Be Good at Being You

God is preparing His heroes. And when the opportunity comes, He can fit them into their places in a moment. And the world will wonder where they came from.  A.B. Simpson

Have you ever tried to be like someone else?  Maybe you decided you wanted to look like another person or dress like someone else.  We decide that we like the way someone dresses or an outfit they wear and so we go out and buy something similar.  Have you noticed that when you do that the outfit or whatever it is doesn’t look the same on you as it does on the other person?  Part of the problem is that God didn’t create us to be just like another person.  The very characteristics that God created in us to make us different from every other human being, we decide we want to change.  We may be shorter, taller, thinner, so we will never look like another person and that is exactly why God created us the way He did.

One of the things that advertisers do is they make commercials that cater to what we don’t like about ourselves.  They tell you that if you buy whatever they are selling, you can look just like the person on TV.  I saw a commercial yesterday where there was a close up shot of a man and a woman.  The woman was attractive but the guy had long sideburns, bushy eyebrows and a long scraggly beard.  I didn’t even have the sound turned on and I could tell what the commercial was about.  All of a sudden the guy pulls out this little shaving gadget and runs it over his beard and then they flash to the next picture and the guy is clean shaven and the woman is looking at him adoringly and running her hand across his smooth face.

We are bombarded daily with things that can make us look better to the world.  We can have brighter, whiter teeth, long flowing locks, fewer wrinkles and just about anything that man can create to make money.  The problem is we begin to forget that we are God’s creation.  Each person on earth was uniquely created by God for His purpose. If we are always trying so hard to look or be like someone else, we will never become the person God created us to be.  Be good at being you.  God created you especially for His purpose and trying to be something other than what He created will hold you back from being everything he meant you to be.   

          

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I am guilty of the very thing I talk about in this devotional.  You created me in Your likeness yet I try to change the things you created in me that make me special and different.  Help me to be good at being me.  If I understand that You created me as a unique individual created for Your purpose, then I will understand that the only thing I can be great at is being me.

Scripture: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:26-28