Who are you?

Have you ever felt that you have spent your life being someone that you are not?

From the moment that we are born, the world tells us the type of people we should be, and the clothes that we should wear, what type (and how many!) properties we should own, the type of friends we should have (social climbers who have the same desire to be successful as we have) and how much money we should have in our bank accounts (no number is high enough).

Trying to go against all of this is like hiking up a mud slide in high heels in a force ten gale. And what is worse is that most of us don't even realise that we are caught up in the mud slide, let alone get ourselves out of it.

I go to the hairdresser and I am assailed by images in glossy magazines of fashionable clothes and accessories, all of which cost a fortune. I have noticed that, when I first pick up one of these magazines, I am shocked at the cost of everything and find myself smiling at the ridiculousness of desperately trying to keep up with the latest fashion. But leave it ten minutes and I am convinced that I need to wear clothes that are "trending" and drink in cool bars and obsess about which retinol I should be using. Ten minutes is all it takes.

I bought into all this nonsense a long time ago, before I became a Christian. That is why I pursued a certain job, even when I realised at university that I really was not that interested in the subject matter. I was caught in a mud slide, up to my neck in living the type of life that would make the world think I was a success, even though it bored me and felt shallow and unsatisfying.

From there I changed careers and for a while everything was wonderful. I had an impressive job working for an impressive organisation; I noticed the way people in the know smiled or drew in their breath when I said what I did for a living and who I worked for. But then I became a Christian.

It wasn't immediate. It took a few years. Then, all of a sudden, my interest in the job that I thought was my dream job, began to wane. By the time I left my job, it felt like I was wading into work every day. And I was: suddenly my eyes were open to the mud slide. At the same time I started to have visions and dreams. I began to wonder if there was a different future ahead of me; one that did not involved business suits.

I am still in the process of letting God take me to a different place. It has been slow and painful. I went on lots of pilgrimages thinking, "This time I will have a vision and I will know exactly where God is leading me!" Alas it was not so. I have had to be weaned off earthly desires; I have had to say goodbye to lots of false and sinful attitudes; I have had to learn which talents God has given me, and accept that there are areas in which I am sadly lacking.

I have been reading Deuteronomy. At the end of the book, Moses told to go up to Mount Nebo to see the promised land that he will never enter. But even though he never entered the promised land, he - a shepherd and a stutterer, who probably never expected to be used by God, led a nation out of Egypt, through the wilderness to the very verge of the promised land. Did he ever look back and wonder what the first 80 years were all about? I don't think so.

Realising who we are in Christ means opening your eyes to who you have been. You may not like it. You may be filled with regret. You may be afraid that it is way too late to start a new life. But that is the devil speaking to you, pulling you back into the mud slide. Paul instead says to you:

"I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:1-14, NIV)

We may be in high heels in a force ten gale, but our prize is the one which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus!