What you are is not what you see

"I really felt led to tell you something, Eric. It doesn't matter what you do, its who you are." I sat in silence and let the words of my girlfriend of, at the time, about five days resonate within me. I hadn't had a job in five months, my bank account balance resembled the ball of a roulette table, going from red to black and back again, and the hope from my latest job interview was dashed once more by that all-to-familiar form letter: "Thank you for your interest, but we have found a candidate who's qualifications better fit blah blah blah blah..." Existing in the financial desert that is unemployment rocked me to my core. If I'm not producing, what good am I? What kind of man can't pay his electric bill? What kind of man can't even pick up the check at dinner with his girlfriend?

My heart was changed, however, in a moment I can only describe as a spiritual breakthrough. For so long, my image of myself rose and fell based on my success in my job, my business, my ministry, and my finances. And yet, in that moment, as I was forced to think about who I was, for the first time in a long time, a peace came over me. Who was I? I was no more the broke, debt-ridden, unemployed bum as I was the successful, entrepreneurial leader. I was a child of the King! I was a beloved child of God, and if God was for me, who could be against me! I was no longer just a sum of my titles, my experiences, my successes and failures. God had erased the labels that had become to define me.

In the New Testament, Jesus says to the disciples; "Come and follow me." In that moment, they cease being mere fisherman, or tax collectors, or zealots, or any other title the world would use to identify them. They were "fishers of men." Jesus came to make all things new, and he had given them a new name and a new purpose, and for the first time, a vision for their lives.

Look in the mirror and ask yourself the question, "Who am I?" Then realize this simple fact... what you are is more then what you see.