I am, especially when I have vision or passion for something. I told my husband about my lunch, and what I had discovered. Of course, he didn’t sugar coat anything. He said, “You are a strong personality. You are forceful.”

I wanted to say, “Ya, but I am kind and I love and I can be tender hearted.”

Instead, I listened to him realizing his rightness and started to humble myself. “Well, Lord,” I said, “I thought I was working well for You, serving you, carrying out Your vision, but maybe I was working well for myself, serving myself, carrying out my vision instead of Yours.”

As I have asked the Lord to show me the truth about things and about myself, I have been hit with a question, “Heather, do you minister to others to help them and to glorify Me, or do you minister to others to make yourself feel good about yourself and what you are doing for others?”

I have asked this same question before, of myself. I have asked it of others, but this time it really hit hard. It made me realize that no matter how pure I think my motives are my “ heart is deceitful above all else.” I can’t even know it.

I recently saw a movie about a group of missionaries who asked a mercenary to take them in to a foreign country, so that they could provide physical and spiritual help to those being devastated by war. The missionaries told this man that they want to go in to bring about change and help others. He informed them that they wouldn't change anything, and he was proven right. The main missionary realized at the end of the movie that her desire to go into this country was a self-centered one. That she had to have it her way, because she thought that to be the best way. She finally understood that her biggest motivation to minister was her own need to feel important.

I am not saying everyone out there working diligently for the Lord is self-centered. What I am saying is that when we are serving our Lord, we need to sift everything, including our hearts, through His hands. He is the only one who really knows us, and if we ask Him. He will reveal our true nature to us. Once we understand who we are, why we do what we do, then He we can move forward in Christ. He will produce the fruit we too often attempt to produce ourselves, without any success. When we realize we aren’t who we think we are, that is the first step in becoming who we need to be.

Ask God to reveal to you the truth about yourself, confess and be transformed into the image of Christ.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24