Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Frantic introspection has defined my life lately.

Am I ready for this?
How am I going to do any of this?
Wait, what's important to me? Who even am I?

Much like His response to Job's suffering, God has not exactly answered my question. 
He's graciously begun pointing out my flaws. Insecurities. Imperfections.
Exactly what I needed when I'm wondering whether I'm equipped to share the gospel and live in community.

God has shown me recently that I don't know how to be. 
I know how to seem.

To seem happy.
To seem like I've got things figured out.
To seem funny.
 
Christian.
Sinner.
Friend.
Fan.
Okay.
Broken.
Fearless.
Complete.
 
To seem whatever the person in front of me needs me to be.

I've lived 23 years thinking that it was my responsibility to whomever I was interacting with to be what they wanted me to be; to act the way they needed me to act; to say what they needed me to say.

I've essentially forbidden myself the question
What do you think about this?

and replaced it with
What does this person in front of me think about this?
 

Only recently have I discovered that it is not selfish or sinful to have my own opinion. I've stood on adopted soapboxes for so long that I never formed my own identity.
 
Authenticity comes from knowing who you are.
Knowing who you are comes from knowing whose you are.
Whose you are depends on what you give yourself to.

And it is possible to give yourself to nothing.
Nothing of substance.

You may give yourself to other people
to be all things to all people
or to become anything to anyone
and in doing so
you may become nothing
while everyone around you becomes the something you wanted to be
while your opportunity to become the something you were created to be
has passed you by
in your attempt to be anything.
 

People-pleasing — being who others want you to be — has no place in the Kingdom of God (gal 1:10). He created a people fraught with individuality. When I seek to be (read: seem) what I think you want me to be, I do no good for anyone. I live a lie that is constructed on a foundation of my inept mind-reading skills. When I seek to be who I was created to be I do much good for everyone, because it is the will of God that we become wholly who He made us.

You deserve my honesty. You deserve my opinion. You deserve to hear my thoughts, not someone else's. You are worth more than my insecurity and lies. 

Authenticity is very obviously becoming a theme of the World Race for me.

What's beautiful about this blog and God's indirect, seemingly insufficient answers to my questions, though, is that this is 100% real. Honest. My heart. What I think. Not something I heard somewhere. 

That's at least a step in the right direction.

Forgive me for seeming.
Empower me to being.
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