My divorce was finally official. It was 3 am, scotch still on my breath, weed still in my chest, and someone I barely knew still asleep in my bed. I hated myself. The shame I had in that moment was the tipping point. This isn’t who I wanted to be. Why was I doing these things? It had taken 5 years of making choices based on emotion and self-interest to get me to this dark place. A place of self. A place of self hatred. A place where the feelings of inadequacy, rejection, failure, and loneliness trumped everything. But instead of looking to Christ’s completed work on the cross I tried to rescue myself. The harder I tried to fix myself the more shame, frustration, and self-hatred flooded the inner most parts of me. It was a vicious spiral of death. To someone on the outside, I was a ‘good’ guy, someone that was generally happy, positive, and full of life. But inside I was at war with myself; constantly searching for a version of myself that I could love but only finding a broken shell of a man who I despised. Who was I?
As I set off on this transformational journey I had three major personal goals: the first was to find out who I was. The second was to discover what God wanted me to do with my life. The third was to grow closer and more dependent upon Him. Over the last 7 months God has helped me grow in each one of these areas. The awesome part is, that all three are connected. And the more I learn about God and the closer He brings me in relationship with Him, the more I learn about the plans He has for me and who I am.
Our identity forms the most basic constructs of how we see the world and how we see ourselves helping to make a difference in that world. Without understanding who I am as a person, how can I start making a meaningful impact or truly living the life God has blessed me with? Neil Anderson, wrote in his book, “Victory Over The Darkness” that, “people can’t consistently behave in ways that are inconsistent with the way they perceive themselves. Our belief about ourself and our purpose in life determine what we do, it isn’t what we do that shapes our purpose and our identity”. What I’ve been learning on this journey is that my identity doesn’t come from me or my achievements, my identity comes from Christ and the work He did on the cross.
As I started month 1 of the World Race in Ecuador and I was a mess on the inside. God used this month to show me who I truly was…a sinner. This is critical to understand because it is the reason the work of Christ is so important and it is that same work that provides the foundation for everything that follows. I am a sinner and no matter how hard I try, I am never going to be able to earn the goodness and acceptance of God. I am never going to be able to change myself into a ‘good’ man. This was an entry in my journal around this time, “I set out on the World Race to try and find out who I was. To discover the man I have been created to be. I thought I’d all of a sudden wake up and see this new man in the mirror one morning. The truth is that God put all the right man inside me the day I let His Son into my heart. What I have realized is that to get to that man, I have to submit my life to Him. I need to let Him chip away my rough spots, let Him soften my heart, and let His light shine through me. The more I yield to Him and let Him work in me, the more of the man I’m meant to be comes through as Jesus takes over my heart.” I needed to learn that is me that does the work, it is the God Head does all the work, I just need to look to Him.
By the end of Ecuador, God had shown me three critical parts of who I am, the first was that I am a sinner and I needed to honestly and truly acknowledge that. I needed to acknowledge the wonderful grace He has given me through the work of the Christ on the cross and even though I am a sinner, I am accepted into His family because of Christ’s sacrifice. The second was that I am called to be a lover. I learned that love is not an emotion but a choice and that even when I do not feel like loving someone, God calls us to love them anyway. The third piece was that I am a forgiver. I spent a lot of time that month working through forgiveness for myself and other people in my life, including Elizabeth, my ex-wife.
Month 2, Peru. I continued to grow in love and forgiveness. I began to understand what it meant to rest in the grace of God. As He reveled more and more areas of my life where I was trying to earn my way into His grace, the more He showed me that I was simply accepted. This has brought me a lot of freedom. I didn’t need to earn anything. I was always in a constant state of anxiety and disappointed because I kept relying on myself to make these changes and failing. R. Newell said it best, “To be disappointed with yourself is to have believed in yourself”. I can rest in God’s love and grace. I can rest in the fact that I am His son. I can rest in the fact that Christ has planted the good seed in me and that it is the God Head who will bring that seed to maturity.
During this time He also started confirming some dreams I had about my career and He also began giving me some ideas on how I could have a meaningful impact on this world. He also began to show me the extent of my issues with achievement and seeking the approval of those around me. I had a very large fear of man and as a result I was a people pleaser. It was draining. I wanted to rest, I wanted to stop worrying about what people thought. God was setting the stage for the biggest “Aaaa Haaa” moment of my life.
