on being yourself biblically.

When I turned 22, I made a promise to myself to guiltlessly - joyfully - embrace the parts of me that God created to be good. I love reading and fine art and a handful of other nerdy hobbies that often made me feel like I needed to be someone else to fit in with any group I stepped into. But I know that there are parts of myself that God created for a specific purpose. At the same time, I need to die to myself and be in full submission to Him whose ways are infinitely higher than my own. 

Today I want to briefly tackle a struggle for the Christian woman on this walk of embracing how God has made her, while staying resistant and repentant towards sin.

We tend to swing between two paradigms as it comes to “being yourself”: 

Loving our personality so much that we make it a god 

 OR

Loving our appearance of holiness so much that we are afraid to express godliness through the ways He has wired us intentionally

1. On the Abundantly podcast, I chatted with Chelsey DeMatteis about this self-obsessed culture. While it’s not surprising that the world is attracted to this level of comfort and so-called “empowerment” without the perspective and hope of Christ, Chelsey described the way in which these messages are infiltrating our church hallways and small group discussions as dripping. The messages of the world will drip into our perception of Christianity if we don’t intentionally seek the Kingdom before this world. Or, equally as terrifying, we consider the messages of happiness to be our religion and slap Jesus’ name on it when it feels good. (Listen to the podcast by clicking here.)
   
   These are the messages that are best-selling on Target bookshelves, with enough about being a good person that if we aren’t careful we will be entranced. I know, because this book was on my to-read list because I was hearing RAVES from people I trust, until I knew better.

In her book Untamed, Glennon Doyle writes: “I will not stay, not ever again - in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.” She writes that motherhood is a martyrdom, and that it's a shame that value in any womanhood is if they can successfully disappear and fade into the background. 

Can you imagine a full life lived with this mantra?

Can you imagine if your parents separated the minute that abandoning their desires caused them to jump ship on your family? Can you imagine if every pastor adopted this slogan, never again to visit a suicidal congregant or anxious family member in hospital waiting rooms because he had other plans that night? Can you imagine a life where your best friend doesn’t engage with anything you want or need to get off your chest, because it would mean stepping away from her own ideals for a minute? Can you imagine a relationship with your spouse where they walk out of the room whenever you ask them to shoulder the burden, physically or emotionally? 

The truth is, we’ve seen the ramifications of selfishness in a nation. And it always, always leads to the destruction of family - and then the tapestry of society as a whole unravels.

The book Untamed is not our enemy. These quotes merely serve as examples of the protruding thoughts I’m finding to be common enough and sneakily enough that it is necessary to stare the seeping lies in the face and to not give them any ground in our own lives.

Doyle continues and claims that the world does not need anymore selfless women: “When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world's expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.”

She lets the rest burn?
Lord help us. 

2. On the other hand, those who have been in the church for any span of time know what it’s like to be ridiculed because of tank top measurements or for how many seconds you kiss before marriage or how much TV your kids watch per week.

It’s just another version of worldly metrics, wrapped in more socially acceptable packaging.

But there’s a rub here that isn’t as simple in the mind of a believer as it may be to our previous point about selflessness. Because holiness matters.
We cannot mindlessly continue wearing whatever we want, sleeping with whoever we want, or consuming media without discernment.

We cannot sacrifice holiness to seem more attractive to the world. 

At the same time, this is also true: we cannot sacrifice life on life discipleship for our own preferences.

By this I mean: we get to come alongside others, stand firm on the commands that are clear in Scripture, and ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom when it comes to grey areas of obedience, of “being one’s self”. It’s not helpful to walk around with planks in our eye - it causes us and new comers and seasoned believers to splinter away from the fold. But what would happen if we reverently sought the will of God in our responses AND with joy discipled others?

Jesus Himself repeated again and again to those who preached but didn’t practice “woe to you.” In Matthew 23:27, we read about His response to church leaders obsessed with power and appearances instead of His mercy, justice, and faithfulness: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.”

Woe to us if we chase an appearance over a worshipful response to a holy God.

Woe to us if we hinder another brother’s growth because we aren’t comfortable with the way they worship God with their whole lives. 

Woe to us if we miss the whole bloody point of it all for the sake of our egos.

We’ve only briefly looked at these pendulum swings. But let us walk with real hope, and a few solutions:

There truly can be a new way!

But how do we detangle what we’ve been told since we were girls: “YOU CAN DO ANYTHING”, and still commit our lives to one narrow Way?

How do we separate the voices of influential women leaders of the self-care, self-preserve, self-love, self-worship movement from the voice of the One who made us, chose us, and calls us the Beloved? 

How do we say YES to the good desires He has placed in our heart that honor His name, but might make church-goers squirm a bit? 

