"the me I want to be" by John Ortberg

So, I decided to start chipping away at my "I'm finally out of school and can read some of what I want to" reading list by reading "the me I want to be" by John Ortberg. I really think it will be a good one to read as I am beginning a new phase in my life. As I read the book, I will post some of my reflections and some of my favorite quotes from the book on this blog. Any thoughts are welcome! It should be a great conversation :~)

Chapter 1: Learn Why God Made You

Reflections
Around the same time I started reading this book I came across an amazing son by FFH. The song is called “I Want Your Best”. The second verse says,
“I’m trying hard to keep from giving you advice,
It’s like teaching Shakespeare how to write,
Or Monet the way to paint another scene.
But there’s just something in this amateur that thinks
That my opinions what you need on how to work in me.
But I am only clay, and clay probably shouldn’t speak.
I want your best.
But what if your best is brokenness,
Would I be broken?
I want your best.
But what if it’s less than what I ask
Or what I’m hopin’?
What if your best is here in the waiting,
Here in the going through the motions?
I’d still be trusting all I am,
And all I have,
And nothing less,
To Potter’s hands.”

In chapter one Ortberg states, “It is humbling that I cannot be anything I want. I don’t get to create myself. I accept myself as God’s gift to me and accept becoming that person as God’s task set before me.” God is the creator of the ends of the earth, the potter in other words, and we are his creation, the clay. When the Bible speaks of new creation, it is not suggesting that we will be exchanged, but that we will be restored… redeemed… to our God-designed uniqueness. There is a me that I want to be but I don’t get to create myself and I don’t get to request that God make me a certain person. The me we all should want to be is the me that God created us to be.

Quotes
Life is not about any particular achievement or experience. The most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become.

Your “spiritual life” is not limited to certain devotional activities that you engage in. It is receiving power from the Spirit of God to become the person that God had in mind when he created you – his handiwork.

God made you to flourish – to receive life from outside yourself, creating vitality within yourself and producing blessing beyond yourself.

Your uniqueness is God-designed.

God wants you to become a “new creation”. But “new” doesn’t mean completely different…

God wants to redeem you, not exchange you.

It is humbling that I cannot be anything I want. I don’t get to create myself. I accept myself as God’s gift to me and accept becoming that person as God’s task set before me.

Your longing to become all you were meant to be is a tiny echo of God’s longing to begin the new creation.

“The me God made me to be” is measured by my capacity to love. When we live in love, we flourish.

I asked a wise man, “How do you assess the well-being of your soul?”
He immediately said, “I ask myself two questions”:
~ Am I growing more easily discouraged these days?
~ Am I growing more easily irritated these days?
At the core of a flourishing soul are the love of God and the peace of God. If peace is growing in my, I am less easily discouraged. If love is growing, I am less easily irritated.