#196: What I Want You To Know: Being who you are

INSIDE: Being who you are, being who God created you to be, is the most free way to live. So how do we live in the wide open space God offers? Listen in.

Living in God’s wide open spaces means there is no condemnation in Christ. God certainly convicts and corrects, but He never assaults your identity. If the Lord has set you free, you are free indeed.

You are free to worship, not only by journaling Scripture but also by sitting in silence watching the sunrise. You are free to love others by leading a small group of teenagers on Wednesday night and running the concession stand that students love so much.

You are free to enjoy friendships, not only by big groups for a girls’ night out but also by inviting over a small group of friends to your house for a quiet night of board games and ice cream. You are free to enjoy that your personality is more introverted, and you make sure to include those who are quiet too, just as she is free to enjoy her extroverted, never-met-a-stranger self.

It is a grace to accept the fearful and wonderful way God designed you, not to wish you were more like someone else, not to feel confined by the belief that there’s only one way to live your life.

Friend, our God takes us away from tight spots and places us in wide-open, green pastures. We no longer need to feel as if we must contort ourselves to fit and conform to someone else’s standards or life or expectations of what we “should” be doing.

We no longer need to play the comparison game. We no longer need to feel the shame of legalism. We are free to run, dance, live, and rest in the grace of the wide open spaces of God’s provision and goodness.

In this episode, we’ll unpack how our God is a God of wide open spaces. So, how is this grace, and what do we even mean?

What God’s wide open spaces are

God’s wide open spaces are carefully curated places with boundaries for those who believe in Him. They are places in which you can live into who Jesus created you to be with the gifts, capacity, and temperament He gave you. His wide and green pastures are designed to give you life in abundance, grace upon grace, and joy to the full. His heart is not to harness you in but to give you room to run.

Living in God’s wide open spaces means there is no condemnation in Christ. God certainly convicts and corrects, but He never assaults your identity.

What God’s wide open spaces are not

God’s wide open spaces are not a license to do what you want to do when you want to do it. And friends, God’s offer of wide open spaces doesn’t mean you get to choose your route to salvation or righteousness. Believing in Jesus isn’t optional for eternal life. The Lord is clear that Jesus is the narrow gate.

When the world frowns on being who you are

Our enemy, the accuser and thief of joy and uniqueness, would have us believe that we don’t actually live in wide open spaces but that we must live a very specific certain way, a way the world defines. Our culture spins out messaging that says: “Good moms do this…Good Christians do this…Good wives do this…”

Our enemy excels in the mediums of comparison and legalism. Comparison calls us to be judge and defendant, pitting us against other image-bearers, demanding a winner and loser. Legalism is laser-focused on rule-following, expectation-meeting, and following the law to the letter without any love. It holds no space for mystery or surprise and often drags us down into feeling morally superior or abjectly sinful.

Perhaps our enemy’s favorite word is “should” because it highlights others’ successes and our failings. Should is the language of fear and rejection and not-enough-ness, and it’s rampant in a world bent on making us conform and forgetting our gifts and squeezing us tightly into actions and ways that we were never meant to hold.

Being who you are

“While He made each of us in His image, He doesn’t expect us to be carbon copies of each other.” – Jill E. McCormick
“We buy into the lie that we must have the same gifts as others or the same resources as others or the same personality as others, and so we deny and downplay and suffocate our God-given uniqueness to try to fit into a mold of what we “should” be or do.” – Jill E. McCormick
“We feel smushed, exhausted, and squeezed when we try to twist and contort our God-given gifting and wiring to do and be who we weren’t designed to be.” – Jill E. McCormick
“Once you believe that Jesus is the narrow gate, your narrow gate opens to a wide, green pasture.” – Jill E. McCormick
“You have the freedom to play and frolic and live and move and have your being in the pleasant place where God has placed your boundary lines.” – Jill E. McCormick
“Our God is bigger than our boxes, bigger than our legalism, bigger than ‘But it has to look this way…’” – Jill E. McCormick
“Our God is creative. Our God is the Author of our story, and He never writes the same story twice. Our God is a God of wide open spaces.” – Jill E. McCormick
“It is a grace to accept the fearful and wonderful way God designed you, not to wish you were more like someone else, not to feel confined by the belief that there’s only one way to live your life.” – Jill E. McCormick
“We no longer need to play the comparison game. We no longer need to feel the shame of legalism. We are free to run, dance, live, and rest in the grace of the wide open spaces of God’s provision and goodness.” – Jill E. McCormick

Mentioned in the podcast

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