God is not interested in changing you. He already has. The new DNA is set. God wants you to believe that he has already changed you so that he can get on with the process of maturing you into who you already are. Trust opens the way for this process… If you do not trust God, you can’t mature, because your focus is already messed up. You’re still trying to change enough to be labeled godly.

The goal of my whole life, since I was first saved at the age of six, has been to "change" or transform into the person God wants me to be. I’d never heard, not until I moved to Nashville and began counseling here, that I already am the person God is pleased with.

Perhaps I’m getting this wrong. Perhaps I’m not reading TrueFaced or Abba’s Child correctly. At least, I still have trouble believing my eyes as I read the words. And yes, in true Lu form (which I stole from my friend Bing), these books sail across the room rather frequently because of what I read within. It just does not seem possible that 42 years of lessons deeply ingrained into my soul could be so wrong. But then there it is again:

A healthy response to the question, Who am I? is, "I am a person already deeply pleasing to God."

Could this be true? Do you believe this about yourself? Could this possibly be real? Does God delight in me just because I am, and not because I do?

The funny thing about me asking this even now is that the last five years have been non-stop experiences that drive this… truth?… home. Over and over God has shown me that His love and pleasure have nothing to do with what I do and everything to do with who I am. Yet even now my spirit resists such a simple yet life-altering idea. Maybe its because it takes control (such as it is) of my life and my sin out of my hands. It means I am no longer responsible for my own goodness, righteousness, loveliness, holiness. And it means I can no longer take credit for, or solace in the credit for, such things. God is the one responsible for what is in me and who I am. Because He made me.

This is a hard one for a girl like me, who’s lived all these years outwardly claiming a grace-based life in Christ but inwardly trapped in a works-based paradigm.