What Words Describe You?

One of my facebook friends posted this last week.  Look carefully.  What are the first four words you see?  Supposedly they will accurately describe you. Don’t read any farther until you see the four words!

Passionate.  Witty. Thoughtful.  Outspoken.  These were the first four words I saw.  I suppose some of my friends may question one or two of those words, but I thought they were pretty accurate!  In fact, my wife agreed.  So that must be right!

I’m not sure if we gravitate to those words that we want to see or not!  I do know it’s difficult to see ourselves the way we really are.  The Scottish poet Robert Burns penned, “O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.”  Probably most people don’t know that line comes from a Burns poem entitled “To a Louse.”   One Sunday while sitting behind a young lady in worship, Burns noticed a head louse roaming over the bows and ribbons of her hat and onto her hair.  Little did that poor woman know that she and her “companion” would be the subject of one of Burns’ poems!

Rarely do we really see ourselves the way others see us.  However, there is a more important question.  How does God see us?  And is it even possible to  know?  Well James provided some help when he wrote:

 “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;  for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.  But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:22-25).

What do you see when you look into the mirror of God’s Word?  As you read through the New Testament what four words would describe you and your relationship to the Lord and His work?  Faithful? Loving?  Holy? Zealous?

Or would the four words be Faithless? Hateful? Ungodly?  Lukewarm?  Ouch!  That hurts to even think about it, doesn’t it?

However, I suppose the reality for most of us who wear the name of Christ is that a combination of those eight words may have described all of us at one time or another. We have not been totally unfaithful, but our faith has at times waned and wavered.  Hateful may be too strong a word to describe our attitude towards others or God, but no doubt there are times our love has become weak.

We yearn to be holy as He as holy, yet there are occasions we fall short of the mark.  We think, say and do things that are impure, dishonest or irreverent.  Our enthusiasm for spiritual things may not be ever stone cold, yet most of us experience periods of spiritual drought where at best our fervor is tepid.

What we desperately need is the ability to transparently see ourselves as God sees us.  Like David, let us pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).  Then when He does, may God help us to see the words that really describe us and muster the courage to change.

–Ken Weliever, The Preacherman