A Life That Is True To You
Finding Your Authenticity & Understanding It's Importance.
Introduction
In my last letter to you I opened up about my experience with giving up on social media for a particular period of time. During the two years I was inactive on social media, I was dealing with issues deeper than showcasing my day to day life online. What I didn’t realise was that the issues I went through served as the foundation behind everything I began to post on my social media a few years later. The experience of going through a tough time was not exclusive to me, but the purpose behind what that experience was meant to do in my life was necessary and unique to who I am today. The instruction from God to forego posting on social media was needed for me to develop a deeper understanding of my identity in him. This was partially due to the ability I developed to see value in pain for the benefit of other people. Prior to this instruction, my social media was for my benefit and my benefit alone. It was for me to look good, feel good, and show people a part of my life that attracted nothing but fleeting compliments and unnecessary comparison. Not once did I look at it as an avenue to change peoples lives but this has become my perspective now that my life has been changed. These days I am becoming less focused on what I am showing and increasingly focused on who I am becoming. The toughest moments in your life can lead you to understanding your God given identity and your identity will become a state of being that does all the showing and speaking from a place of true authenticity. Your uniqueness is what sets you apart and it is also what protects you from the threat of comparison. Therefore my prayer is that this letter will help you develop a deeper understanding of these three points:
How difficult experiences don’t just happen to you, they happen for you.
How these experiences point you towards your uniqueness.
How authentic living protects you from the threat of comparison.
It’s Happening For You
A difficult experience is worth a lot more than an attribution to misfortune. In many cases in life, difficult experiences are self-inflicted. However, some experiences have been orchestrated by God to point you into the path of transformation. Therefore when it comes to the will of God, the good, the bad and the ugly can all be repurposed for good (Romans 8:28). When a bad thing happens to you, you can process it in one of two ways.
The first method of processing communicates the source of your problems as misfortune and being unlucky. I say this because if you believe God never had a part to play in your “misfortune” then you wouldn’t believe he has a part to play in your healing or recovery. This line of thinking will always leave you in a state of misery and your antidote to healing will be searched for outside of God. It is hard to fathom the idea of a good God letting a bad thing happen to you so your mind resorts to the idea of misfortune.
The second method of processing communicates the source of your problem as a divine lesson designed to help you grow. If you are in a season where you are struggling in various ways, there is an opportunity to change your paradigm to look at what the experience could be teaching you as opposed to simply dwelling on how it is making you feel. Divine lessons are disruptive and uncomfortable, but so is misfortune. The difference is that a divine lesson provides a solution, points you towards your divine identity and towards God as your sole survival mechanism. However, misfortune points you towards an identity as a victim and the things that make you feel better become your survival mechanisms. The reality is that you can view your life through the lens of both paradigms; but only one is ultimately true.
Being Unique In Your Misery is when you believe that the life disruption you are facing is exclusive to you. When a problem is seen as exclusive it becomes magnified in your eyes and as you magnify the problem you subsequently minimise the solution. This is the root of a victim's mentality and you constantly tell yourself: “Bad things are always happening to me!”
Being Unique In Your Soul is when you understand that a life disruption could be happening for you in a way that is exclusive to you. This repurposes the position of exclusivity from your circumstance to your soul. Your soul is where the lessons are learnt and where your life’s purpose is activated.
God speaks to the uniqueness of your identity in him. He doesn’t speak to “uniqueness” of hard times that are really not exclusive to anyone. The hard times don’t define your uniqueness, the hard times point you towards it. Therefore there is only one paradigm that is worth believing as true - understanding that it is happening for you! I thought I was going through a mental crisis when I went on my social media hiatus. Little did I know that my mental crisis in God’s eyes occurred when I was visible online and the world thought I was normal. My paradigm didn’t change until I considered the possibility of my circumstance being a divine composition by God for my good as opposed to a random coincidence that I could latch onto in order to weaponise an identity in victimhood.
Experiences Pointing You Towards Your Authenticity
I want you to think about everything you are going through in your life at this very moment in time. Take a moment to ask God to show you how your authenticity can be revealed through that experience. The problem with our modern day society is that it is made up of too many fictional characters. Everyone wants to be authentic in their pain but no one wants to reveal the authenticity of their souls. Understand that your pain is not needed to define you but rather it’s intended to reveal who you really are. Living from your authenticity is developed through self-awareness and being self aware is learned through the paradigm in which you view your life experiences.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle
This famous quote by the ancient Greek philosopher partially sums this up through the idea of self-awareness being foundational to wisdom. This alludes to the fact that you become self aware through the lens in which you view your life experiences. However the Bible takes a deeper approach in highlighting the source of your identity. In order to know yourself, you must know the orchestrator of your being. This is the difference between viewing your life experiences through the lens of divine purpose as opposed to earthy coincidences. Earthy coincidences can leave room for a misguided identity because there is no overriding faith in the possibility of all things truly working together for your good. But it is only once you have been called according to his purpose that you can truly believe it (Romans 8:28). This looks like living in and for God’s will.
Here’s the how:
Your life experiences, especially the painful ones, make you sensitive to the call.
It is from the call that you get to build a relationship with God and understand his goodness and faithfulness.
Your life experiences will continue to change and so will your identity without the knowledge of how God uses your experiences to teach you.
Reverence toward the unique creator that made you in his image and likeness is what should serve as the foundation beneath the foundation of self awareness (as described by Aristotle)
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: But fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs: 1:7
According to the Bible, knowledge actually starts with reverence for God and it is through this paradigm that makes it truly possible to understand yourself in the eyes of who God has called you to be. So anytime you find yourself in a difficult position out of your control, consider the idea that a loving God might be trying to teach you something about yourself.
A Life That Is True To You
Ultimately, I have come to understand that my authenticity was found in what I learnt from my experiences. This looked like becoming a person less concerned about what people expected of me to a person focused on who I needed to be in order to overcome the disruptions in my life. In hindsight I grew to realise that I compared myself with a social standard that had nothing to do with my God given identity. But a deeper understanding of my identity was revealed through the pain and discomfort. Therefore, I encourage you to consider the fact that every time you run away from the storm you are possibly running away from a deeper understanding of your identity. Furthermore, every time you identify with the pain of the storm you are disregarding your authenticity because the storms are common to everyone. Your race is found in what you grow through not what you go through and it is God who helps you grow.
Lastly, I want you to study this verse through the understanding of your purpose, your individuality, and God’s sovereignty.
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!
Psalm 139:13-17
Here are my takeaways - please feel free to share yours:
God is an intelligent designer and he wants you to grow in the understanding of his divine intelligence.
He knows everything you will go through - every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
This means that your life disruptions aren’t mere coincidences. They are opportunities for God to be glorified.
His thoughts about you are precious and unique to your individuality.
Thank you for reading and have a great day!
So true. This letter is specifically addressing the situations that he orchestrates and his will as a whole. However he still moves in the messes we create because of his grace and mercy... As a matter of fact the is the only way out of a self inflicted mess; it is just hard to accept especially in the moment.
My struggle is that it’s easy to believe that God has use situations that ‘He’ orchestrated for my good. But it’s harder for me to believe He would move in the messes of my own making because my hardship is simply a result of cause & effect.
Has anyone ever struggled with thinking this way? And how did you navigate it?