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“Everyone in your life wants you to change.”


A thought by John Ortberg from his book, The Me I Want to Be (p. 26). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

I’m sure we live with the pressure of that being the truth.

John says, “Your boss wants you to be more productive. Your health club wants you to be more fit. Your credit card company wants you to be in more debt. Networks want you to watch more television, and restaurants want you to eat more food. Your dentist wants you to visit more often. Everybody has an agenda for you. This is the me other people want you to be.”

He goes on, “If I spend my life trying to become that me, I will never be free. Loving people means being willing to disappoint them sometimes. Jesus loved every one, but that means at some point he disappointed everyone. Seeking to become the me that other people want me to be is a hollow way to live. Nobody else can tell you exactly how to change because nobody but God knows.

“When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robbins Island for his opposition to South Africa’s apartheid, he was issued a pair of shorts — not long trousers — because his captors wanted his identity to be that of a boy instead of a man. People in power over him wanted him to be a docile accepter of a racist society. Angry people who suffered with him wanted him to be a vengeful hater of their oppressors.

“Mandela was neither. During twenty-seven years in prison, he suffered and learned and grew. He called his prison ‘the University.’ He became both increasingly committed to justice and opposed to hate, and by the end of his captivity, even his guards were won over by his life. The final official charged to watch him used to cook Mandela gourmet meals. When he went from Prisoner Mandela to President Mandela, he sought to lead the country to peace through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established on the biblical principle that ‘the truth shall make you free.’

“God didn’t make you to be Nelson Mandela. He made you to be you — and no human being in your life gets the final word on who God made you to be.

“Even you can’t tell yourself how to change, because you didn’t create you. To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God. He has no other agenda. He has no unmet needs he is hoping you can help him with. And he knows what the best version of you looks like. He delighted in the idea of it, and he is already working on it. The apostle Paul said, ‘We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.’ (Romans 8:28)”

John continues, “Which means God is at work every moment to help you become his best version of you.”

Would you ask Him to do that in you?  Would you?

Yes, yes!                                                                                                                      
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