Yeah, that's easier said than done.
You'd think it would be easy, right? I mean, seeing as how you ARE yourself and everything. It would really make sense, wouldn't it? But somehow, it's just hard for some people. And when I say some people, I obviously mean me...
Ever thought about why it's so hard, though?
We constantly feel the pull to be more like other people. As we go through life, we are thrust into situations where someone we know is telling a joke and a pretty girl's laughing, or a confident girl is being asked out on the street by three different guys in a night. Normally, we feel something as we stand on the sidelines. If that feeling had words, it would be this.
Not enough.
Why is that not happening to me? Why don't I get attention from those guys or those girls? What do I have to do to get it? Who do I have to be to get it?
Everyone has felt "less than" in their lives. It's one of the most common ways the enemy undermines our original design, the way God intended us to be. You're not as funny as him. You're not as pretty as her. Who you are is not enough.
Eventually, we wear it around like a name tag.
Hello, My name is "Not enough."
Most of us have ended up believing this about ourselves in some form or fashion. And do you know what it does? It forces us into imitation. It causes us to be someone we're not. It makes us forsake our own gifts, our own demeanor, and our own sense of identity in favor of what we have deemed to be "better."
But what if we weren't meant to just be imitators? What if the way we normally are is valuable?
It's time to rip that name tag off.
The truth is, God enjoys the way he made us. He wants us to be the most "ourselves" that we can be. Our gifts are undermined by a need to be someone else, because it stops us from cultivating them. And diversity is necessary in building the Kingdom. Do we really think God is looking at some of us, thinking, "Man, I really wish I had made more of this guy and less of that guy"?
Of course not.
So that must mean he likes the way he made us, doesn't it? It must mean he wants us to be exactly the way he designed us, doesn't it?
Again, it's easier said than done. When I was a Young Life leader, I struggled with being myself. I would look at the ways my fellow leaders would get positive reactions from high school kids and try to imitate them. Because I had only seen it done a certain way, I was afraid to do it my way.
Many personality types are hesitant to do the things nobody else has done before.
But here's what I had to do. Instead of asking myself, "What would my leader have done in this situation," I had to start asking myself, "What would Tim Branch as a leader do in this situation?"
Maybe Tim's leader would have told a funny joke or made up a fun game in this situation, but Tim the leader would probably just have made some small talk. Is that wrong? Is it wrong for me to be unlike any leader I've personally seen before?
Do I need to answer that question?
I began to notice I preferred to do different things than my leaders did. And as I began to act more like "normal me" would, I stopped feeling like such a fake. Also, the high schoolers that were actually like me began to gravitate towards me. And I began to have genuine friendship with them.
When we feel ourselves buckling under the weight of fear and channelling our inner (Insert cool person here), let's take note of it. Did that need to happen? What might I have done if I was brave enough to be myself right there? What's the difference, and what feels like life? It's not worth it to sell your true self for some cheap laughs or attention. Trust me. Been there, done that.
It's definitely a skill to be yourself in this world. It takes guts. But if you won't be yourself, then the world will never see the unique expression of God's heart that you are. And that would be sad. Don't make me sad. Be yourself.
Romans 11:4-5 - "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."
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