Raw.

For those you joining me in this blogging adventure, hold tight to what you know and be prepared to read something different from the social norm.

Humanity is designed by God. Humanity is created with purpose. Humanity is accountable to destiny.
Adam and Eve were created naked and bare. Original creation was most themselves when in their raw state, completely known by God and in His presence. Current creation is no different.

At the end of my freshman year at Moody Bible Institute is was a commonality to hear a classmate say, "I've changed so much!" in a way to explain the transition. This concept was a bit unsettling for me. I didn't feel that I had changed immensely, but rather that I was more myself than I had ever been.
The more we follow God, the more we become like the image we are created to exemplify, the cross.
The more we follow God, the more we find out who we truly are.

Reading Confessions by Augustine, translated by Garry Willis, I came across something spectacular. The preface reads,

"The intense innerness of the Confessions comes from Augustine's conviction that God is to be sought within ourselves, not in outward preaching or observation. Since human beings are made in God's image, God can be understood by them only through self-observation, a deep probing of one's own makeup that has made some people call Augustine the father of modern philosophy. Even Scripture, he believes, speaks within us, by God's direct inspiration. "I was outside myself, while you were inside me." He addresses God as "deeper in me that I am in me" (intimior intimo meo). His book call us back into ourselves, to our own inner depths." (xii)

My writing is an express of the call to look back at myself, at the depths of who I am.
As I write, I want it to be a raw expression. I'm a bit nervous of the response it may create in the various readers, but I want to be faithful to the conviction stimulated by the Holy Spirit in my writing. I'm flawed. I'm broken. I'm blessed. I'm more myself than I ever have been, and I love the journey God is taking me on as I follow Him.

"When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory...Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created Him" Colossians 3:4,8-9