Monday, January 12, 2015

Who Am I?

Don't we identify mostly with our weaknesses?  I think this is much more subtle than we expect.  We constantly take personality tests and all too easily take their results as gospel.  We develop a fixed mindset about ourselves and our personalities.

Am I extroverted?  That must mean I get a pass for shallow thinking, not making time for meditation/prayer, speaking before I think, being careless, etc.  Am I introverted?  That means it's okay for me not to reach out to others, to spend undue time worrying rather than trusting, to focus too much on myself, etc.  Even these are generalizations.  We all have our particular weaknesses--but these weaknesses are not an ingrained part of our nature!

In fact, we are called to overcome weaknesses, especially the most impossible ones.  The hardest things for us to do are the ones we absolutely must do, but this can only happen with God's grace.  He wants to bring us to the point where we are ready to crack, where we can't bear any more, on a natural level, so that He can lift us up with His Spirit.  He says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

That is how we should see ourselves, not as weak, sinful humans crystallized with our least-overcomeable traits, but as completely empty anyway.  We are vessels of grace and what we can or can't do on our own is basically irrelevant.  Even the achievements we are most proud of we would never have done without God.  Neither will we be able to accomplish the hard things that we don't want to do without His help.

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