Who are you?

More from Encourage Me by Charles R. Swindoll

"....you were prescribed and then presented to this world exactly as God arranged it."

"In our overly-populated, identity-crisis era, it is easy to forget this. Individuality is played down. We are asked to conform to the "system." Group opinion is considered superior to personal conviction and everything from the college fraternity to the businessman's service club tends to encourage our blending into the mold of the masses."

"...There is an "image" the church must maintain."

"Our fellowship must be warm, but filled with cliches. Our love must be expressed, but not without its cool boundaries. The creative, free, and sometimes completely different approach so threatens the keepers of the "image syndrome" that one wonders how we retain any draft of fresh air blown through the windows of flexibility and spontaneity."

"My mind lands upon a fig-picker from Tekoa...His name was Amos."

Do I write to an Amos? You don't "fit the mold"? Is that what sent you down into the valley of discouragement? You don't sound like every other Christian or look like the "standard" saint...or act like the majority?"

"Hallelujah!"

"What the church needs is a lot more faithful figpickers who have the courage to simply be themselves, regardless......He "arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be" (1 Corinthians 12:18)


In writing this I remember however that there is a oneness in Christ. A union of saints by His Spirit. But our uniqueness remains. He made each of us in utter seclusion. (Psalm 139:13-16)Just me and Him...unique .... a one of a kind....but He longs for us to be one in Him. Communion with Him and each other. But not identical cookie cutter Christians.