Comfortable in Your Own Skin
If we don’t learn to be content with who God has made us and called us to be, then we will never reach our potential as influencers.
~The Catalyst Leader, Brad Lomenick
Have you ever thought about who God has called you to be? I think a lot about calling — that’s part of being a pastor. If you are serving a church, and don’t feel like you have been called, you may have the technical skills to do the job, but something will always be missing. There will always be a gap.
And, truthfully, that’s true for any area of life. One of my convictions in ministry is that everybody is called to some kind of ministry. That doesn’t mean that everybody is called to vocational ministry — that is, ministry as a job or a career. But there is some kind of ministry to which you have been called.
You probably know what it is. It’s the thing you love to do. It’s the thing you look forward to doing every week/month/whenever. It’s the thing that brings you life. It’s not always easy, but it is fulfilling.
Ideally, we should be able to embrace who we are and what we are called to do, but that’s not always the case. We live in a world that is constantly trying to sell us something. Billions of dollars are spent every year in advertising.
The whole purpose in advertising is to get us to want something that we don’t have. Many times this is done by creating an artificial desire that turns into real desire that turns into dollars spent searching for something we’ve been manipulated into thinking that we need. We don’t need it. We just think we do because we think it will fill a hole in our lives.
Now, maybe I’m being cynical here. Maybe this isn’t the case. But I feel like I see it on a regular basis. We can turn this trend around, however, by cultivating contentment in our lives.
What is contentment? It’s recognizing that what we have is enough. It’s recognizing that who we are is enough. Once we are content with our lives as they are, we can begin to be comfortable in our own skin.
Now, we also have to be careful not to let the pendulum go too far in the other direction. We can easily move from contentment to a stubborn refusal to change when necessary. There is a balance there we have to be able to keep, but when we develop an understanding of who we are and who God has called us to be, we can keep that balance.
So, hear these words: you are enough. As I heard somebody say once before, “God don’t make junk.” You are beautifully and wonderfully made. Now, live out that truth.
