Self-awareness is just not an end unto itself. We needn’t turn out to be paranoid and obsessive about improving ourselves and call it self-awareness. Rather, it’s the door to repentance, transformation, and alignment with God’s ways. It’s about waking up and realizing who and where you’re, irrespective of where it’s.
In Luke, the Prodigal Son had just such a moment of coming to himself. “But when he got here to himself, he said, ‘How a lot of my father’s hired servants have good enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!’” (15:17 ESV). Before he had come to himself, he was in a dirty, pathetic pig pen, still pondering he was right. Then, straight away, he woke up, suddenly becoming willing to do something he had not been willing to do in months and even years: run home to the very Father he had sinned against. He knew the Father’s worst was still higher than the rest he could experience. What he got as an alternative was the Father’s best.
True self-awareness creates the pathway to true repentance. If we don’t know we’re sick, we won’t take heed to a health care provider. If we don’t know we’re lost, we won’t ask for a map. And if we don’t know we’re dying, we won’t snatch life.
“Whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” – Luke 7:47 NIV
Yet after we’re fully aware that we’d like big forgiveness, it leads us to big love for God and others. May we have now the courage to look within the mirror of Scripture and community, acknowledge our blind spots, and humble ourselves in joyful alignment with the wisdom of God. The more we come to know ourselves in the sunshine of those truths, the more we are going to come to know God higher and more authentically. A life spent following Christ is a life-long journey into deeper self-awareness and, by proxy, deeper grace to cover and heal what we progressively and willingly uncover after which fully and confidently entrust to Christ.
A Prayer for Wisdom and Light
“Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what You would have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false decisions, and that in Your light we might even see light, and in Your straight path may not stumble.” –Book of Common Prayer
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Listen to John’s Podcast! A nerdy humorist at heart, John is a former History teacher who has been featured on Good Morning America and various other shows and podcasts. On his weekly podcast, Talk About That, John goes toe-to-toe with best friend and comedian Jonnie W. in hilariously real and genuinely insightful conversations about life, history, current culture, faith—and all the things in between. He earned a B.A. in History and a M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Tennessee. He lives near Nashville together with his wife and daughter, where he has served as an executive and teaching pastor at The Church At Pleasant Grove for over twenty years.
