Who are you?

Lately in my quiet time I have been reading through 1 Samuel along with Praying the Heart of David by Elmer Towns.  Today I read through 1 Samuel 30 and reflected on the life of Saul.  Towns wrote, “Remember, sometimes when things don’t happen on your timetable, God operates on His own timetable.  God is more interested in who you are than what you do.”  You know that verse in Hebrews that says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joint and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart”?  Well, my heart felt the word of God prick it just like getting stabbed with a sword.  It was like the Spirit said, “Wake up!  I’m talking to YOU.”

This past year has certainly been an exercise in finding out who I am, and at times I’ve been disappointed with myself.   There have been times when I have stamped my feet and thrown a temper tantrum like a small child because I didn’t get my way.  There have been times when I have shaken my fists at God in anger because things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to.  There have been times when I closed my heart to God and everyone else around me because I was hurt and wanted others to feel my pain.

I also thought about how living overseas seems to make the worst parts of me bubble up.  Call it culture shock or bad behavior if you will, but it seems to me that God using the experiences of moving/living overseas to stretch me and show me the parts of my heart that I’d rather just sweep under the rug.  The parts of me that I never would have noticed had I continued to live in the pretty, shiny, sanitized world I had created for myself back in America.  (I’m not passing judgment, just reflecting and observing.)  Living overseas has shown me that my heart finds it difficult to be generous to others (especially strangers) and that I really don’t want to love the unlovely (I REALLY don’t like dirt and germs!).  I suppose what it boils down to is that God has used my experiences of living overseas to reveal my flesh, my worldly self, and asked me to kill it…continually.  It does not go willingly, but puts up of fight.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.  For God has done what the law, weakened by flesh, could not do.  By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.                ~Romans 8:1-4

I am who I am because of what Christ has done for me and in me, not because of anything that I have done.  I am thankful for a God who is not content to leave me where he found me, but who pushes me to greater holiness, to be more like him.  I am thankful that God does not condemn me for the unloveliness that still reigns in my flesh, but brings it to the surface to be removed to make me more righteous and pure, like refined gold.  I also need to learn not to condemn myself, but to see myself the way that God sees me, as a wholly loved child of God who is and will be a work in progress until I see him face to face and am made like him.