By the very act of refusing to succumb to the enormous pressure of Western culture around us, we, too, serve as a sign of a free people. We have been called out of a world trying to prove its worth and value by what it does or possesses. We are deeply loved by God for who we are, not for what we do.

Most of us never examine the scripts handed to us by our past.

God never asks us to annihilate the self. We are not to become "non-persons" when we become Christians. The very opposite is true. God intends our deeper, truer self, which he created, to blossom as we follow him.

God thinks. You think. God wills. You will. God feels. You feel.

Our goal is the same: union with God in Christ, transformation into his image, and the freeing of our hearts from anything that stands in the way of Christ living in and through us.

Sadly, when we look deep beneath the surface of our lives, most of us are not doing anything fundamentally differently from what our families did. God's intention, however, is that our local churches and parishes are to be places where, slowly but surely, we are re-parented on doing life Christ's way. God intends that his new community of people be the place where we are set free.

way. Part of the sanctification process of the Holy Spirit is to strip away the false constructs we have accumulated and enable our true selves to emerge.

It is essential that we reflect on the messages that were handed down to us, submitting them to Christ and his Word.

Grow me, I pray, into an emotionally mature adult through the Holy Spirit's power.

God promises if you and I will do life his way (even though it feels unnatural and hard to us initially), then our lives will be beautiful.

human. To minimize

The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are. We unconsciously live someone else's life, or at least someone else's expectations for us. This does violence to ourselves, our relationship with God, and ultimately to others.