We surely cannot rely on our own perspective of who we think we are to determine the reality and truth of who God made us to be.
Although I am not specifically fond of people referring to P&B as being a blog, for what it's worth, to me at least it is not. Although there are technicalities in the differences, I will refrain from getting into that. This specific article however may feel a little more “bloggy” than I would like, but I just cannot help write about how incredible the launch of P&B has been and how exciting the hopes of what it could become are.
To say it in the least of ways, I could not have accomplished merely anything close to what you see here without the help and support of those God placed around me during the development and launch of P&B.
What an amazing feeling to be believed in.
To have the creator of the universe fathering us and backing us up as we follow Him into the many adventures he takes us into.
The feeling it gives to have those around you who you love and love you in return is completely fulfilling. They support and encourage you relentlessly until you finally begin believing what they had been saying all along because of the potential they had seen all along in you.
It almost somehow draws out the potential as if they are calling out what could be, turning the potential into a tangible reality for you now. It becomes something from what seemed to you to be nothing, and it is activated by God encouraging what you are called to do.
He does that by often times placing around you those who will in fact encourage, challenge, and draw out the potential in you.
Again, what an incredible feeling it is to be believed in, to have those around you who see you for who you really are rather than getting hung up on your weaknesses or short comings; but evermore so, we have to make sure God is our number one source of whom we let have the final words over who we are and what potentials we indeed carry within us.
We can be so damagingly critical to ourselves until we have destroyed the truth of who we are meant to become because we are only seeing who we are right now.
We are like young trees in certain areas of our lives. Some of those areas have grown from a seed into a sapling coming through the ground of many decisions made over time. If we constantly become hung up on seeing the young stages we are in right now, how discouraging would it be compared to knowing how much more we still need to grow?
It is just as important to see where we are as much as where we are headed and who we are becoming. Honestly, what scares me more times than not is the man I am becoming rather than the man I am right now. If I want to change the man I am becoming, it starts with who I am now. And in order to take the first steps, I have to accept where I am right now even if I don’t like being a “sapling” in a specific area of my life.
We surely cannot rely on our own perspective of who we think we are to determine the reality and truth of who God made us to be.
That is for Him alone to have mapped out and determined.
Proverbs 16:9 says it beautifully how much God is divinely the head over our lives with each decision and each step. How more so being His children does He father us beyond what we even know?
We not only need others to point out truths, good and bad, but most importantly we must be told by God alone who we are as a man.
If not, we will always be at the mercy of our merciless depiction of ourselves and who we think we are.
We must get that image from God as he fathers us specifically in this way, the way of our identity.
I have never seen a young boy more secure and confident in his own skin than when he has a loving father next to him who has poured into him and his identity in which surpasses insecurities, fears, and doubting himself.
What a beautiful picture a father and son portrays as it is a mere reflection of who God is to us.
What a beautiful strength we can derive from finding such security and hope for the man that we will become, starting now in finding ourselves in who we truly are in Him.
What a life-giving thing to be believed in.
(Photo: the last one is of me and my dad
towards the end of a fly fishing trip)
