It Takes a Long Time to Sound like Yourself

In Philippians 3, Paul rants about the religious elite who dog everyone with their tight-fisted morality. He then confesses that he knows this so well because he lived it so long. And he recounts his decades-long trajectory towards ‘getting his s*** together’ by talking about his lineage, his birth, his education, and his achievements (‘a Hebrew of Hebrews’ blah blah blah in 3:5). But then he turns a corner by admitting that it didn’t work. All his great plans to bring the disorder of his life under control, to curb his passions, to reign in his unruly soul - none of that worked. He calls it ‘not having a righteousness of my own’ (3:9).

Instead, he found out that he was loved. Accepted. Embraced. And that’s when he started to find his real voice, his deepest desires. That’s when he could be who he was in all his beauty and brokenness and not be shamed from the inside or shouted down from the outside. And that’s why his life goal became:

I want to know Christ. - Philippians 3:8

It took Paul a long time to figure this out. How about you? Do a little meditation on this image and quote below (and maybe to this song). How are you at finding your true voice?