Have The Courage to See The Truth About Yourself
Consider 3 ways to embrace the truth about who you are and be set free.
By Philip K. Hardin, M.A, M.Div. LMFT, LPC
God has given us a role in redemptive history.
Our role is to fully own who we are –who God designed us to be, while also confessing and repenting of the strategies that we use to sabotage His design.
That journey is a courageous look into the deepest parts of our heart. It’s a walk into the darkness that is permeated by guilt and shame in order to be leased from the lies that keep us hiding and running.
Freedom only comes when we experience the face of God through the Gospel of Grace.
When we surrender our attempt to make life work and trust God with our life, we leave the darkness and shame behind and begin the adventure of knowing ourselves and knowing God.
As Tim Keller said, ”Love without truth is sentimentality. It’s supports and affirms us, but it keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness and gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God ‘s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet it is also radical unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance move us to cling to, and rest in God’s mercy and grace alone.”
Freedom from the “False Self”—that which I construct and cling to in order to make my life work—only comes when I tell the truth about those strategies. That typically requires trusting that I will NOT lose my life if I do so, but actually gain my life, as Jesus promised.
To me, it feels a little like the way I imagine bungee jumping would feel. I hate heights! I have never bungee jumped, and I don’t plan to. But I have acknowledged my failures and experienced the fear that confessing causes. And, I have experienced the relief and healing that telling my story in a safe environment brings. When I get to the point of embracing that I have nothing to offer…that I am truly “poor in spirit”, I am moving in the right direction. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
“If the church has a future, it is a future with the poor in whatever form.”
–Henri Nouwen
I’ve already run for dear life
straight to the arms of God.
So why would I run away now
when you say,
“Run to the mountains; the evil
bows are bent, the wicked arrows
Aimed to shoot under cover of darkness
at every heart open to God.
The bottom’s dropped out of the country;
good people don’t have a chance”?
Psalm 11:1-3
We need to run to Jesus. He’s the safe place that makes room for all parts of us to show up…the good, ashamed, and afraid parts.
Confessing my sins and repenting is hard from me. I work hard to serve God and help all those He brings my way. And yet, I fail my family, disappoint friends that I deeply care about, and even deceive myself in my blindness to my own lack of self-awareness.
On February 8, 2023
at an ordinary chapel service at Asbury University something very special began. That was the occasion for the current revival. Preacher Zach Meerkreebs exhorted Asbury’s students from Romans 12 to live lives marked by the standards set forth there: 30 commandments in 13 verses, calling his hearers to love with perfect love, not polluted, hypocritical, or perverted love. Meerkreebs’s concluding point was that the love demanded by these verses isn’t possible in our own power: “You can’t love the way that this verse speaks. . .. You cannot love until you are loved by Jesus.” We love because God first loved us (I John 4:19), and “if you want to become love in action then you have to experience the love of God.”
God enables us to love others at their darkest because he loves us at ours.
That is what the students at Asbury are demonstrating: honest, radical repentance and radical love.
Can you bring him your darkest? …Your rebellion, forms of self-reliance, and resistance to his redemptive work in your life? Will you let him love you in it?
I offer 3 steps of action that I try to practice and that we teach in our Men’s Coaching Weekends and men’s community:
1. ASK FOR FEEDBACK
I want to practice a lifestyle of not being afraid to face my brokenness. I want to ask for feedback from those that love me and care about me. “What’s it like to have me as a friend … a husband … a father” … or whatever role I’m in with another person.
I cannot see my sin if I don’t look in the mirror of relationship. I want to practice a lifestyle of ACTIOIN that seeks to eradicate sin from my life. I want to be who I was were destined to do! BE THE LION! I will seek to be intentional about owning my life—confessing my sins and repenting of my self-centered strategies. Will you?
2. DEVELOP AN ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE
The key to the life God has promised is thinking long. And the longer the timeline, the better the direction of your life. Live for eternity, not for immediate comfort or gratification. If you’re thinking in terms of eternity, you will have a freedom that comes from trusting God with the present. “God will bring me through this.” I want to practice facing sin today so that eternity will be even sweeter. Remember, facing my sin today, in view of eternity, is the most painful part of my life because eternity will be pain free. For the one who lives for today, this is as good as it gets.
We think that what God does for us is for us. And it is, but it isn’t. It’s also for the third and fourth generations. We think right here, and right now. God is thinking nations and generations. I want to leave a legacy by living for eternity NOW. Do you?
3. JOURNAL
Write it down! We MUST establish priorities and put timelines to our dreams. Next to your Bible, nothing is more sacred than your journal if you are living an intentional growth life. Write your sin—your failures, your shame, your brokenness. Then share it with someone who can help you own it and receive God’s forgiveness in an incarnational way.
Nothing like experiencing the Grace of Jesus through a trusted friend. Your journal is personal, but not private, meaning when you share your written thoughts with a trusted friend, it opens you to the experiential love of Jesus. It becomes real and rich. And I want to be BOTH and I am.
In Jesus, I can be REAL, and I am RICH in His GRACE! Create a legacy. Write down your sin and acknowledge your failures. It is the way of freedom, even revival.
Enjoy the Adventure!
Phil Hardin works as a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with Hardin Life Resources practicing in both Jackson, MS and Fairhope, AL. Phil’s heart is for men to personally experience God’s redemptive plan through sharing their story with a community committed to whole, authentic living. Check out Men’s Coaching Weekends to learn more.