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Revelations of Me

Multi-Syllabic Facade

God has been teaching me a lot recently about the need to be known. Growing up, I learned through too many painful experiences that being myself inevitably led me down the path to rejection. Rejection hurts. It hurt bad enough that I made a subconscious vow with myself that I would never do anything that would give anyone cause to reject me. But I've noticed that life isn't any fun when I live it by those rules. God has put people in my life to know me and fellowship with me, and I don't let them in. I've sabotaged His system.

Life is such a paradox. I want so badly for people to know the real me, and yet I do everything in my power to fool those around me into thinking that I'm more than I am. And I do it mainly so that I'll be liked.

Why do I try so hard? I use words from the thesaurus like pedantic and sesquipedalian to make you think I'm smart. Sure, big words amuse me, but there are more peculiar and certainly more meaningful things about me that you should know. I like climbing mountains. I sing best in the shower. I love the flatlands of Kansas. I want to study geography as long as I live. Deep down, I want to be known for who I really am, including my idiosyncrasies (and they are legion). I'm tired of trying to impress you. It takes too much energy. And too many syllables.

Noticed : One Ply :: Known : Two Ply

I think that we work so hard to look or act or perform or be a certain way because we honestly want to be known. But when we do things — like our hair or our resumé — a certain way, all we really get is noticed. We don't become known. Being noticed is a cheap imitation, like toilet paper that's thin and abrasive like typing paper. It will do, for a while, but sooner or later you just need the real thing.

God intends us to be known by one another. James alludes to this in his contribution to the New Testament: "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results" (5:16, NLT). We need to reveal who we are, and not just the cool or endearingly quirky parts of ourselves. God wants us to tell each other how we're struggling — how we've sinned, and how we've been wounded.

This is the conspicuously foul part of wanting to be known. I have to tell people my junk. Very few people know about the deep, dark, cavernous places within me. These are the places that I try very hard to ignore. Eventually, though, God reminds me that those places are still within me, needing to be dealt with. I can get really depressed when I ignore His provocations. Too often, I don't believe that He will give me the grace I need to take people spelunking with me into the depths of my heart. I fear that people will reject me when I lay myself bare.

Let me tell you, though, that hiding myself has been exhausting. The authors of the book TrueFaced cogently express this emotional and spiritual fatigue: "Hiding drains us. When we hide, we can never rest. We live every waking moment with a nagging fear that someone or something will blow our cover. Hiding requires constant vigilance and maintenance."¹

Finally, the Revelation

I realized several months ago that I was squandering away an opportunity of a lifetime. I was at Focus on the Family Institute, living in the midst of one of the most remarkable communities I had ever experienced. We were just a few weeks from graduating, and I hadn't done what I had gone there to do. Yeah, I knew the classes on worldview would be good for me. And the marriage and family training were sure to be great. But I signed up for the Institute because I knew it would be a spiritual incubator of sorts, a great place to share all of me. Yet during my time there, I felt like no one really, really knew me.

In class one day, God tapped me on the shoulder — or, I should say, He jabbed me with His divine taser gun. The Holy Spirit gave me the sense that if I wanted to be known and truly wanted to continue becoming the man He wants me to be, I had to tell someone my story. I had to take that first step. I got that same feeling you get when you think you're going to throw up. You know the feeling. You know it will be messy, but you're pretty sure you'll feel a lot better afterward. I had to get my story out of me.

I sought out a friend I knew I could trust. We exchanged our stories that night. An incredible weight was lifted off my shoulders. And the figurative puking sensation was gone, thankfully. God replaced it with a newfound confidence in the person that He wanted me to be, and a trust that He was working in my life. Similar, very honest encounters with a professor and other close confidantes further demonstrated to me that I no longer had to hide. I began the process of accepting that these people loved me for who I am and in spite of where I've been.

I'm not exactly sure how this self-disclosure thing works, but it does. It seems rather curious to me that through stumbling around in our weakness we fall into God's strength and His grace. I suppose it's in times like these that we live out the truth of 2 Corinthians 12, in which Paul writes, "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. ... For when I am weak, then I am strong." (vv. 9-10, NIV). Though seemingly counterintuitive, boasting about our weaknesses is part of the mystery of the life to which Christ calls us.

Unhide and Go Seek

I want to encourage you to go and share your life with someone you know. Tell them your hurts and failures. Like chemotherapy to the cancer patient, it can be a difficult process. But God uses our outward acknowledgements of our pain to attack our malignancies of guilt and shame.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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Why is it so important for us to be vulnerable with others?

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And when you show others how things are really going, you'll encourage them to do the same thing. Hearing others' stories gave me hope that God was pursuing me and wanted to heal me. And now I pray that God will allow me to help and comfort those who have dealt with life issues similar to my own. God gives me this hope through the words He speaks in Jeremiah 15:19:

'If you return, then I will restore you —
Before me you will stand;
And if you extract the precious from the worthless,
You will become My spokesman.
They for their part may turn to you ...' (NASB)

Vulnerability begets vulnerability, and hope begets hope. So take off your mask. Hiding isn't worth the cost. Come out, come out, wherever you are.