Finding Myself

“If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.” (Matt. 10:39 MSG)

I often hear from parents that their young adult children are still searching…trying to find themselves. Well, I’m in my 40’s and wonder if I have found myself!

Who am I? What is my purpose? I often ask God for answers to these questions. I would like very much for Him to be my guide as I search for my own significance. But Jesus says that we have this all mixed up. I’ll never find myself this way. I must forget about myself and merely seek God—not so that He can assist me or be my advisor or agent—but because He is the Only One who is significant.

“Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” (--from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis)

If we spend our lives searching for who we are, we might discover that our core is corrupt—full of vanity, self-absorption, pettiness, and degeneration. It’s like searching for a treasure all your life and finally finding a treasure box full of worthless, fake jewelry. What a waste of time!

Yet what if we modify our search parameters and seek the answer to the following questions:

Who is God? What is HIS purpose?

And during this quest, just maybe…He will reveal how I fit in to His plan.