The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery (The Spiritual Journey, #2)

by David G. Benner

Pettiness is one of its most stable characteristics. The things that bother us most about others—our pet peeves—also point toward falsity in our own self. The speck that bothers me in the life of someone else is almost always the log in my own eye (Matthew 7:3).

It’s the thing we pride ourselves of having that annoys us the most about others. It’s the false sense of self we’ve created that causes us to look down on others.

Jesus knew who he was in God. He could therefore resist temptations to live out of a false center based on power, prestige or possessions.

Every moment of every day of our life God wanders in our inner garden, seeking our companionship. The reason God can’t find us is that we are hiding in the bushes of our false self. God’s call to us is gentle and persistent: “Where are you? Why are you hiding?”

The more we identify with our psychologically and socially constructed self, the more deeply we hide from God, ourselves and others. But because of the illusory nature of the false self, most of the time we are not aware that we are hiding. Coming out of hiding requires that we embrace the vulnerabilities that first sent us scurrying for cover.

First, ask God to help you see what makes you feel most vulnerable and most like running for cover.

Second, prayerfully reflect on the image of your self to which you are most attached. Consider how you like to think about yourself, what you are most proud of about yourself. Ask God to help you see the ways you use these things to defend against feelings of vulnerability. And then ask God to prepare you to trust enough to let go of these fig leaves of your personal style.

is not something you need to construct through a process of self-improvement or deconstruct by means of psychological analysis. It is not an object to be grasped. Nor is it an archetype to be actualized.

It is not even some inner, hidden part of you. Rather, it is your total self as you were created by God and as you are being redeemed in Christ. It is the image of God that you are—the unique face of God that has been set aside from eternity for you.

The clarity of thought and action that would later characterize Jesus’ public ministry came from his years of preparation in solitude and anonymity. The core of that preparation was meeting God in the secret place of his inner self. It was through meeting God in places of solitude that Jesus discovered his identity and grew in intimacy with God.

Jesus gave glory to God by being himself—deeply, truly, consistently. Thomas Merton says that “to be a saint means to be myself.”3 Sanctity is finding our hidden and true self in Christ and living out the life that flows from this self in surrender to the loving will and presence of our heavenly Father.

By becoming fully human, Jesus leads us to the fulfillment of our humanity. By being fully God, he leads us to God.

Calling brings freedom and fulfillment because it orients us toward something bigger than self.

Our call, like Jesus’ call, is to live out our life in truth and in dependence on the loving will of the Father. As was the case for Jesus, the discernment of this call must always involve wrestling with God, our self and the devil in the solitude of our private wilderness.

However, while doing will always be involved, vocation is much more than our occupation. It is the face of Christ we are called from eternity to show to the world. It is who we are called to be.

To be, not just to do. It’s who we are. It rises out of us.

My temperament, my personality, my abilities, and my interests and passions all say something about who I was called to be, not simply who I am. If I really believe that I was created by God and invited to find my place in his kingdom, I have to take seriously what God had already revealed about who I am.

While the first revelation of our calling is in the givens of our being, it is important to note that God’s will for us does not always grow naturally out of our wishes.

But his call is always absolutely congruent with our destiny, our truest self, our identity and the shape of our being.

We are all called to live the truth of our uniqueness. Divine creativity has never involved a production assembly line. The results of God’s creative acts are never less than original and truly unique works of art. You and I are no exception.

God meets us in our individuality because God wants to fulfill that individuality. God wants us to follow and serve in and through that individuality. God doesn’t seek to annihilate our uniqueness as we follow Christ. Rather, Christ-following leads us to our truest self.

I was afraid to be unique and different. Different meant weird to me and people don’t like weird. People like sameness because it makes them feel comfortable. Or so it seems. Maybe people are really looking for uniqueness so they can feel safe enough to be themselves too.

Death always precedes new life.

Our self-in-Christ is a self that fits perfectly because it is completely us. It is a self that allows us to be free of all anxiety regarding how we should be and who we are. And it allows us to be absolutely our self—unique not by virtue of our strivings for individuality but profoundly original simply because that is who and what we are.

Our calling is to become that self and then to serve God and our fellow human beings in the particular ways that will represent the fulfillment of that self. Our identity is not simply a possession. It is a calling.

It is not just becoming like Christ but actualizing the Christ who is in us. It is a journey toward union with God. And

Our persona is how we want others to see us. Our identity is how we see and understand our self.

God’s intended home is our heart, and it is meeting God in the depths of our soul that transforms us from the inside out. This is why the self is so important in the Christian transformational journey. It must be encountered, not bypassed. It must be embraced and deeply known if it is to be transformed.

This is so good!