Identity Theft

I once wrote that our problems and flaws are what make us who we are.  I’d like to retract that statement.  Last Sunday, yes, you guessed it, I heard a sermon.  Two sermons, actually.  And I couldn’t really process them into something my brain could follow logically (remember, my brain works like a computer…01011001) until today.

Last Sunday, the Gospel reading was that of the Man Born Blind (yes, that was his name).  From the sermon, I wrote the following thought in my handy dandy notebook: “Why would God do it this way? Allow problems that are no one’s fault?”  The answer, as we discovered, was that God allows problems so that He might reveal His glory in us.  John 9:3 says “…Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”  Him being the Man Born Blind.  So we agreed that we need the “sight” to see how God is working; to see God and know God more clearly through trials and hardships.

In the second sermon, we were told that God wants to make a change in us.  He wants something about us to be different.  And since the name of this new series of sermons is called “I Quit,” I ultimately concluded that I didn’t really have anything to change, or at least to quit.  I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t party.  I’m practically St. Mary.   And as I nervously looked around the room as people jotted down the things they knew God wanted to change about them, I felt scared.  Or actually, I felt blind.

So all this was on my mind as I thought about a verse from today’s Quiet Time: “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.  Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.”

Whew, got the intro out of the way, now onto what I REALLY wanted to say.  Unintentional rhyme.

I decided this morning that there are much deeper things that God wants to change about me.  Things He wants to clean out.  And these are things that I had long considered to be my identity.  They made me Selbouez.  I started to realize that God wants to kill my identity.  And I thought about the Winter Retreat.  How when God asked us to be grafted to Him, we had to lose ourselves in order for His work to be complete.  Today, I was able to make a list of at least 7 things (what I thought to just be personality traits) and see how they were standing in the way between God and me.  Not things like “laughs when nervous.”  That’s just cute.  I’m talking about things that slowly ruined my relationships with people; and worse, my relationship with God. 

I guess, to summarize this long blog entry: if you’re experiencing a trial or hardship, or even if everything is awesometown, ask God to show you what He wants to change about you in all of this.  And as He begins to change us, I think we’ll start to see His work revealed in us.