1. Repent of your sin regularly.
   
   The way that you entered the Kingdom of God, turning from your sin to belief in God to save you, is the way you remain a healthy participant in the Kingdom. If you repent of your sin on a daily, weekly basis, you will over time know the difference between sin and personality traits that the Lord wants to use for His glory.

2. Quiet the noise.
   
   “People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular - and too lazy to think of anything better. Hurry ruins saints as well as artists…. And so it take heroic humility to be yourself and to be nobody but the man, or the artist, that God intended you to be…”, challenges Thomas Merton. 
   
   When was the last time you were bored?
   When was the last time you dreamt about something that wasn’t necessarily practical? 

   When was the last time you co-created with God instead of striving to just finish the day?
   
   Cut the noise that keeps you from what matters most. Watch less TV or no TV. Put your phone on silent mode in the other room. Go for a walk. Color with a toddler for the pure joy of company, not monetization. These things should not be radical calls to action, but I’m engrained enough in the digital life to know that they can be acts of radical defiance against a distracted, aimless life. Carve time to feed your soul, so that you aren’t responding on auto-pilot that the world has set, but you know the way He has directed you to go.

3. Remember what you loved before.
   
   Imagine that it’s a Saturday afternoon when you’re eight, eleven, thirteen years old. What are you doing? Who did you want to become? Did you love being asked to help, or were you a bossy playmate that was meant to lead initiatives? Were you decorating the scene for a yard sale, because you wanted to mimic what coming into a cozy storefront looked like? Were you behind the scenes, making sure a production went seamlessly - even if you never walked on centerstage, that was the living room floor next to the communal ceramic bowl of popcorn? Were you writing notes in the margins or singing at the top of your lungs?

   
   I have a hunch you know what that is for yourself.

I also have a hunch that the culture that values being *too cool*, where we all have the same hobby - Netflix - subtly fed you the lie that it doesn’t matter.

We weren’t called to be bossy playmates or to forever sing concerts in our parent’s basements. Those desires and gifts and interests that were placed in us from the beginning were made to sprout in our young age, not so that we could just have memories of a happy childhood, but that we could use those things in devotion to Christ and His church.

4. What makes you come alive, serves the body of Christ, and honors the Father’s heart?

There’s a good chance that number 3 helps you answer this question. But if it doesn’t, think about the last time that time passed quickly for you. Were you enjoying an intimate moment with your spouse, playing with children, cooking a meal, or in a collaborative team meeting?

How can you use this passion, this idea, this activity to disciple others? To feed the hungry? To bring laughter and solidarity to the mourning? To provide for the poor? To build up and nourish the spiritually malnourished? 

The Lord has made you with a personality, interests, passions, and experiences that He will use to enrich your life and reach others. By squishing those things, we miss out on abundant life and the friendship of God. By giving them full power and say over our schedules, we make it about us.

I’ll give an example. From the time I could hold a pen and not yet shape scribbles into letters, I was writing in the margins of my Bible. I remember feeling an importance when I held a workbook in my hands. I had great enjoyment in the workbook or novel itself as I grew old enough to read, but there was an innate feeling in me that knew it was about more than that. That I could create tools and chop up sentences and weave them back together again in useful, beautiful ways. In recent years, I’m tampered this gift. No one has the attention span to read blogs anymore. No one cares. And maybe that’s true - but I believe there is something out there that you were made to do, that you experience the friendship of God within when you obey Him in that particular way. 

And isn’t that a good enough reason? I believe He will use the gifts He has given us - but have we reduced our attention towards Him to a transaction rather than a relationship?

“Hurry ruins saints as well as artists,” wrote Merton. If you slowed down long enough, what’s the art that you would uncover, that God wants to give the world through you? What skill could you build, even if it was a messy first draft? 

Being yourself biblically is about walking in how the Trinity has made you with total surrender to God’s purposes, not with the purpose of becoming full of yourself but to become more like Christ.

This world needs self-less women willing to give their whole bodies as living sacrifices (men, of course, too). 

He may call you to do a thousand things you don’t like. But I also know that He is a good Father that gives good gifts and instills them into His kids. You have a gift that you will flourish in when using it for the beauty and restoration of the Kingdom, and not for your own selfish gain. 

What would if you slowed down and remembered the younger you long enough, to see the kind of person you want to be at 95? 

What would happen if you decided to give your life away for the most noble cause - your personality, interests, desires surrendered to the Lord’s purposes? 

What would happen if you weren’t caught up in the world’s narrative anymore, and were completely free to live as Christ’s beloved and were experiencing the friendship of God everyday? 

What if heaven was cheering you on? 

As for me - I’m going to get to work writing. I know that God has more for me here. I know that He also has gifts for me in addition to writing, but I know this is the best place for me to be along every step of the way - flourishing in the way He made me, and writing about the ways He is redeeming all things - even my love for Matisse-like brush strokes, the taste of sea salt on chocolate, and the turn of a brand new page.