Who Do You Want to Be?

Nov 5

There are questions God asks that seem simple until you realize they are inviting you to see your life differently.

For me, that question was, “Who do you want to be?”

But the journey to that question actually began in Scripture.

I had been studying the verse, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.”— Psalm 37:23 KJV. As I sat with those words, I began thinking more deeply about what it actually means for God to order our steps.

For a long time, I think I understood that primarily in terms of God determining the direction of my life. And certainly, He does. But I began to see that His sovereignty doesn't mean He micromanages every decision I make as though I have no meaningful participation in my own life.

There is an orientation to my life. My steps are being ordered toward something. They aren't random. My life exists within the foreknowledge and purposes of God.

And yet, I still walk.

I choose.
I plan.
I set goals.
I make decisions.
I move.

That realization began opening something in me.

I started seeing divine sovereignty and human responsibility not as opposing ideas, but as truths I could hold together. Because God foreknew me, chose me, and predestined me according to His purposes, my choices don't somehow threaten His sovereignty. My goals aren't meaningless. My plans aren't automatically evidence that I am trying to control my own life.

They can actually become some of the means through which His purposes unfold.

Jeremiah 10:23 began to come alive for me: “I know, Lord, that our lives are not our own. We are not able to plan our own course.” (NLT)

There is something deeply comforting about that.

My path has been made secure and purposeful in Him. And within that security, I am genuinely choosing, acting, growing, discovering, and becoming.

Then something happened that made all of this theology deeply personal.

I was having a conversation with someone very special to me. He began asking me questions about myself—questions that required me to think deeply about who I was, what I wanted, and how I saw my life.

And I found some of those questions surprisingly difficult to answer.

Somewhere along the way, I had become so focused on surrendering to God's will that I had stopped asking myself what I wanted.

I had stopped dreaming.

I had stopped imagining.

And that's when I sensed God ask me:

“Daughter, who do you want to be?”

That question threw me.

Why would God ask me who I wanted to be?

I thought I was supposed to be who He said I was.

But He began showing me something I hadn't understood about surrender.

I had interpreted surrender as though everything I wanted had to be put away. My dreams. My ambitions. My ideas. My goals. Somewhere in my understanding of yielding my life to God, I had begun to believe that the safest way to surrender was to stop wanting anything for myself.

But that wasn't what He was asking of me.

The key was alignment.

I could dream with Him.

I could make plans with Him.

I could set goals, explore possibilities, develop gifts, choose directions, and then continually bring those things before Him—trusting Him to affirm, reshape, redirect, or even close doors when necessary.

And then came the words that changed something in me:

“You don't disappear because you surrender to Me.”

I felt as though God was giving me permission to dream again.

He brought my attention back to the 29-year-old version of me—the young woman who once carried lofty dreams about her life but eventually put many of them down.

“Remember that young lady? She's still in there. You could develop her.”

That was deeply intimate for me.

Because the God who was inviting me to discover this woman is the same God who already foreknew me.

He chose me.

He predestined me according to His purposes.

And somehow, within the security of His sovereignty, He has given me room to become.

That's the beautiful mystery I'm learning to embrace.

God's plan for my life doesn't eliminate discovery. His sovereignty doesn't erase participation. His purposes don't require the disappearance of my personality, creativity, desires, gifts, or dreams.

He gives me space to discover who I want to be while remaining surrendered to who He is calling me to become.

And perhaps this is the part that moves me most:

For Him, I'm already her.

He already knows the woman I'm still discovering.

He knew her before I could imagine her. He saw her when I was 29. He saw her through every season when I stopped dreaming. He sees the choices, growth, surrender, courage, and transformation that are still ahead of me.

Maybe He's simply waiting for me to discover her.

To develop her.

To participate with Him in becoming her.

To Be Her.

So now the question that began this journey becomes the question I want to leave with you: