Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

Just Be You

(?)

THERE IS ONLY ONE YOU. In our overly-populated, identity-crisis era it is easy to forget this. Individuality is played down. We are asked to conform to the "system."

This results in what I'd like to call an image syndrome, especially among the members of God's family called Christians. My mind lands upon a fig-picker from Tekoa . . . a rough, raw-boned shepherd who was about as subtle as a Mack truck on the Santa Ana Freeway. He was tactless, unsophisticated, loud, uneducated, and independent. His name was Amos. That was no problem. He was a preacher. That was a problem.

He didn't fit the image . . . but he refused to let that bother him. He was called (of all things) to bring the morning messages in the king's sanctuary. His words penetrated those vaulted ceilings and icy pews like flaming arrows. In his own way, he pounced on sin like a hen on a june bug, and the "image keepers" told him to be quiet. Amos, realizing their attempt to straitjacket his method and restructure his message, replied:

I'm not a professional prophet, and I was never trained to be one. I'm just a shepherd, and I take care of sycamore-fig trees. But the LORD called me away from my flock and told me, "Go and prophesy to my people in Israel."

AMOS 7:14–15

Amos was not about to be something he wasn't! God made him, called him, and gave him a message to be communicated in his own, unique way.

Are you an Amos? You don't "fit the mold?" You don't sound like every other Christian . . . or look like the "standard" saint . . . or act like the majority? Hallelujah! Don't sweat it, my friend. Now—don't you dare change just because you're outnumbered. Then you wouldn't be you.

What the church needs is a lot more faithful fig-pickers who remain themselves, regardless.