archives: july 2011

how do i find out who i am?

by luke brown

When I was at school I decided that it wasn’t a great idea to tell my mates that I was a Christian. I thought that no one would like me if they found out about that part of who I was. It was a bit of me that I was insecure about and did not want to share.

We can all be like this at times, we can all feel insecure and often it’s because we are trying to work out who we really are. We can be so desperate for guidance that we’ll even take quizzes in magazines or on Facebook to see what famous film or book character we’re most like. (I’ll admit I did a ‘Lord of the Rings’ one and found out that, sadly, I am Arwen and not Gandalf as I’d always hoped.)

So how can we feel secure? How do we find out who we are? After all, the journey of self discovery is actually one of the greatest ways we grow in life. There’s a real power in understanding who you are and how you relate to the world around you. But how should our journeys of self-discovery be different as people that know and follow Jesus?

In Romans 12:2-3 Paul says this: …be transformed by the renewing of your mind… For by the grace given me I say to every one of you; do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has given you.

Paul is firstly speaking to our pride and reminding us to remain humble but he is also saying there’s something about faith, something about what God does to us that changes the way we think. We can all get into negative patterns of thought that start to dictate our lives, but God renew our minds, enabling us to shift away from those negative thoughts and live in freedom.

Sometimes instead of looking to God we can look to other people, hoping they will build us up and affirm us to make us feel better. I always find it interesting the way God deals with Moses when he was having a bout of insecurity.