IF YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY, BE WHO GOD MEANT YOU TO BE
By Michael H. Brown
If you want to be happy, be who God meant you to be. Don't be what your friends think you should be. Don't do what everyone wants you to do. Don't shoot for Hollywood.
Shoot for happiness.
And that means doing what gives you peace. It means doing what brings you closer to Jesus. It means doing what God -- and not everyone else -- meant you to do and expected you to be.
You can not fulfill the mission God has given you unless you are yourself, the way He intended you to be.
God intends some of us to be mailmen and some congressmen and some housewives and in the end He judges on how well we did what He set for us to do, how we handled our missions. Too often, we orient everything to what others will think when we shouldn't care about that. We should care about what heaven thinks. And that judgment is different than the way things are viewed from here (where physical allurements confuse those who seek to materialism).
When we are ourselves, we are closest to God because God made us and when we allow Him to orient us, when we allow Him to materialize our plans -- when we let go -- we have His happiness. What joy to simply walk the path that He set! What a joy to ignore the competition of a world that is blinded by the flesh! What a joy to rise above the judgments of those obsessed with attaining things that in the end they can't keep.
When we die, God will judge in great part on how close we ended our lives to what He intended as well as how much we loved. Were we terrific, spiritual housewives, great fathers, spiritual mailmen who spread His example, who worked in the places He had positioned us -- or did we try to attain things because we aimed for societal stature? Were we good at housework, plumbing, rearing children -- or did we force ourselves into "prestigious" occupations that were never designated for us? Did we preach His word or were we afraid of what others might think?
One of the wisest things we can realize is that whatever role God assigned us is as important as any other in the scheme of eternity. We're all equal. And we have to put God's desires above all others. This is key: not caring how we are viewed by others and instead seeking the happiness that God grants those who carry forth the mission He has designated.
Doing that means looking in the mirror and not worrying about how others view us but asking Him what we should be.