Reflections based on 1 Samuel 16:1–13.

‘People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart’ (v7)

As our children have just started a new term, I’ve decided it is a good time to start a new series of devotions (particularly after a bit of a break over the summer). So much has been shaken this year – including, for many of us, our sense of self. With much of our freedom limited for months, and many of us affected personally by Covid, we may feel quite different than we did at the start of the year. We listened to our son’s new headmaster give his ‘welcome back to school’ address last night; he recognised that the pupils will have been changed by lockdown – and that their personalities may be somewhat different too.

Whether we are going back to school or our workplace, starting a new school, as our son is, or simply trying to regain a sense of routine, embracing the challenges as well as the opportunities can be harder when we aren’t sure how to live out of a sense of who we truly are as Christians day by day. Too often we can live out of a warped sense of self, allowing those around us, or our circumstances, to influence who we are. We can struggle with our identity when, ultimately, it can only be found in Jesus. 

Part of stepping into who we are is learning to walk into the freedom already won for us, but the other part is about discipline and learning to cultivate the positive qualities of our new selves along with the help of the Holy Spirit.

So where does our sense of self come from? What we do, from what those around us think of us? What we think of ourselves? How do we measure ourselves? Is our first port of call to go to God and His Word to see what He says about us – or do we rely on what society is telling us and what it says we should be like?

I love the reminder that 1 Samuel gives us. God had told Samuel to go to the house of Jesse, as he would find the next king of Israel there. But his expectation of what the king would look like caused God to remind him that what is most important is what is going on inside a person – not their outer appearance. As we start this study on ‘self’, let’s not forget that the way we judge ourselves is so often different to the way God judges. He is most concerned about our spiritual wellbeing and about us coming into the fullness of what it means to be ‘new creations’ in Jesus.

Prayer: Thank You Lord that to understand who I truly am, I need only look to You. Help me, through the coming days, to learn to see myself as You see me. Amen.