How to Become Who You Really Want to Be

Ever wished for a magical solution that could take you as you are today and transform you instantaneously into the person you really want to be? Perhaps you are cautiously optimistic that your life could be different, but the day-to-day choices leave you discouraged, weary, and perhaps a bit resentful. We’ve been talking about missional living and the ripple effect, but maybe you’re hung up on whether what is rippling out from you would do anybody else any good.

So let’s talk about it today. You and I. Here in this safe place.

How do you become who you really want to be?

How do you blaze a new trail when the rut you are in has been growing ever deeper for so long?

Where do you start when the changes you want to see in your life tower high and you feel incredibly small?

How can you, ordinary you in your quite ordinary life, join an extraordinary God on His life mission?

Can even your life mirror the glory of God, point others to Him, and display Him in the ripples you create?

Where the ripples begin

Each ripple in the water has a starting point. So too does what ripples out beyond us have a starting point. What moves beyond us always begins within us.

Who we are on the inside affects everything about the impact we have on those around us.

So where we begin is here: at the starting point deep within.

Because without God at the center, there is nothing to surround. Without Him within, we will always be without—without life, without hope, without grace to offer and love to lavish.

But the good news—the grace-news—is that we don’t have to change what’s inside us. We do what is ours to do—surrender—and this gives God access to do what is His to do—transform us.

This morning I opened to Romans 5 in my little blue copy of The Passion Translation read this: “Our faith in Jesus transfers God’s righteousness to us and he now declares us flawless in his eyes” (v. 1). Notice how we don’t clean up our lives in order to become flawless—perfect—in God’s eyes. We simply believe that Jesus is good and true and here and the best One to hold the reins of our lives. And He does the work.

The freeing and sometimes forgotten truth is that you become who you really want to be when you stop being the driver and place the reins back in His hands.

There is an initial decision, and there is a daily surrender.

More of You, my Lord. Less of me, and more of You!

If we want God to be in what ripples out from our lives, we have to bury ourselves in Him. We have to choose Him again and over again.

And as we surrender, over and again, He fills our within, and as we are held we are also healed.

To ripple life, we must choose life—choose Him.

To become who we really want to be, we must let God be all He longs to be inside us.

When your faith becomes stale

I love the sound of moving water. It’s like the gentle, effortless laugh of God Himself—the sound of water moving merrily along, creating currents and divets and bubbling as it babbles.

When water ripples, there is intrinsically movement. Where there is life, there is growth, and movement in the right direction is an apt description of growth.

We run into a conundrum when that faith that once created ripples has grown stale.

When we stop pursuing Him, moving towards Him, we begin to grow stagnant. The Christian life feels boring, restrictive, or irrelevant to our lives.

The ripples we offshoot are no longer clear, life-giving water overflowing from the Giver of Life.

We can’t give away what we don’t ourselves hold as good and true. We can’t fill our ripples with anything but what grows deep within.

Today, if your faith is merely a motion you go through but you know something is missing—if you aren’t who you really want to be—if it feels there is no life within you to flow out beyond you—take heart in this: you can always have more.

God does not limit the amount of Himself that He will give us. As the line of one of my favorite Bethel songs says of God, “You don’t give Your heart in pieces / You don’t hide Yourself to tease us.”

Sometimes we have nothing to give because we don’t see how God wants to fill us with limitless measure.

We don’t see Him in our ripples because we’ve stopped letting Him in.

If this is you today, would you join me in this prayer:

Lord, something has been missing, and it’s been missing for a long time. I still love You—You know I do—but the fire has gone out in my heart. I feel like I am just going through the motions. And I want something to change. I want to want You again.

A reflection of within

When we don’t like what we are reflecting, we need to look within. When we aren’t not yet who we really want to be, we move forward by leaning on the One we want to replicate. We walk this road—Him and us—savoring all He has to teach, showing Him all our broken pieces that need His healing gaze, surrendering the walls behind which we’re tempted to hide.

We accept His tender, knowing affection that sees us through and loves us still the same.

And then we let it ripple—the stories of our lives as we live learning to look like Him, the learnings and the failings and the new beginnings and the grace covering it all.

There is no magic pill, no 3-step solution—but there is Him, and that is Who we truly need. More of Him. Always, always more of Him.

Because that’s how we become who we really want to be: we invite Him in.

As Elizabeth Elliot wisely said: “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” 

The life you want to live, the person you want to be—it’s not you in someone else’s shoes. It’s God in you.

Do you need a friend to walk this out with you?

If you want someone to walk alongside you as you practice letting God have His way deep inside you, would you let me do that for you? I’ve compiled 30 short devotions that will help you lean into God and let what He is doing inside you ripple out beyond you into your neighborhood. If you haven’t read Cultivating a Missional Life yet, would you commit to just a few minutes a day for one month? Together we will create new rhythms that will be God-infused and mission-minded so you can discover how God can fill a life, and then fill the ripples.

I also encourage you to consider reading Cultivating a Missional Life with a friend. There are questions included for each section of the devotional that you can use for self-reflection, conversation with a friend, or a group discussion.

For a chance to win TWO FREE paperbacks of the devotional—one for you and one for a friend—click below to enter the giveaway!

Let’s close with a final prayer.

Jesus, You see every place inside me that feels raw or numb or torn. You see the reasons why I’ve held back—held You back. And today I surrender my hurts and my questions, my what if’s and what’s next’s, my expectations and my complacency. Draw me near, Lord. I want eyes that long to see You, ears that hang on Your every word, and a heart that is alive on the inside. Next to You is where I choose to be. In Your precious and holy name, Jesus, I pray. Amen.

P.S. Did you know The Uncommon Normal is also a podcast? Tune in on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, or Spotify.

Change your actual life in less than 5 minutes per day!

You can change your actual life in less than 5 minutes a day because baby steps truly can change the trajectory of your life. If you want 2021 to be the year you actually start living on mission in your neighborhood, this little book (available as a paperback and on Kindle) will help you get there. Each of the 30-day devotions takes but a few minutes to read, but they will lead to lasting life change.

If you’d like to check out Part 1 of the devotional FREE and also gain access to the rest of the missional living resources I’ve created for you in the new For You library, let me know here where to send the unlock code!