01/02/2023
Live Your True Identity
(From the devotional on YouVersion Don't Settle For Safe by Sarah Jakes Roberts)
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Everything you need to be beautiful, successful, incredible, blessed, trusted, respected, honored, and happy are already in your life. It may not seem like it, but only because you’re focusing on the wrong things. Anything birthed prematurely risks complications. The complications you’ve faced that made you stop believing are simply things that you gave birth to too soon. Still, God was kind enough to teach you a lesson from that journey that made you better for His use.
Don’t take life into your own hands. Control the part of you that believes you know better than Him. Trust that if you don’t have something it’s because you aren’t ready for it. Believe that if it’s on your plate, you can handle it. Stop doubting your strength and testing grace. Don’t do what feels right; do what makes you a better person. That may require you to have a new level of discipline or deeper level of vulnerability. There will be countless things that allow you an escape from your insecurities. Don’t use them. Instead, see your insecurities for what they are: places where love can fill in the gap. Love yourself enough that the insecurities have to become beautiful.
Be patient. Once you reach the destination you have in your mind, you will see that there is still work to be done. Then you will wish that time would slow down long enough for you to enjoy the view. Find something beautiful about life every day. Look beyond the bills, the heartbreak, the dying mother, the absent father, the wild child, and the failed dreams. See the beauty in having another day, another chance. Choose to no longer worship the way things should have been. Praise God for knowing you weren’t ready.
When you start to find your true identity, people will still be looking for glimpses of the old you. Some will be unsuccessful; others will be content with learning the new and improved you. Have a memorial service for those who want to hold you to your mistakes and poor decisions. If that’s all they choose to see, then they shouldn’t be granted access to the blessing that is your journey. They aren’t evil. They’re broken. You don’t have to let them break you too, though. You don’t have to lose yourself trying to save them. Be strong enough to choose you.
