Pride.

“Dude, that was so freaking pretentious.”

When I was in high school, I always looked forward to going to class, but not for the reason you’d expect. I enjoyed learning and all that, but I was honestly super shy all throughout high school. My thinking was that people didn’t want to actually hang out with me, but if they were stuck in class with me, they’d at least be nice to me. I usually didn’t have much trouble making friends in my classes, but the instant I got outside of them, I just couldn’t believe people would actually want to be around me, so I thought I’d do them the favor of not trying to talk to them.

That feeling of insufficiency carried over to college in a lot of ways, and it’s affected the way I’ve acted the whole time I’ve been at Lipscomb. I thought I was just a sucky person, and I found it hard to fathom people wanting to be around me. And yet, that has changed radically in the past nine months. Someone asked me what my fall semester at school was like, and I immediately said it, at its heart, was one of affirmation. I had a ton of people believe in me and praise me in ways I’ve never had before.

It’s hard to explain why, but for some reason, I’ve always had this sense that I was meant to do great things in life. That being said, I never really felt comfortable talking about dreams like that. For one, I felt super pretentious basically saying that I thought I was going to be awesome. More than that though, I honestly thought there was no way I could be as successful as I wanted to be.

The source of my shyness around people was a deep sense of insufficiency, and it was that same insufficiency that made me believe I was genuinely incapable of achieving the things I want to do in the world. This winter break, I had a chance to reflect on the affirmation I received last semester. I had people believe that I could achieve greatness in life, and I guess I realized for the first time that if I’m willing to put in the work, I can make my crazy dreams come true.

I started talking frankly with myself and others about what I wanted to do in the future. I set a goal to never pay a dime of tuition in my life while still likely getting at least one master’s degree. I want to write a book someday. I hope to spend my entire life preaching but never get paid a cent by the church to do it. I hope to engage in a business in such a way that I receive a livable income without being consumed by work.

I came back to school this semester with an overwhelming confidence I’ve never felt before. I was comfortable talking to people in a way I never have been before. More than that, I was frank with them about the fact that I wanted big things out of life. With that confidence at my back pushing me forward, I can connect with people in new ways, and I can actually work for those big goals I have.

Stephen King once said he thought that every person finds a handful of big issues that they struggle with for the majority of their lives. I think one of mine is the question of identity. There’s who I actually am as a person, and who I see myself as. More often than not, those two things don’t line up. For the longest time, my picture of myself was just utterly wrong. In many ways it was too low; I thought I’d never achieve anything or that people didn’t want me around.

I don’t know if you’ve ever asked your friends about their first impressions of you. If you haven’t, I’d highly recommend it. I’ve done it with most of my close friends, and the one thing they always say is that I come across as more than a little prideful. That was before I started to see myself as actually capable of doing well in life, and that probably didn’t help. I’m starting to see that at my worst, my newfound self-image is pretentious as heck.

I’ve come to believe that as a result of my past successes, it’s almost guaranteed that I’ll succeed in the future. I believe that in just about any given role, I’m always the best man for the job. I believe I can put in far less effort or energy into a project and yet still do better than other people. At various places and at various times, all of the above statements have been true, but they are by no means true universally. Where I go wrong is applying them to every part of my life.

The “fear of the Lord” described in the Bible has always been one of those concepts I never fully understood. Then I had a professor phrase it in a way that has been seared into my mind even to this day.

“The fear of the Lord is knowing who we are, knowing who God is, realizing the vast difference between the two and yet the intimacy we enjoy with God in spite of it.”

I think the fear of the Lord has two purposes. It reminds me that my identity is defined by God, not by anyone or anything else. He’s called me His son with whom He’s well pleased. He’s told me He loves me, and that I’m never alone. It’s a good feeling to know that the God of the universe cares about me, and I think that serves to address those places where I see myself as incapable or not worth the time of people. He lifts up those places where my view of myself is too low.

At the same time though, I am nothing compared to God, and everything I have was given by Him. While I need to use the gifts He’s given to me as well as I can, just having them is no source of pride for me. Even any reward I gain from using what He’s given me doesn’t go to me; everything I do is for His glory. The whole point is to use what I have well so that I can give it back to Him when His Kingdom comes. The second function of the fear of the Lord is to reign in my self-image where it’s getting a little too high and remind me who I truly serve.

For the last year of my life, I’ve leaned on my identity in God more than I can express with words, and I don’t want to ever stop. That expressed itself through a lot of reading, but now my problem has changed. I see myself too highly, and so my method of spiritual disciplines need to change as well. I think I’ll replace some reading with fasting in the next while. It serves as a reminder of where my sustenance comes from, as well as how weak I am on my own. More than that, my prayers need to change from “Remind me that you’re always with me” to “Remind me that all I have is yours.” “Give me confidence” to “I give you the glory.” I aim to change the way I fear God, and hopefully I’ll change with it.

Originally published at theforlornemoose.wordpress.com on January 18, 2017.