IT’S PERSONAL
When Mike asked my father if he could marry me, my father felt led to warn him. He said, “Mike, she’s different.” That has definitely been the testimony of Mike’s life! 😂😂😂
And I will admit, I am different. I had a friend tell me that my brain synapses were different from anyone else’s. I’m positive she didn’t mean it as a compliment.
Psalm 103:1 says, “Let all that I am praise the LORD; with my whole heart I will praise His holy name.” That obviously means complete and total wholehearted surrender. But for me it is a bit more personal. I like to think that “Let ALL that I am” is also talking about every single uniquely different and complex part of my personality. I’m sure yours is complex, too. Like snowflakes and fingerprints, there are no two of us exactly alike.
Don’t fall into the comparison trap or the conformity trap!!! "O LORD, what a variety of things You have made. In wisdom You made them all" (Ps. 104:24a, NLT). Quit trying to be like everyone else!!!
I think these verses mean that God doesn’t want me to be a mimic. What He looks like wearing my personality is different from what He looks like wearing your personality. God doesn’t want me to shapeshift my personality so that it becomes indistinguishable from anyone else’s. Boring! God is a God of limitless and exotic variety. Why would you take what makes you distinctly unique and silence it in order to conform to the sameness of everyone around you?
No, let all that is in YOU praise the Lord. Glorify Him through your unique personality and your quirky lens of looking at the world. Praise God through your temperament, your inclinations, the different way you phrase things, and the details you notice that no one else sees. There is a part of God that He wants the world to experience when His character is viewed through your uniqueness.
Did any of you ever watch the television series, Monk? His entire wardrobe was the exact same every day. Fifteen identical outfits hung in his closet. Kind of like the fifteen different pairs of black pants that hang in mine! Well, God’s wardrobe is as different and colorful as every single person who makes up the body of Christ. He lives inside of each of us and displays a complete picture of what He is like through all the uniquely different humans He “wears.”
That doesn’t mean that God wants us to be anything we want to be or do anything we want to do. What He wants is for us to present everything we are to Him so that we can fully be the wonderful and different people He created us to be. We were each made for a distinctive purpose. God isn’t interested in our “self-actualization.” He is interested in us offering everything we are to Him in complete surrender. He wants us to present our bodies to Him as a holy sacrifice.
“Lord, You made me the way I am for a reason. And that reason wasn’t to seek my own pleasure or pursue my own purposes. That reason is to praise You with all that I uniquely am and love You with my whole heart. I give everything that I am to be inhabited by everything You are. And when I do that, I may look different, but I’m pretty sure You made me that way for a reason. It is only when I am fully Me that I can praise You with all that I am.”
