Be yourself. So cheesy and cliché to say, right? You probably feel like you hear someone say this to you every other day, and you hear it so often that you probably don’t even think about what it means at this point.
But seriously, BE YOURSELF. Be proud of the person that God made you to be, and be GLAD that you are you. God did not make you to be like someone else, he made you exactly as you wanted to be. So friends, I encourage and challenge you to stop comparing yourself to others. Stop wishing you looked liked someone else, you acted like someone else, or that you had someone else’s personality. You are not meant to be someone else. You are meant to be Y O U.
God loves you just as you are, my friends. He sees your imperfections and your deepest insecurities that you try so hard to hide. He loves EVERY part of you, and those parts of yourself that you hate? He loves those, too.
Let’s surrender our entire selves to God, friends. Let us be thankful that God made us exactly how he wanted us to be, and praise his name that we are uniquely and wonderfully ourselves. Let us surrender our anxieties to him, and trust that he holds us in the palm of his hand.
Whatever it is we are insecure about – our body, our temper, constant fear/worry, debilitating anxiety, bad habits we continue to engage in even though we know we shouldn’t – let us SURRENDER these things to him. Let us come to the realization that we CAN surrender our bad habits to God and that even though we cannot be perfect, we can and should always strive to be a work in progress by the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And those things about ourselves that we cannot change? Let us finally learn to truly ACCEPT ourselves the way that we are. Let us love to love our bodies, and if we may have a strong personality that shows up in anger let us learn to channel that passion for righteousness. Let us transform our worry and anxiety into worship. Let us crave the presence of God more than we crave food. Let us praise God whether we are an introvert, extrovert, loud, quiet, organized, “go with the flow”, tall, short, pale, tan, black, white, poor, rich – let us praise God no matter WHAT. Let us celebrate who we are, realize that we all have bad habits and imperfections, and I pray that we learn to constantly and continuously surrender our bad habits to the Holy Spirit while learning to love and embrace our imperfections that we cannot change. Let us genuinely LOVE the truest, most genuine version of ourselves.
Psalm 139:13-14: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well”, (NIV).
Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good works that he planned for us long ago”, (NLT).
Ephesians 4:22-24: “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”, (NRSV) (italics mine).
Romans 12:2: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God”, (NKJV).
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