What Are You?
You did not come into this world as a little animal that has to start finding out what it should do here. You came as a person who has been created by our Maker inside his own Son: this is why at times you feel you are not only unique but valuable. In fact, you are a distinctive expression of our Creator's Son (who was the first human being), and no one else can express his planned life in just the way you can. We say that Christ is the first human being (Col.1:15) because he existed before the foundation of the world - even though he did not visit the earth physically until his appearance in Palestine in the first century. Indeed the life that you have come here to live is a life that God has already lived in his son in timeless eternity for he is able to see all of time in one millisecond; and he did just that _ foresaw what you would do with his plan for your life, faced the confusion and pain which you caused him by your independence, bore the reality of it in his son's death, and then worked out a way back to reality for you in his son's resurrection.
A Whole New Start
The result is that today you face a miraculous opportunity to live the life that your Creator has planned and prepared for you. And because He has planned and prepared it for you, it is exactly right for your fulfillment and you are exactly right for expressing what Christ has already achieved through you! How boring!! You have now to spend the rest of your life going through the motions or passively watching the events that God has foreordained for you!! Not on your life!!! God's living your life in the reality of his own great mind presupposes your actions and the exercise of your will _ only as you do fully and actively the things you see to do _ only then is God's foreseeing will worked out in detail. Our Maker plans the life that your will freely chooses, lovingly works your choices so that you are repeatedly drawn towards his perfect will for his whole universe, and bears the constant pain and chaos that you can cause by your own autonomy. This is the reality of the life that now lies before you.
Obviously the question is how do you find out what you are here to do and be? The only way is through the one who is humanity _ the one of whose body each of us is a part _ Christ. You were made inside him and he is the one who holds you together and keeps you alive: He is also the one who has walked through every step in your life in his Father's infinite mind. And he alone can lead you through the experiences on earth that will make you a real and willing part of himself. Only he can deliver you from that independent spirit that persists in pretending that you are somehow an independent, self-existent creature rather than part of an infinite being. Naturally this kind of intimacy between him and you requires that you believe in him and begin to follow his directions.
Change Your View of Yourself
How can you do that? First - by facing the reality that you are not an independent, self-existent being that is in charge of your own creation and destiny. You have hundreds of reactions that you've built on this deception - ways of thinking, of speaking, and of acting that prevent you being the person you really are inside your creator's son. The first step, therefore, is to fully face this reality and be prepared to change your thinking about your whole life and its behavior. Secondly - face the reality that Christ's spirit - his attitudes - in fact He Himself - is in you and ready to begin living your life with you. Once you really and practically begin to take these two steps, your life starts to take a whole new direction built on reality.
Everything - every relationship, every circumstance of your life - becomes secondary - secondary to your relating to the person in whom you were made - and in whom you live. You won't necessarily become religious or churchy - though you may go to places that are regarded that way, BUT you will be more concerned with getting directions from your Maker than getting directions from other so-called experts. In a real way, you'll be less dependent on other human beings for directions; and you'll be more content and restful in listening for God's. You'll end up being more vividly alive to the world than before, yet you'll be more independent of it than before. The truth is that you become more your individual self when you commence finding yourself as you were originally made in Christ. Our creator did not make thousands of clones when he expressed his Son's humanity through all of us - He made thousands of individual beings who express the millions of facets of Christ's - and our creator's - character in billions of different ways and circumstances. The result is that your differences from the rest of us begin to be seen in the ways God planned, and you cease to be dominated by the need to conform and copy others. It's all like starting life over again - except that it's more exciting and interesting because you don't know what's going to happen next. You lose that boring feeling that today is going to be just the same as yesterday - instead, you get up in the morning with an interest in what God has planned for his son in you today. How does all this work out in practice? I can mention some things I've found out, but you have an interesting journey to travel that is different from all the rest of us.
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