Right in the middle of putting together a 1 Peter Bible Study—which morphed into a discovery of personal identity—I came across this great internet document, The Seven Snares of Worldliness. The way it meshed with the Epistle’s opening kinda rocked me: Peter giving the positives of Christian identity, and the net document the negatives of perceiving one’s identity by the world’s defining methods.
What rocked me more was how sharply (as in ouch!) one of the “seven snares” hit home, one identifier in the “I-am-_______” parts—as in the list below.
But you go first: Which of these strikes you as how you (secretly perhaps) perceive your identity (what makes you, you)?
“I am what I own…
I am what I do/produce…
I am the source of my own life…
I am what others perceive me to be…
I am whatever I want to believe…
I am sufficient to handle my affairs…
I am okay because of my religious works and activities.”
If that’s too hard, you can check the full Snares article. Or, consider which, if completely lost, would make you feel your earthly life was over, done, shot. For instance, if you came to own nothing but the ragged clothes on your back? Or if you lost all ability to accomplish anything, create anything…
I need go no further for myself. For I know my snare: My secret self thinks it’s what I do that makes me me, that makes my life on earth worth offering up to Christ, to others, to myself.
Wrong. How wrong! I know that’s wrong. When I stop and think about it. I am not a mere amalgam of accomplishments. Completely paralyzed, I’d still be me. And yet, when hindrances and endings block my efforts to create, accomplish, compose, I struggle to see the point of my existence. I ask, what on earth am I doing here on earth? Or, rather, since I’m not doing, then why am I here?
Back to my own Sunday school lesson! Yes, mine. I composed it, studied out all its parts ahead, worked hard on it, put it all together, shared it with that women’s class. Did. an. accomplishment. Something. I. did…
But God…
does me favors:
He blesses me with hindrances. Like my net service lags and lags, and how will I ever get that post up, like I’ve purposed… to do? Or I get allergic to 70% of the herbs growing in my wonderful accomplishment of an herb garden. Or He starts turning down the dimmer switch on my eyesight so I may not long see those colors or threads to compose the pretty patchwork patterns or stitch the embroidery or post pleasant photos.
Or He gives me a test. He puts me in a situation where I must choose integrity or getting that Bible study book published as planned with those folks…
He’s showing me how charmed I can get by the idols of accomplishment—and how I couldn’t achieve a thing if He didn’t enable me (John 15:5). Yet, when He brings me up smack against the wall of realization and choice, by His good grace, He still enables me to choose what’s right. Even when my choosing right slams the door not just to publication, but also a lot of “ministry” accomplishments.
Or, could I say, it lays them on the altar of burnt offering? Because, when they go up in smoke, I smell sweet savor, and feel sweet peace.
And now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Except I blog, when I don’t get too bogged down, by blessed hindrances He gives.
I shift the focus and reconsider. My Life aim shouldn’t be accomplishing, but being! Being ever more His. Letting His life fill mine and make it more and more an expression of His (John 15:4; Gal 2:20)—whether I ever accomplish another accomplishment or not!
*****
