On Myself

I am preparing to provide four talks for a retreat this coming weekend. The theme is "I Want to Change!" While I am going to teach a biblical way of thinking about the process a believer in Jesus Christ embarks on the moment of saving faith, that process of being transformed into Christlikeness, I find myself pulling together a history of how I have thought about myself over the nearly 45 years I have been a Christian.

In 1995 I spoke on change for my own church's women's retreat. At that time I had been a believer 30 years. As I prepared for that retreat I looked over journals from early in my life to note areas I had changed, only to be mortified to see myself still struggling with the same things. Was the idea of transformation a lie? It couldn't be. So, I knew I needed a better grasp on what Christian spiritual growth was. As I studied for the talks I gave on that retreat fourteen years ago, I was encouraged by truth I will be sharing with a new group of women in three days. It strengthened my resolve to follow and serve my Savior…BUT, looking back now, I still carried around in my thinking an error concerning what it meant for me to grow and CHANGE as a believer. This error, that God wanted me to be a different me, was dealt with in a very creative way by my heavenly Father in 2005!

When I started my journey with cancer, I really hoped that I was embarking on a life-changing experience. So many believers before me had testimonies in dealing with various threats to life and coming out altered, that I expected I would also. At some point shortly after my initial round of treatment, I was having a conversation with a friend and summed up what I had come to realize. “I thought this would change me…but I am still me…I am still me, but I’ve shared a deeply intimate experience with the Lord. I know that experience was part of how the Lord is forming Christ in me…but I am still me.”

At that point I remembered something I learned when I was 20 years old shortly after a deep bout of depression, a mere eight years into my faith walk. This was a long ago discovery that was bearing new fruit in my post-cancer life: God made me and loves me, and saved me and intends to sanctify me (make me holy) but I am still me…a broken me becoming a more Christlike me, a more God-glorifying me...but still me... and I am glad I am the me that the Lord made.

What about you? Do you, like I did, imagine a need to be or harbor an expectation to become someone other than who you are? Do you hate something about yourself, or carry some shame, and secretly hope for pieces of your personality or history to be gone…to replaced by a different self—one you imagine being happier to live with? That is a wrong concept. Think of the changes you’ve already experienced and which God delights in. In Christ you are forgiven, cleansed, made spiritually alive--a new creation, no longer a slave to sin. You belong to Someone, are given new purpose for life by Him, and are not left alone as you learn to obey and please Him out of love for Him…You are who you are...it's just that your identity is complete (you are not just you, but you are you "in Christ"), and your destiny is certain (when you see Him you shall be like Him)!

The only “changes” we need and should desire are those which come as we confess and forsake sin in our lives and surrender to the help of the Holy Spirit to walk in humble obedience. We will change, God will see to it! (How many of us claim Philippians 1:6 as a "life verse"?) We will become--I am becoming--a loving, joy-filled, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled me. But I will still be me. You will still be you. To God be the glory! We will be fit for heaven, and that is the point!