The me I want to be

My biggest guilty pleasures is self help books. I adore reading other's opinion about life and maybe taking away their life lessons. At the moment I am reading a book called "The Me I Want To Be: becoming God's best version of you" by John Ortberg. I tried reading this book over the summer in my book club but I run out of time. Fast forward to last week when it looked so lonely on my bookshelf and I decided to see what it could give me insight on. Within the first couple chapters I've already learned a lot. In chapter two, the author states that "we do not drift into becoming the best version of ourselves." Then, he breaks it down into the different rivals that keep us from becoming the type of people we want to be. Here is the breakdown and my favorite quotes from each section.

The Me I Pretend To Be
"God designed us to delight in our actual lives."
"We never have to pretend with God, and genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality."

The Me I Think I Should Be

"Comparison kills spiritual growth."
"Each one of us has a me that we think we should be, which is at odds with the me God made us to be. Sometimes letting go of that self may be a relief. Sometimes it will feel like death."
"Should is an important word for spiritual growth, but God's plan is not for you to obey him because you should even though you don't want to. He made you to want his plan for you."

The Me Other People Want Me To Be (this is the one I deal with the most)

"Everyone in your life wants you to change...everybody had an agenda for you. This is the me other people want you to be."
"If I spend my life trying to becoming that me, I will never be free. Loving people means being willing to disappoint them sometimes. Jesus loved everyone, but that means at some point he disappointed everyone. Seeking to becoming the me that other people want me to be is a hollow way to live. Nobody else can tell you exactly how to change because nobody but God knows."
"He made you to be you-and no human being in your life gets the final word on who God made you to be."

The Me I'm Afraid God Wants
"There is an enormous difference between following rules and following Jesus, because I can follow the rules without cultivating the right heart."
"Jesus did not say, 'I have come that you might follow the rules.' He said, 'I have come that you might have life, and have it with abundance.'"

The Me That Fails To Be
"Languishing is the opposite of flourishing, and it was the fear of Henry David Thoreau that 'when I came to die, I would discover that I had not lived.'"

The Me I Am Meant To Be"God wants you to grow! He created the very idea of growth...Paul said that in Christ the whole redeemed community 'grows and builds itself up in love.'"
"God designed you to flourish 'so that' you could be part of his redemptive project in ways that you otherwise could not."
"Jesus once said that with God, all things are possible, and the great thing about life with God is that your next step is always possible. That step toward God is always waiting, no matter what you have done or how you have messed up your  life. Jesus was hanging on a cross with a thief hanging next to him, and Jesus turned to him and said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise."

It was total accident that I started to read this book. At the moment, I'm reading four other books but I had a strong urge to pick up this one. To be completely honest, I deal with who I want to be. I believe this is rooted in the fact I want to make everyone in my life proud. My parents, my friends, my church leaders the list goes on. I struggle with who I want to be while trying to live up to what others tell me. I'm thankful I've discovered this problem within myself and am starting to process through it before I move out and become my own. I am really stoked to see what else the book has to offer. I want to end with a paragraph the author wrote that I thought was the most encouraging and impacted me the most.

"Even you can't tell yourself how to change, because you didn't create you. To Love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God. He had no other agenda. He had no unmet needs he is hoping you can help him with. And he knows what the best version of you looks like. He delighted in the idea of it, and he is already working on it. The apostle Paul said, 'We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.' Which means God is at work every moment to help you become his best version of you."