The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You

Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear -- because peace and fear are both contagious.

If you can't do great things, Mother Teresa used to say, do little things with great love. If you can't do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you can't do them with a little love, do them anyway. Love grows when people serve.

Low self-esteem causes me to believe that I have so little worth that my response does not matter. With repentance, however, I understand that being worth so much to God is why my response is so important. Repentance is remedial work to mend our minds and hearts, which get bent by sin.

We tend to be preoccupied by our problems when we have a heightened sense of vulnerability and a diminished sense of power. Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God. Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.

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.

God is so immense that if he were 'too visible,' people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there.

The Bible does not say you are God’s appliance; it says you are his masterpiece. Appliances get mass-produced.

Because you have been created by God as a unique person, his plan to grow you will not look the same as his plan to grow anyone else. What would grow an orchid would drown a cactus.

If ever there were a true “just as I am” church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended — we could not make enough room inside the building.

Too often, people who need the cheers the most get them the least. Every day, everyone you know faces life with eternity on the line, and life has a way of beating people down. Every life needs a cheering section. Every life needs a shoulder to lean on once in a while. Every life needs a prayer to lift them up to God. Every life needs a hugger to wrap some arms around them sometimes. Every life needs to hear a voice saying, “Don’t give up.

The main measure of your devotion to God is not your devotional life. It is simply your life.

Peace doesn’t come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in the boat.

To be fully known and fully loved is the most healing gift one human being can give another.

The Spirit never just flows in us; he always flows through us so that others might flourish as well.

If I think God’s aim is to produce rule-followers, spiritual growth will always be an obligation rather than a desire of my heart.

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

My main job is to remain connected to God. When my primary focus is being present with him, everything else has a way of falling into place.

Spiritual greatness has nothing to do with being greater than others. It has everything to do with being as great as each of us can be.

surrender is the glad and voluntary acknowledgment that there is a God and it is not me. His purposes are often wiser and better than our desires. Jesus does not come to rearrange the outside of our life the way we want. He comes to rearrange the inside of our life the way God wants. In surrender, I let go of my life. It is a Copernican revolution of the soul in which I take myself out of the center of the universe and place God there. I yield to Him. I offer obedience. I do what he says.

Flourishing is not measured by outward signs such as income, possessions, or attractiveness. It means becoming the person he he had in mind in creating you. Flourishing means moving toward God's best version of you.

Failure isn’t falling down; failure is refusing to try.

The Spirit wants to make you threatening to all the forces of injustice and apathy and complacency that keep our world from flourishing.

When you help other people discover their strengths, you are helping the image of God to be restored in another human being.

When you discover your strengths, you are learning an indispensible part of what it means to be made in the image of God.

Repenting of our sin is never despairing of our sin; it is always done in hope.

We are free to feed our minds from every good source, but there is no source like the Bible. It is a written revelation of who God is and of what God’s purposes are for humanity. No book comes close to it in influence or significance. Eugene Peterson writes, “Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love.” Yet consumer researchers say that the average Bible owner possesses nine Bibles and is looking for more. Something is lacking.

Real life, however, begins when I die to the false god that is me.