“And it was so, when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, that he said, Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another?….” 1 Kings 14:6
One of the most frustrating things in life is to live trying to be someone else. Trying to fit into someone else’s personality and area of gifting. And this of course can be really frustrating. The major reasons behind this problem are lack of knowledge about oneself [Click on this link to read an article about, “Finding Yourself”.] and not accepting who you are. We are all created differently and uniquely. That implies that we are not just different from one another, but that we are also unique in our nature.
The Bible text above describes a conversation between one of the Prophets in Israel and the wife of one of the Kings of Israel. This King and his wife realized some truths about themselves, but rather prefer to live in denial. They both agreed that the wife should disguise herself when approaching the prophet. However, through the help of God the wife was discovered by the prophet even before their plot of deception could materialize. This teaches us that God knows each and every one of us. He created us and knows our make-up. We would only end up frustrated if we went out of line on what he originally created us to be.
The journey of Self-Acceptance begins with self-discovery. After finding ourselves, we should accept and find peace with our findings and then seek out ways to improve ourselves. What are we to accept about ourselves? We are to accept our uniqueness: that we are different from others in a special kind of way. We are to accept our ingenuity: our ability to be original, inventive and clever at doing things. We should accept our natural endowment: our Gifts and Talents, and then polish them to fulfill God’s ordained purpose for our lives. Focusing on our area of strength is vital to our success and will help against avoidable frustrations in life.
Accepting our uniqueness and peculiarity does not imply accepting destructive habits that could jeopardize our future. There are those that say, “This is who I am and I cannot change myself”. It is necessary that we draw a line between our natural gifts and bad habits we have accumulated over time. We must reject bad habits and work on ourselves to overcome them. We must never settle into the rut of bad habits and assume that this was how we are created to function. We must say no to excuses, and unwillingness to change, which can eventually lead to mediocrity.
Thanks for stopping by in this section. In our next post, we will be looking at some of the benefits of self-acceptance and the dangers of not accepting ourselves. Thanks for reading and see you in our next post.
