First Baptist Church of Herndon

Who do you think you are?

Linda Soller | Feb 10, 2014

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Are you the life of the party or a homebody? Are you kind, tolerant, assertive, intelligent, and funny, a leader, or a follower? Are you a trendsetter, or a jock, or an earth child? Who do you think you are?

When we’re kids we spend a lot of time thinking about ourselves, and who we want to be. We spend a fair amount of time trying to be something we’re not. Did you ever stand in front of a mirror and try to see yourself as a rock star or maybe a fashion model? Maybe you ran around in your yard pretending to be a star athlete. It’s very likely you saw yourself as nothing special, certainly not as special as those famous people you watched on TV or listened to on the radio. There’s also a very good chance that you thought a lot about your image. You probably wanted to be seen a certain way by others. All the while your parents are telling you how special you are and you can be anything. When we grow up and reality hits, some of us have a hard time facing the truth.

Do you do the same thing when it comes to your faith? Do you spend time trying to be what you observe in others? Maybe you want to appear to be generous, thoughtful, wise, or devoted. Maybe you want to have people see you in Christian settings, like church, so they will assume you are a faithful person.  Maybe you go to a certain church because it is big and you can hide in the crowd or it is small and you can be important. Maybe you pass judgment on certain denominations without knowing the people inside the building. After all it’s the people that make God’s church, not a building or a name. The big difference is that as a child you might fool your friends or even fool yourself for a while, but when it comes to your faith you can’t fool God. To God it’s who you are on the inside that really makes a difference. He’s able to work with whatever the outside happens to be. 

God asks us to follow him, to be kind, and to strive to be the best of ourselves, which may not be the same as the best in others. We are all different for a reason. He wants us to share, to pray, and to love one another. He wants us to look beyond the image and into the heart of the people around us. God doesn’t ask us to be famous, to dress fancier, to be the smartest, but if we are one or all of those things he loves us still. He asks us to be ourselves, which makes us unique and special to him. I think God is happy when we look in a mirror and see a person that knows they are loved by him. God, unlike so many people in our lives, has endless patience, boundless forgiveness, and unlimited vision of the possibilities in each of us. He’s fine with us doing our best, which means he loves us through our failures, and we all have failures.

But there is a catch! God also knows when are trying to make others think we are something we’re not.  He’s not fooled by our actions, or impressed by the material things that might impress people we encounter. This shouldn’t scare us, it should make us all take a deep breath, a sigh of relief. Now we can rest easy for we know even without reaching all of our dreams, we have God’s love. There’s no need to put on an act, only a need to take action. God knows who’ve we been and who we can become. This brings us back to you; who do you think you are?

Happy Valentine’s Day!  :o)    Linda