When people ask me to be myself, I wonder
if they really know who I am and what I am capable of. I am manipulative, selfish and would
generally not help anyone if unsure they would be of any use to me. Impatience
defines me, and really I have no qualms detaching myself from people when I
find them irrelevant to me.
So imagine how grateful I am that the Holy
Spirit resides in me and helps me be more like Christ. Seriously. I really
can’t be Christ-like without Him. The first thing was to take a self-assessment
(which obviously I did and that’s how I know to tell you all of the above).
Secondly, I have determined that if I
really want to be Christ-like, I need to understand what that even means. It isn’t
being a pushover on whom people would spit and I would say thank you. I find that it is having the confident
knowledge that God lives in me and still put on the nature of a servant to
serve others (not to my advantage, but that they may profit).
Philippians 2: 5-8 aptly describes
Christ-likeness “Think
of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with
God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages
of that status no matter what…” (MSG).
Thirdly, it is a conscious effort. I don’t
just talk about being Christ-like. I think about it. I study it. I live it with
His help. I fall, dust myself up and tell myself “He has to shine through me.”.
I am not going to speak ‘Christianese’ and say,
“ I am not perfect, I make mistakes”. I am perfect, and not by your standards
but by His. I make mistakes but I am perfect because He said so. When I
accepted Him, He made me perfect and told me in Matthew 5:48 to be perfect like
my Father. And we all know that whatever He speaks comes to life.
The point is this: You cannot be like Him
without Him and He won’t force you to. He is the perfect gentleman and would
only work on transforming you if you totally let go of you and let Him take
over.
