Sunday we start a teaching series called The Skin You’re In.

Bottom line: God shaped us to thrive in our own skin, not to struggle as someone’s second-rate twin. Pardon the cheesy rhyme…but you’ll remember it.

Let’s be honest, though, we’ve all wished that we could switch places with someone else. We want to sing and play like John Mayer, because he has money and fame; but we consistently get booed off stage on Rock Band 2. We want our boss’s job, and think we can do it better, but we don’t like to lead or handle confrontation. We want to be a scientist, but struggle through algebra. We want to be a doctor, but faint at the sight of blood, and hate being awake 48-hours straight. And, on and on the list goes.

Essentially, we covet a personality, skill or calling in someone else, and continuously bury or discredit our own.

And, that’s just what we do to ourselves. What about external pressures to be who we’re not? Your dad wanted you to be an all-state athlete like him, so you played the game (and may have even been great at it) but inside you only wanted to play guitar in a rock band, paint masterpieces as a starving artist, or be the best chess player in all the ninth grade; or visa versa. Or, your mom wanted you to go to college and be a career woman just like her, so you got the grades, got in that school and then that grad school, then you climbed the ladder; but inwardly you’d rather be a full-time mom and nurture a great home for your family; or visa versa. Your spouse wants you to be more extraverted like him or her, but, no matter how hard you try, you never seem to be energized by constantly meeting and interacting with new groups of people. Instead you like a few familiar relationships that you can engage and retreat from when necessary; or visa versa. You’ve shown a lot of competence and passion in one area at work, so your boss promotes you to oversee the entire department; and then you quickly realize your skill-set didn’t get promoted with your position. You’re not a manager or strategist, but a great individual contributor. Now, instead of coming home jazzed about your job, you come home feeling stressed, incompetent and want to kick the dog.

Everywhere we turn, whether it’s an internal dissatisfaction with us, or someone else’s pressure over us, we don’t like the skin we’re in and we’re afraid to be ourselves.

Let’s talk about this Sunday. What does Scripture promise? And how does following Jesus change and free us…to be us?