Does the Bible Say I Can Be Whatever I Want to Be?

God’s Path Is a Greater Calling

Gideon lived during a time of terrible oppression for the people of Israel. He found his identity between a rock and a hard place. So did everyone else at the time. Their entire culture was defined by this oppression and so as individuals, the oppression bled into their personal identities as well. The writer of Judges describes it this way:

“So they (the Midianites teamed up with the Amalekites) would camp against them (the Israelites) and destroy the produce of the earth as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel as well as no sheep, ox, or donkey” (Judges 6:4, parenthetical names added).

In the midst of this severe survival-mode season of seven years, God meets with Gideon.

“Then the angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press in order to save it from the Midianites. The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.’ Then Gideon said to him, ‘O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.’ The LORD looked at him and said, Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?’ He said to Him, ‘O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my fathers house.’ But the LORD said to him, Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man.’ So Gideon said to Him, ‘If now I have found favor in Your sight, then show me a sign that it is You who speak with me. Please do not depart from here, until I come back to You, and bring out my offering and lay it before You.’ And He said, I will remain until you return’” (Judges 6:11-18).

Gideon was shocked, not only by the sudden appearance of an angel, but also shocked by the angel calling him valiant. Couldn’t the angel clearly see he was anything but a valiant warrior? He was a scared farmer! Or at least that was all Gideon knew of himself.

We can be much like Gideon; thinking we are carving out a corner of personal freedom for ourselves, but entirely missing a much larger calling that would bring true freedom to us and, as in Gideon’s case, others as well. Gideon went on to tear down his family’s idols and then lead the people of Israel to fight and win back their freedom, both spiritually and politically.

But the takeaway from Gideon, wasn’t that he became whatever he wanted to be. In fact, I’m pretty sure he just wanted to remain a little-known farmer. He found freedom when he became what God called him to become.

God’s Path May Not Be Our Plan for Ourselves

Moses was in a similar situation (Exodus 3). He had been raised as an adopted son in Pharaoh’s court. He tried to stand up to the injustice he saw, but it went badly and he fled Egypt for fear of punishment after killing a harsh task master. Decades went by and he created a new life for himself as a shepherd, husband and father. But when God called him back to Egypt to be the spokesman for freedom that his people needed, Moses didn’t jump at the calling. In fact, he explained to God all the reasons he was the wrong person for the job, to the point of somewhat testing God’s patience with him.

“Then Moses said to the LORD, ‘Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’ The LORD said to him, Who has made mans mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say.’ But he said, Please, Lord, now send the message by whomever You will’” (Exodus 4:10-13).

Moses had already gone two rounds with God, questioning the pitfalls of His plan and calling Moses to be part of it. The verse right after the above quotation says, “Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses” (Exodus 4:14). Moses pushed God with excuses until the Lord was irritated with him! Finally, Moses yielded to God’s to plan. The baby boy saved from Pharaoh’s extermination order, raised in the palace as an adopted son (so he understood the politics and dynamics of the royal family and also had a personal relationship with pharaoh like no one else), finally acquiesced to God’s sovereign wisdom and plan.

It was Moses leaning into God’s calling, rather than choosing his own path, that enabled him to become a vessel of freedom and blessing to the people of Israel, but also to us as we read and learn from all the Scripture God wrote through him.

God’s Path Can Be Hard

We all have goals and desires, just like those people in Scripture did all those years ago. We all have ideas about what will bring us joy or significance. But oftentimes the path to finding our life’s satisfaction isn’t in the external things we set our sights on.

I would like to be a lot of things. Most of them, as the years tick by, are turning out to be goals that might not bloom. But the purpose of some of those desires was to take me on a journey to learn and grow.

For almost a decade, my husband and I couldn’t have children. I really wanted to be a mom. For the sake of expediency, I won’t drag you through the years of infertility, but for a variety of reasons, that desire to be a mom was not fulfillable. In the meantime, I learned many valuable lessons. I learned that faith is not believing really hard that you will get what you want; instead faith is trusting in God’s goodness and resting in His sovereignty when I don’t have what I want.

I also learned that people speak a lot of really junky things into other people’s pain. Through that, I learned to have compassion for others differently than I had before our infertility journey. I learned that when a struggle is both deeply personal but also public, that person needs special prayer because the enemy seems to camp on those kinds of pain in a particularly difficult way. I learned things about myself, God, marriage and life that all came from not being whoever I wanted to be. Those lessons ended up being crucial to making me the woman I am now – the woman I was meant to be. And they have shaped the mom God eventually made me become.

Sometimes, we find our truest and best selves not in being whatever we want to be, but in learning the hard lessons of not being whatever we wanted to be. But always, we will find our highest satisfaction in life when we embrace all that God has called us to be!