An Awakening from Brokenness, Prayer, Words of Endurance

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God,
and he will give it to you.
He will not rebuke you for asking.
JAMES 1:5 (NLT)

And so I asked God to reveal the truth about myself – I asked God to give me the wisdom and insight into the reason why the history of my life kept repeating itself. He answered my prayer by revealing my imposter.

You may ask what is an imposter? Well I learned about my imposter – my false self –the masks I wore – when I read Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning. His words explained …

Impostors are preoccupied with acceptance and approval. Because of their suffocating need to please others, they cannot say no with the same confidence with which they say yes. And so they overextend themselves in people, projects and causes, motivated not by personal commitment but by the fear of not living up to others’ expectations.

The impostor is the classic codependent. To gain acceptance and approval, the false self suppresses or camouflages feelings, making emotional honesty impossible.

The imposter prompts us to attach importance to what has no importance, clothing with a false glitter what is least substantial and turning us away from what is real. The false self causes us to live in a world of delusion.

The imposter is a liar.
ABBA’S CHILD BY BRENNAN MANNING

I had always known that I was a classic codependent. I knew and claimed to all that I could be the poster child for Codependents Anonymous! But what I did not know was that my codependent lifestyle – my people pleasing that I so believed to be a “spiritual” attribute – was nothing more than a lie that I was portraying for others so that I might receive their acceptance and approval.

The lie that I lived was the mask that I wore to hide the true me from others – even from God. But oh how elated I was that it was not my human viewpoint by which I was seen and judged because when I trusted Jesus as my Savior I was given a gift from God. I became a new person – a Saint – His child – and His approval and acceptance was not based upon my performance!

What Good News for the Child of God!!! Oh how freeing was that for me!!!! How freeing is that for you too!!!!

So we have stopped evaluating others
from a human point of view.
At one time we thought of Christ merely
from a human point of view.
How differently we know him now!
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ
has become a new person.
The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
And all of this is a gift from God,
who brought us back to himself through Christ.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:16-18 (NLT)

On the Journey with You,
Jan Dravecky