Good morning…
As we walk on the road God calls us to travel, we are encouraged by the verse ending yesterday’s post: And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences (Ephesians 4:3, MSG). Be humble. Be disciplined. Pour yourself out for each other in acts of love, steadily, not in fits and starts. This makes complete sense to me, but the next two phases perk up my inner ears and tickle my curiosity. Over the next week, let’s unpack these two directives: be alert to differences and be quick to mend fences.
Be alert to noticing differences. You mean differences are natural, God? We are designed to live alert, at home in our variety? If we are all following Christ’s footsteps, why do we not all think the same, feel the same, look the same, behave the same? We will turn to the wisdom of David Benner to help answer these crucial questions.
*******
Excerpt from The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery
Being yourself would not make any spiritual sense if your uniqueness were not of immense value to God. But each person is exactly that – of inestimable value to God.
We should never be tempted to think that growth in Christlikeness reduces our uniqueness. While some Christian visions of the spiritual life imply that as we become like Christ we look more and more like each other, such a cultic expectation of loss of individuality has nothing in common with genuine Christian spirituality. Paradoxically, as we become more and more like Christ we become more uniquely our own true self.
…there are many false ways of achieving uniqueness. These all result from attempts to create a self rather than receive the gift of my self-in-Christ. But the uniqueness that comes from being our true self is not a uniqueness of our making. Identity is never simply a creation. It is always a discovery. True identity is always a gift from God.
The desire for uniqueness is a spiritual desire. So too is the longing to be authentic. These are not simply psychological longings, irrelevant to the spiritual journey. Both are the response of spirit to Spirit – the Holy Spirit calling us home to our place and identity in God.
Being most deeply your unique self is something that God desires, because your true self is grounded in Christ. God created your uniqueness and seeks to restore you to that uniqueness in Christ. Finding and living out your true self is fulfilling your destiny.
…There are three broad needs faced by all Christians who seek to put themselves at God’s disposal:
- The need for a transformational knowing of God that comes from meeting God in the depths of our being.
- The need for a transformational knowing of ourselves that comes from discovering how we are known by God.
- The need to find our identity, fulfillment and vocation in our hidden self in Christ.
…true knowing of our self demands that we know our self as known by God (fully seen, unconditionally loved, accepted as is), and true knowing of God demands that we know God not just as an abstraction or as objective data but through our lived experiences. (18-19)
******
My prayer becomes the prayer of David Benner, written in Sydney, Australia on the Fourth Thursday of Lent in 2004: “I pray that what follows will help you to discover the uniqueness of who you were called from eternity to be…to know both yourself and God more deeply, and thus discover the gift of truly being yourself.” (19)
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:16-19, NIV).
…Sue…
