Be True To Who You Are in Christ
Do not follow your dreams... Do not march to the beat of your own drummer... do not be true to yourself. This is opposite of what the world tells us.
The world tells us that our identity is to be found in what we desire. You are, what you feel, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. – No right, no wrong, no rules for me, I’m free. Let it go. Let it go.
The Bible tells us, on the other hand, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death - Proverbs 14:12.
In Adam’s fall, we all sinned, and so we’re not the people that we ought to be. But, if you’ve been made new, and the old person is gone you’ve been brought to newness of life in Jesus Christ, and actually, the New Testament does tell you that you should be yourself.
Listen to the lyrics of this song by Rich Mullins:
“They said, Boy, you must follow your heart. But my heart just led me into my chest. They said follow your nose. But the direction changed every time I went and turned my head. And they said Boy, you just follow your dreams. But my dreams were only misty notions, but the Father of hearts and the maker of noses and the giver of dreams, He’s the one I have chosen, and I will follow him.”
If you are truly born again, and belong to Christ, then one of the chief ethical motivations in all the New Testament is very simply: be who you are. You should be true to yourself, but not your old self. You should be true to yourself if you have died to your old self, and your new self has now been raised with Christ and is now seated with Him in the heavenly places. The real you is worth letting out if the old you is dead to sin, and the real you is alive to Christ.
The world says, “You are what you feel.” The world says, “You must find yourself, be true to yourself, and above all, express yourself.” Jesus points us in a different direction and gives us a much better way to live. “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life will lose it. Whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
The motivation for this was from a 2022 commencement address at Geneva College by Dr. Kevin DeYoung, a reformed theologian and author and graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
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