I love Rob Bell and I love Don Miller and I wish I was them. Well maybe not them exactly, but I definately wish I thought like them and I had thier talent.
But I don't. I try my best but ultimately I am just not Rob Bell or Don Miller or any other great writer for that matter.
And when I understand that I can finally move on and start writing like someone else unique.....
Myself.
When I constantly compare myself to other people I am preventing myself from being who I was created to be. I wasn't born to be Rob Bell. I was born to be Paul Robinson.
And when I constantly compare myself to other people it shows a lot about what I think about God.
If you asked me if I thought God is perfect and never makes mistakes I would say yes. But I seem to have some trouble applying that to myself.
Sometimes we get so bogged down by our own faults and our own mess ups that we focus too much on oursleves and not enough on God. We see ourselves and hate ourselves even for not being good enough and we forget that there is more to it than meets the eye.
If we look at who we are and come to the decision that we are not good enough and worthless, then how can we trust our own opinion of ourselves. If I am as worthless as I sometimes see myself, well why would I trust that type of persons opinion.
But thankfully my opinions of myself aren't really worth much. That's good news.
When I base God's view of me on the type of person I am, I am inevitably setting myself up for failure.
God's view of me is always the same.
He loves me.
He loves you.
I can mess up every day and never go anywhere but God will always love me.
How can he love me though when I struggle with porn? Or how I can he love me when I hate my body? Or how can he love me when I keep treating my friends like crap?
Simply,
because he is God. And unlike us he doesn't make mistakes. He created each of us exactly the way he wanted. Yeah sure sometimes we get off track, and need reminded of that, but its still true.
So what does this mean?
Well it means that I can stop trying to earn God's love and favour by trying to be people I am not. We can start focusing on the fact that when God made us he made us exactly so we wouldn't be anyone else. It means that I can stop being anxious and rest in that knowledge and start living my own story.
We should study people like Rob Bell or whoever we look up to. We should learn from them and take away principles of their ministry or writing or art.
But we shouldn't try and just copy it. Because we are doubting God's ability to make something of unique beauty and goodness from our own lives when we do.
Because the world only needs one Rob Bell.
