Who Are You?

Today I want to talk for a minute about a hard subject but one that is of utmost importance.  Who are you?

As I have said before, when God made you he created a very special person and in that person he put wonderful traits, characteristics and abilities.  As adults, most of us don't really understand that God made us a very special creation and we haven't taken time to appreciate the gifts that God placed inside us.  Understand that no matter how hard your life is, you are still an amazing gift presented to this world at your birth and you owe it to yourself and the world to develop you to the fullest.  Also, we are selfish and decide to work on certain areas of our life.  Our favorite gifts should be used every time we get a chance.  But what about that special gift that is inside you that someone else might need?  Have you ever taken the time to work on something inside you that might be a benefit to someone else?  For instance, maybe you really are a funny person.  Do you know what you could do for someone who is having a bad day if you made them laugh?  That doesn't seem like a big thing but it can be really big.

What if Dr. Martin Luther King (who is one of the most amazing gifts ever given to the earth) never had a dream and decided to chase it?  The world is a much better place today thanks to his generosity with the gifts God put inside him.  This may surprise some but I have never written until now (I can hear some of my friends laughing).  I think some of these Opinions have actually helped people.  If so, then how selfish would I be if I didn't try to write?  I wouldn't get blessed and I would miss an opportunity to help someone.

What about you?  Do you like to sing?  Do you like to build things?  What if you ignore your ability to build things and some great invention never gets built?  You have something this world needs locked up inside you right now.

But before you can develop any of these things, you have to know who you are.  That may sound silly but it is a rather profound statement.  Many of the people who read this are young people.  For you, my message is be yourself.  It is very easy to try to be someone you aren't.  We do it to get in the right click or avoid being picked on.  But when you change to be someone you are not, you rob the world of the great gifts that God placed inside you.  Kids, if you start trying to change yourself to be what you think someone else wants you to be, you will end up being miserable. 

Let's say you want a boy or girl to think you are cool so you change the way you dress, act, or talk.  If you do one of two things will happen - 1.  Eventually the real you will come out and then what? or 2. This is the real tragedy - You can end up being someone you aren't.  If you do that, over time you forget who you are and become miserable.  I see adults all the time who don't really know who they are and what they like anymore.  It is really sad to see.  Because what you do is take something so wonderful that God took special care to create and love and you tried to change that person into something different.  Please don't do that - YOU ARE WORTH TOO MUCH.

Adults, we do the same thing.  How often do we do things we really don't like to please other people.  Have you ever pretended you really loved football just to try to impress some guy?  Have you ever pretended you like romantic comedies to impress some girl?  Over time, you can fake so much stuff that you loose touch with the real you.  See we aren't that much different than our kids.  After all we learned how to be that way when we were kids.

For the last several months, I have really taken a hard look at who I am and who I am not.  I saw other people that looked happy and tried to act like them hoping I would be happy too.  Do you know what happened?  I got more down than ever.  It wasn't until I read a book called Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers that I really remembered who God made me to be.  I don't want to give the book away but one of the characters in the book is named Michael.  If I am honest with myself, I am a lot like Michael and want to be more like him in some ways.  Since I read that book, I started getting back to my roots and rediscovering who I really am.  Every day, I am becoming more and more the person I want to be.  What's funny is that every day, I find myself wanting to understand more about God's love for me and how I can show that love to others.  I am also discovering other things about myself.  This blog is one of them.

So I will leave you with this - Who are you?  Do you know?  The world needs the special someone that is you.  Is this a little corny?  Is it still also very true - Yes.

And that's the Opinion of the Minion