Excerpts from "TrueFaced"
Recently I was talking with some friends about how I am one of those people who, as Donald Miller so eloquently puts it, just “don’t get grace”. I really, really want to get it. I’m so frustrated by the fact that I don’t. And honestly, I’m tired. I know intellectually that God wants me to cast my cares on Him. What keeps me from doing that? What keeps me from being able to rest in how much my Savior loves me? Why can’t I stop striving?
So when one friend said I had to read the book TrueFaced, I hopped on Amazon and placed my order.
It’s been a pretty incredible ride. One of those places in life where the road diverged. I’m realizing how many things I thought I understood…..and wow, I so did NOT understand. I’m also hearing things that I just plain didn’t know. Several times I’ve gone to Scripture after I read something, thinking, this can’t be right! It can’t be this good!
It is.
Excerpts from TrueFaced: Trust God and Others with Who You Really Are
Have we already been changed? Yes. As day is from night, we have been changed. We have received a new heart, for crying out loud! We have a brand new core-identity. We have already been changed. Now we get to mature into who we already are. (I am blessed, Ephesians 1:3; I am chosen and holy, 1:4; I am adopted, 1:5; I am forgiven, 1:7; I am favored, 1:7-8; I am close to God, 2:13; I am loved, 3:17-19; I am promised great things, 3:6; I am cherished, 5:29).
…Nature provides many examples of this incredible discrepancy between who we appear to be and who we truly are. Consider the caterpillar. If we brought a caterpillar to a biologist and asked him to analyze it and describe its DNA, he would tell us, “I know this looks like a caterpillar to you, but scientifically, according to every test, including DNA, this fully and completely a butterfly.” Wow! God has wired into a creature that looks nothing like a butterfly, a perfectly complete butterfly “identity”. And because the caterpillar is a butterfly in essence, it will one day display the behavior and attributes of a butterfly. The caterpillar matures into what is already true about it. In the meantime, berating the caterpillar for not being more like a butterfly is not only futile, it will probably hurt his tiny ears!
So it is with us. God has given us the DNA of godliness. We are saints. Righteous. Nothing we do will make us more righteous than we already are. Nothing we do will alter this reality. God knows our DNA. He knows that we are “Christ in me”. And now He is asking us to join Him in what He already knows is true!”
I knew I had a new identity, but I never understood it like this before. It’s all already there! I’m already a butterfly, and it’s okay- normal even- that I don’t look like one yet. For some reason, this fact helps me rest….helps me take a big, deep breath. It helps me to understand, for the first time, that it’s not up to me to strive and do everything I can to make myself into a butterfly…. I already am one.
You know what is even more liberating? That I don’t have to pretend to be a butterfly. I don’t have to be around church people or cool people and try to pretend to be something I’m not. I don’t do that consciously, but if we think about it, we all do it on some level. We’re all pretending. Or as they put it in Truefaced- we’re all wearing masks.
I have so much more to share with you from this book and from others God is using so powerfully to bring me closer to Him. But in the meantime, friend, I’m taking off my mask. Or masks, I guess I should say. It’s a pretty risky thing to do, but I’ve decided to take the risk. My Savior, after all, is trustworthy. If I look and act like a caterpillar, well, okay.
My true essence is pure, 100%, unadulterated butterfly.