by Ken Lim
I had a casual chat over lunch with a colleague this week. At one point, I asked him about how his wife was coping with working from home. Though his wife has a specific work function, she was recently roped in to a project, and she soon found herself to be under taking a project manager’s role, something which she was not prepared for. But according to my colleague, she seemed to be doing well and was able to help the project progress. I was curious and asked if his wife had ever considered taking up that role as part of her job scope. My colleague had asked his wife the same question, but her response was that she didn’t think she was up to it. However, my colleague felt that her personality and competencies made her a very suitable candidate for a project manager. He could not understand why she would reject it.
I thought about what the reasons that held her back could be. Could it be that she is not aware of her personal capabilities? Could it be that she has had bad experiences before and therefore decided at some point in her career that she would never take up the role of a project manager? Whatever the reason maybe, a few thoughts came to my mind, “Have I limited myself in any manner due to a bad experience or a temporal failure? Have I decided to deny my identity in Christ because at some point in my life, I have given permission to the “bad things” in my life to limit myself in who God has intended me to be?”
Do not limit who God has intended for you to be. It is time to bring it to God and let Him show you who you really are.
When I think of it, Moses had the same experience. He ran away to live in the desert after murdering an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-15). He permitted that failure to limit himself until God called him (Exodus 3). You know his past experience limited him by looking at his conversation with God. And I thought about Peter who denied Jesus three times (Luke 22:54-62), and was probably living in agony and shame until Jesus restored him by the sea (John 21:15-17).
Have you permitted the “bad things” in your life to limit who God has intended for you to be? It is time to bring it to God and let Hm show you who you really are.