Who Are You?

Who are you?  We answer this question is many different ways.  We explain where we come from, who are our people.  What we do is somewhere in there, along with hobbies, friends, and what makes us happy.  All of these things contribute, of course.  They are all a part of our stories.  But are they who we are?  Do we argue genetics versus environment?  Are we our family tree?  How much choice do we actually have about who we are?  Do road trips actually help us in finding out who we are?  I can tell you all about my story, who I’ve been, what I’ve done, where I’ve been.  But maybe, I’ve been looking at all this from the wrong perspective.

When we see art, most of us admire the art itself.  But when an expert looks, they see much more than the art, construction or design.  They study the artist, architect, and designer.  They discuss who the artist is or was, what their goals were, what they were thinking and feeling.  What is the purpose of the creation?  What was the creation intended to do?  So, maybe instead of searching for ourselves in an answer of ‘who am I’, we should look and study our Creator.  To start, check out Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you.  Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you…”  Not bad for a start, huh?  Then, there’s Ephesians 2:10 “God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”  How about 1 Peter 2: 9-10 “But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.”?

Folks, the things written about us in Scriptures are almost unending.  Check them out for yourselves!  What was our Artist, our Architect, our Designer thinking?  What is His goal, the purpose of it all?  My take is simple, foundational, and infinitely complicated…  Love.  We argue over everything.  Politics.  Sports.  Everything from how to worship to how to cook an egg.  And what does He want us to do?  Love.  Love the people who are different from me.  Love the people who are persecuted.  Love the people who need what I have.  What did Christ do, nailed by His hands and feet to wood and hoisted in shame?  He looked at His killers and He loved.  What are we to do when faced with disagreeing thoughts, when ridiculed and persecuted?  Love.  Listen to this video of Chris Tomlin singing Good, Good Father.  Read and print out the lyrics.  Study.  Learn.  Love. 

So, who am I?  Who are you?  You are loved by your Creator.  It’s who you are.

How Do We Get Out of the Mess We've Made?

All these years later, I still remember the confusion, the fear.  I had no idea what to do or where to start.  It was too much!  I was overwhelmed and it was all my fault.  What happened, you ask?  When was this, you ask?  Well, let me tell you, I was five years old and had been told to clean my room…  You’re laughing, aren’t you?  It does seem funny, even to me.  Until I remember how it felt.  How was I supposed to clean up the mess I had made?  Have you ever been there?  Has the mess ever been so overwhelming that you were defeated before you even started?  How could you ask for help, when it was so private, so shameful that you couldn’t even admit you had made it?  How many of us are thinking of that secret, so embarrassing that no one knows of or suspects?  What do you do when your world up ends and you are left surrounded by that secret, and all its exposure has destroyed?

Your mess might actually be an easy fix.  All you may need is the skills to organize or the cleaning supplies.  It might be as devastating as the earthquake and following tidal wave that hit Japan in 2014.  And the organization and clean up takes years, even decades.  The size really doesn’t matter.  It’s what we do with this mess.  You could be the person everyone else takes their messes to.  You could even be the ‘mess whisperer’.  But all of your skills, your comping mechanisms, and giftings could be useless when facing your own mess.  Seems hopeless, doesn’t it?  And it is.  When we only look at it with human eyes.  Human eyes, you ask?  What other eyes should we use?  What other eyes do we have?  Hindsight?  Foresight?  Intuition?  Experience?  All are possible and all can be great tools, even when cleaning up messes.  But the eyes that I am writing of are not our own eyes.  They are the Eyes of the Holy Spirit.  The Eyes of God.  The Eyes that saw our mess from the beginning.  They Eyes that see the middle, end, and eventual results of our mess.  The Eyes that see our intentions, our hopes, our secret sins, our addictions, along with everything else that went into making our mess.  He is the only One who can make beauty out of it.  He is the only One who can restore the loss and makes what seems impossible happen anyway. 

So where do we go from here?  You’re sitting, surrounded by all the destruction around you.  Helpless.  Hopeless.  Terrified.  Your secret is minutes from being exposed and there is nothing you can do.  Don’t shove everything into the closet or corner.  Trust me the mess only gets bigger.  If you don’t believe me, just watch one of those horders shows.  It gets bigger, messier, and more destructive. Thanks, Lara, you’re thinking.  Describe my life, down to the second, and leave me hanging.  That’s human thinking.  You may feel or have felt deserted by God.  That’s human feeling.  He has never and will never desert you.  What do you do?  What did I do when overwhelmed by the contents of my toy box all over my bedroom floor?  I cried out.  I asked for help.  Cry out.  Ask for help.  Look up.  He’s just waiting for you to ask for help.  Ask forgiveness, He never says no to that.  Read the manual, the Bible.  Go to your spiritual leaders.  If they are true followers of Christ, they will work and walk through this with you.  Come clean with those you love.  If they love you and are true followers of Christ, they too, will work and walk through this with you.  Get counsel.  Get counsel.  Get counsel.  Do whatever it takes to stop the cycle.  Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.  Repent.  And when the enemy of our souls tries to remind you of the mess and your part in it, when he blames you for the fall out.  Stand strong.  Because he will.  Cry out.   Look up.  Reach out.