Do you look at yourself as a self-made man or woman? Are you working hard to make yourself into the person you have been told you should be? Or are you working to make yourself to be like someone you have seen and desire to model yourself after?
Some of us strive diligently to make something of ourselves. We may have been encouraged, or even pushed, by our parents into a certain profession and had high expectations put on us. Others may have seen someone in their lives they admire and strive to be like them.
Based on my observances, we too often model ourselves on someone we see on television or in the movies. We fail to realize, first of all, that they are actors playing a part. Second, they get multiple takes or chances to get it right for the screen. Even those in reality shows don’t have all their mistakes shown. We hold these people in high esteem rather than the real person in our midst.
On the other hand, we hear people say, “Just be yourself.” Often, they mean to say and do whatever you want. That is a recipe for disaster as well. At least, that meaning of it is. But we are to be ourselves and there is a way to do so that is highly effective.
When we are our authentic selves, the person God has made us to be, truly seeking to follow his plan for our lives, we live the abundant life. That requires us to recognize him as our Father and as the potter. It requires us to be pliable and moldable like clay. It requires us to continually go to him in prayer, asking how he wants us to act, where he wants us to go, what he wants us to do, and being willing to be the person he is molding us into. No two of us are exactly the same. We are to be who we were made to be.
I pray we all seek to be our authentic selves. I pray we seek God’s direction for our lives. I pray each one of us are willing to be clay in the hands of the master poster—our Father in heaven. Be yourself. Be who God intended you to be. Be clay in his hands. Be willing to follow him.
Isaiah 64:8
Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Marty Pressey 