The mantra of our age is not only ‘be yourself’ but ‘find yourself’. Yet the imprint of the New Testament is not to find yourself but to define yourself. It’s not what the Word of God says about you that ultimately counts, it’s what YOU say about you. Your definition of yourself will either align you with God’s truth, and release its power upon your life, or alienate you from truth and render it redundant to your life and world.
When people say ‘I want to just be myself’ it poses a huge dilemma! You’re a very complex person. There are in fact 6 persons that are all the real YOU that exist within YOU –
THE NOTORIOUS YOU
The ‘Narcissistic’ You that makes life nothing else than about you.
THE NASTY YOU
The ‘Moody’ You that pollutes the world with an attitude of ingratitude.
THE NAUGHTY YOU
The ‘No Rules’ You that wants to disregard integrity, trust and good will and do what it likes.
THE NATURAL YOU
The ‘Just Me’ You. It’s your personality, talents, hang ups, quirks and instincts.
THE NEW YOU
The ‘New Creation’ You. The You created though being born again. The You birthed in the Spirit.
THE NEXT YOU
The ‘You Choose’ You. The You that you have chosen to be. The You, that you chose to PUT ON.
Out of all the ‘Yous’, the Next You is the Decider You.
The Next You is the You of your choosing. It lives at the front door of your will and decides who it’s going to be from the 5 other choices available.
In fact, because the Natural You is either attached directly to either the Old or the New You, or attached indirectly through the motivations behind its behaviour, the Next You actually has only 4 choices.
If the choice is New over Old, Faith over Fear, Trust over Suspicion, Love over Hate and Grace over Law, then the Natural You can emerge and serve with the brilliance that is the New You.
If you spend your time defining who you want to be rather than describing who you have been, you will effectively launch yourself into a new orbit of power. If you stop spending your time exercising bad behaviour in the name of ‘well, that’s just who you married’ or ‘well, I have needs’, and decide to be a better you, God’s power will kick in and the New Man will start to grow stronger and stronger and become The Next You.
There are 7 things that you will have to work through in order to define THE NEXT YOU. These 7 things are the things that identify us – not the hats we wear, but the hearts we carry.
- The offenses you decide to ignore and bury
- The failures you decide to leave behind
- The losses you decide to let go of
- The sins you decide to lay down
- The distrust you decide to squash
- The self-portrait you decide not to paint again
- The dreams you decide to never let go of
It’s time to be the Next You. God awaits your choosing so He can release his power of transformation into your world!
There’s a lot of people waiting to be released themselves by the NEXT YOU!
