John's Identity Statement

Recently my wife stepped out of her comfort zone and began posting on our family blog site with two posts in the same day. One of those blog posts she shared on proverbs 31 as part of her bible study. This morning, she showed me a blog post that I read from Mandisa which caught my attention and opened my mind to some of my inner demons so to speak. 

My biggest issue that I have battled over the years is the feeling of not being good enough and always beating myself up when I do not succeed.  When things do not go the way that I want, I shut myself down and throw my own little pity party about how my objective failed. I question myself and my abilities! Why can’t I have the success that everyone else has? What am I suppose to be doing with my life? These are all fairly simple questions, right? 

John, the loser that will not succeed.

John, the boy always picked last because you’re not good enough.

Here are some things about me that you need to know and how in some ways I have tried to make some changes in my life. First, I did not grow up going to church and had no spiritual life until I met my wife Catherine in 2006. And there is a funny thing about what men will do just to be with someone. I started going to church with Catherine and was baptized that same year.  I started to see a change in my life, slowly at first but it was gradual. I still fight the battle of pity parties but not as much as before I got involved with church. 

However, it was not until September of 2008 that I got a real wake up call. The guys at our church had gotten together for a movie night out and saw the movie Courageous. Talk about a slap in the face! I thought I had started getting things right in my life but I was far from it. I had made mistakes in my adult life that I know I am going to have to answer for. We all will when we are called “HOME”. What I realized is that I have to be that spiritual leader for my house. I have children that I can either allow to float through life like I did and have to learn about God and Jesus Christ, our Savior as an adult or I can get them involved now and teach them to love God. In the end, I said “I will” and I meant it. 

Shortly after that movie I started this blog as a way for me to reach out to other men in hopes that they will have the same resolve I have and that they will identify themselves as the Spiritual Leader in their home. My identity statement:

“As for me and my house, We will serve the Lord” –Joshua 24:15 

It is important for my children to grow up with a better spiritual background that I did. I already see it in all of my children, the older three are involved in their own church functions and my five year old sometimes begs me to let her say the “amen’s” instead of her daddy. And she immediately steps in when Daddy is not at home. I need them to love God more than anything else. As a father with four girls and one boy in the house it is that important because if they love God more than themselves, they will be in a better place than I was at their age. And they do not have to play catch up.

So the questions I asked earlier are really not that simple. Why can’t I have the success that everyone else has? To whose standards am I measuring myself? The only standard I should measure up to is Jesus Christ. That in itself is a hard standard to follow. Instead we should be doing everything to live our life as Christ-like as possible and remember that sin will always be knocking at our door. What am I supposed to be doing with my life? The better question should be, am I doing what God wants me to do? In the end, it is His plan for us and we have to accept it, whether we agree with it or not. 

John, the confident child of God (Ephesians 3:12)

John, the victorious child of God (Romans 8:37)

This song best identifies how I want to live my life and is the best influence on me: