I find myself more introspective than normal lately. Questioning the things that make up my mindsets, picking up thoughts and habits and examining them closely with the intent of finding their origins and discerning their truth.
When I calm my inner world enough, I’m taking a pick and slowly teasing apart the separate strands so I can lay them out and see which are truly mine and which have been woven in by the expectations of culture, of others. What social compulsions have I drawn in and made a part of me? How do they continually pulse at my being, making me anxious, tired, and uneasy?
In short, trying to answer the questions: “Who am I really? What is my purpose?”
Today, this verse arrives in the form of a Bible app entry:
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.
Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. – Romans 12:2 NLT
I’m finding most things with God are in the long game, in the journey of constant conversation and discovery and sometimes even wrestling with Him. He is not concerned with the loud, fast, showy, quick-moving, 5-steps-to-self-discovery things of the world.
Instead, most of the time He simply asks me to be still and know. He asks me to wait, to trust, to understand quietly and bit by bit that all of the things that seem intangible and insignificant in the estimations of the world are producing a fruit-bearing harvest of righteousness, of goodness in the Kingdom.
So as nature signals the shifting of seasons outside, so these things signal a change of season in my soul. Here is to the next step, and the next prayer, and the next right thing – and when I look back several seasons from now, I trust I will see the fingerprints of God where His hands have gently molded me into a truer version of myself, hidden in Christ.
Sindy Hankins 