“Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.”
1 John 2:6 NLT
Together with a friend, I recently launched an online learning business. I hope this will provide a source of income, freeing me to pursue a life of prayer and spiritual mentoring of others here in the Oratory. Every hermit is instructed to take responsibility for their own income. In doing this there is that perennial question of describing myself in a way that might give others confidence in my training competence. The challenge is always to resist overselling oneself and simply describing one’s capability as a trainer of others.
Over the years, I have experienced a lot of identity change. Life experience has made considerable impact upon this, while the practices I adopt equally shape who I grow into. My identity is never static. It is forever influenced by the habits I adopt.
When I began to explore this way of prayer, a clear call God placed before me, and one which I took up with a fair measure of reluctance, I discovered there was a difference between praying and being a prayer. For all my years as a Christian, and even before, I had prayed. It was part of the landscape of discipleship that I embraced and practised. Yet, praying made little impression upon my identity. It was more like a smart phone app I utilised before switching to another app for some other activity. Slowly, I discovered that if I was to grow into a prayer, it was about identity change. It was about those characteristics that determined who I was. It involved letting go of things and people so that I might embrace the new me, crafted through the Spirit’s invitation.
Slowly over 15 years I have established my prayer habits. I can now contrast my contemporary self with the person I was 15 years ago, and I am shocked at the difference I perceive. I think others perceive it too, leaving some confused and uncertain of the person I am today. No matter, for I now inhabit the habits I developed through obedience and the identity that has emerged through the practice of those habits.
QUESTION
What habits do you need to stop and start in order to become more like Christ?
PRAYER
Father God, may my identity be that of one made new in Christ.