It seems like an easy enough question right? One of those questions we ask kids and they respond with answers like a doctor or a ballerina. But as we get older the question starts to become something different. Not just what do you want to be, but WHO do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to be known as?
So we read self-help books and listen to inspirational speakers to help us achieve our ideal idea of ourselves. The thing is other people can’t help us and there isn’t an easy 5 step program to becoming who we want to be. All it comes down to is a choice. A choice we have to make daily.
Last month we were asked to write out who we want to be. What kind of person we want to be known as. Since being on the Race my list has gotten a lot longer. Here are just a few of mine:
I want to be a women who ferociously seeks the Lord
I want to be humble in words, deeds and thoughts
I want to be trusted with little and with much
I want to live with an open hand
I want to be bold and confident in my words
So I have a list, now what? Well, for a long time that’s all that it would be for me, a list. A list of things that I hope to one day become, sometime when I am older and have had more life experience. I would keep making excuses for not becoming the person I want to be and the person God has created me to be. God was shaping me, but I wasn’t taking an active role in my life.
I was doing the same thing on the Race. For a long time I was wondering why I wasn’t changing. Why the Race wasn’t changing me. Then I got a giant slap in the face when I realized that the Race couldn’t change me. It creates opportunities for change to happen but it’s not automatic. I have to actively fight for the change.
And that is the same no matter where I am. When I go home I will still have to fight to grow and keep the changes.
So if you want to be a person who responds with love instead of anger, choose to be that person. God wants that for you too. But He wants you to want it enough to fight for it.
Maybe you want to be a person who listens more and talks less. Choose to be that person. That may mean you won’t be the center of the conversation all the time. But you will learn to listen not only to what others are saying, but also to what God is saying.
Learning a new way of doing things and dropping old habits is hard. It isn’t something that changes over night. But the awesome thing about God is that his mercies are new everyday. He doesn’t expect us to be perfect. But He delights in seeing us grow towards him.
So, who do you want to be? It’s never to early or to late to start fighting to be the person God has made you to be.
