Know Who You Are

A few days ago, I ran into a friend of mine at the shop. While catching up, I realised just how temporary change often is. People try to change their lives, but it only lasts for a while. It adds to their frustration and challenges their faith repeatedly, until we simply stop believing that change is even possible. We become cynical and bitter or even, like my friend, deeply depressed. 

My clients often tell me, despondently, about years of effort without a significant breakthrough. They doubt the possibility of change, especially since their previous attempts had been in vain. 

Is change possible? 

It certainly is. In fact, it’s not just possible, it’s non-negotiable. However, change only occurs if it has an eternal quality. Permanent change that has eternal value only becomes possible when renewal penetrates to the very core of our being. Such a change results in total transformation, a denial of our own interpretations and assumptions, and discovery and acceptance of God’s truth. 

People are created to be in a relationship with the Creator God, and to worship Him in spirit and in truth. That requires us to know the Spirit and the truth. We can only have a deep and meaningful relationship with God when we know the truth about our identity, other people and Him. 

Our life experiences play a huge role in how our truth is formed. Our personal truth, the truth as we perceive it, is in charge of our entire being: what we think, what we choose and how we react. It manages our perceptions and our opinions. It determines our attitude towards life. However, the question remains: ‘Is our truth God’s truth?’ Ideally, when we become aware that some of our daily experiences don’t echo God’s truth as it is revealed in his Word, we start searching for renewal and change. 

How is it that our truth so often clashes with his? And why is mere reading of his Word and the knowledge we gain by doing so not enough to bring about much needed change? It is my prayer that, by the end of the book, you’ll have answers to both these questions. It will require re-creation, a radical about-face of your personal, human interpretations and assumptions to embrace God’s revelation. 

There are certain requirements for effective renewal. Our being is not divided into separate, independent components; each part of us is interdependent on the others. There is constant non-verbal communication between the different aspects of our being. How we listen to it and the extent to which our inner language becomes discernible to us are very important. In ourselves we have a core, the deepest part of our inner being. It is here where our deepest decision-making takes place. In order to assert ourselves, we ought to know this core and bring it in line with the rest of what we know about our make-up. It is almost like gutter pipes that fit into each other to channel the flow of water to the desired destination. In our case, the destination is uninterrupted unity with our Creator and Re-Creator, the only place where we can experience transcendent peace and eternal joy. Without it, we are stuck with a subsistence approach to life. 

This book was written to equip and enable you to experience sustainable change. When change comes through truth and lasts, true re-creation has taken place.