You have been set apart as holy to the LORD your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure. Deuteronomy 14:2
Why are we always trying to fit in when we were meant to stand out? How often I wonder do we miss being the treasure we were meant to be because we are terrified of being “set apart” and seen as different.
I recently took a new position in my home town school system. Wow, what an eye opener of an experience. We are trained from an early age not to stand out and to fall in line. The thought “different isn’t acceptable” is drilled into us without even knowing it is happening. We come to believe that being different ensures rejection.
I wonder how many dreams and possibilities never came to be because they were put up on the shelf of “I must fit in with the rest”.
As I leave the Elementary and walk into the Middle School and High School, I find that the belief that being different equals rejection has only grown more intense. It has become a way of life – all these teens terrified of being mark with the scarlet letter “D”. I think we are scared of those who dare to be different because then we’d have to face our own mediocrity and insecurities. Maybe we learn something in school no one intends to learn, and it causes us to fear being different more than we fear leaving this world without making a difference!
Unfortunately, in my short stent as a school staffer, I’ve witness the trend and seen the cruelty experienced by those who don’t fit in with the rest. Those who dare to be creative and unique are often shunned. I’m constantly seeing these bubbles of opportunity being pop because of someone else’s view. If we don’t break the mold and dare to be different, we will always be paralyzed by other peoples’ opinions.
I believe many of us have allowed the truth in the Gospel message to follow the mentality I’ve see everyday in the hallways of our schools. As Christians we have been shamed into conforming. We are terrified to be different. Little by little we have allow God’s Word to be watered down all under the disguise of fitting in with the world. I’m so thankful Jesus never watered down the message his Father sent him to deliver. He never came to fit in, no, he came to do everything different. He loved like no other. He forgave in a way people couldn’t understand, and he served radically different than anyone who had ever come before him. People couldn’t put him in a box and make him conform to their long-laid rules. I think in the end, they were terrified of what he was asking them to be so it was just easier to rejected him.
I can guarantee you the message God places on your heart to share won’t always be accepted with open arms by everyone. But we can’t be so afraid of being different in this world that we fail to make a difference. As Jesus was leaving his disciple to ascend back to heaven he said to them, “Just remember, when the unbelieving world hates you, they first hated me. If you were to give you allegiance to the world, they would love and welcome you as one of their own. But because you won’t align yourself with the values of this world, they will hate you. I have chosen you and taken you out of the world to be mine” (John 15:18-21, Passion Translation).
If I can be honest with you for a moment, I often feel this way regarding the message God has place on my heart to share about healing and freedom. Most of us would rather stay in a world of denial than face the fears that grip our hearts. I’ve found that freedom requires a fight most don’t want to fight. Trying to spread a message of light in a world that has come to believe remaining hidden and in the dark is safer, isn’t always well received. But, yet, a passion for helping every heart chained to their past find the freedom to shine their light, keeps me voicing God’s truth!
In the end, I believe that light always wins and that if I dare to be different and spread an often hard to look at message, then more lights will be left shining than if I conformed and tried to be liked. My husband often says, “Josie, people just aren’t like you. Most of us don’t want to look inside. We don’t want to do the hard work of healing. It is just easier to avoid.”
Well, then I embrace me and how God made me different, because I know in the end it will make a difference! Maybe different isn’t so bad after all, maybe it is exactly what we are all meant to be!
Dare to be fully YOU ~ Dare to be a light in a world that is always trying to dim it!