Just like in a marriage, you cannot have a good relationship with God if you don’t know yourself. Salvation is not just about praying and reading the Bible. It’s also about discovering yourself, both the bad and the good.
In this post, we explore bible verses about finding yourself and how to go about it.
What You'll Learn Today
The Importance of Knowing Yourself
Many of us go through life and practice our faith almost robotically. We do what’s expected of us – like going to Church and praying with the rosary – but we don’t really have a personal relationship with God.
The problem with that is that if you don’t know yourself, then you are not really living out your salvation in full.
It means:
- You have no idea what purpose God has for your life.
- You don’t know what weaknesses/sins you are vulnerable to and need to guard against.
- You don’t question the state of your heart and whether it’s pure in the eyes of God.
- You don’t know your position in the Body of Christ and what role you have to play in the fellowship.
- You could be deceiving yourself about your morality, righteousness or faith.
- You easily conform to the world and others, instead of following the path of righteousness.
…and so much more.
If you think about it, salvation is a two-fold process. One, you commit to discovering and embracing the grace of God. Essentially, you set off on a journey to knowing God and drawing closer to him every day.
Two, you also set off on a journey of self discovery.
To be saved, you have to have judged what’s in your heart and found it wanting. From the moment you accept Christ, you need to constantly find yourself to make sure you are still on the right path.
How To Find Yourself
Finding God and finding yourself are intertwined. You cannot rely on yourself to find yourself. Your heart is deceitful.
Jeremiah 17:9-10 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Finding yourself involves asking God to help you discover who you are and what you are meant to do. And when you discover bad things in your heart, it’s only God who can transform you.
As King David cried to the Lord in Psalm 51:10: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
One thing to keep in mind as you find yourself is that self discovery is painful.
You’ll uncover things you didn’t realize you had hidden in your heart like jealousy, greed, lust, and others. But it’s a necessary process.
Here are some tips on how find yourself with bible verses to guide you.
1. Be baptized in water and the Holy Spirit
Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
To find yourself, you must be led by the Holy Spirit. If you are not yet baptized, do it as soon as possible and then welcome the Holy Spirit into your heart.
We’ve been given the Holy Spirit as a helper, to guide us on the path of righteousness and help us keep our hearts pure.
2. Pray
1 John 5:14-15 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
When you start truly finding yourself, you’ll find praying to be more important than ever.
Above all, you’ll have to spend time in prayer asking God for forgiveness for all the sins and weaknesses you discover in yourself.
You’ll also need to ask God to give you strength to overcome your weaknesses and make your faith stronger.
3. Read the Bible
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Reading the Bible is like having God’s voice constantly guiding you in your faith. It helps you judge your heart, thoughts and intentions.
Reading the word of God also helps you discover the kind of person you should be.
It’s not enough to discover the bad things in your heart and get rid of them; you also need to replace them with the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Praying and reading the Bible will gradually transform you into a new person.
There’s no strict formula for reading the Bible. You can read it from cover to cover, read from different books each day, start with the gospels and so on.
The most important thing is that you read and understand.
4. Be silent
Psalm 4:4 Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.
Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God.
We are understandably busy. After all, we have to put bread on the table, and workout, and catch up with what’s happening on social media, and watch Netflix and a million other things.
We often neglect the importance of slowing down, finding a quiet place and pondering in our hearts.
To discover yourself, you have to talk to yourself and constantly search your heart with the Holy Spirit guiding you.
But you cannot do that if your mind is always occupied with work, people, entertainment, food and other things.
That’s why it is important to find a few minutes of quiet everyday. Even ten minutes can be really helpful.
Then ask yourself questions like the following:
- Have I kept my heart pure today?
- What sins have I committed so that I can ask God for forgiveness and the grace to avoid repeating them?
- Have I moved forward in my journey of self discovery? If so, what have I discovered about myself today, good or bad?
- What can I do to become a better person tomorrow than I was today? If your quiet time is in the morning, ask yourself how you can become a better person today than you were yesterday.
5. Listen
Proverbs 1:8-9 Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.
God’s wisdom doesn’t just directly come from him or through the Bible. Sometimes, it also comes through other people.
That’s why it is important to listen to others, especially those who are ahead of you in the spiritual journey.
It can be the Sunday sermon or a fellow brethren advising you on something. It can be especially difficult to listen when someone is pointing out something not so good in you.
But that’s when it’s most important to open your heart.
Here’s another great proverb on listening.
Proverbs 15:31-32: The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise. Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence.
Best Books Of the Bible To Help You Find Yourself
If you want to read an entire book of the Bible to help you in your journey of self-discover, I suggest starting with the five books of wisdom.
These are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs.
These books are not heavy on theology, prophecies or history, so they are relatively easy reads especially for spiritually young believers.
They contain immense wisdom on God, the meaning of life, justice, righteousness, sin, the heart and emotions.
These collections of songs, poems, hymns and dialogues will help you answer some of the biggest questions you have about yourself, your purpose in life and the importance of believing in God.
One of the best things about the people featured in these books is that they are not perfect or always strong in their faith. Like us, they are people who are also finding themselves.
Take Job, for example. He experiences deep loss including that of his family. As he processes that pain and questions God, he discovers a lot about himself.
Ecclesiastes can sometimes feel like it was written by someone on the verge of giving up. But it’ll help you find the meaning of life.
Once you are done with the books of Wisdom, try one of the Gospels next then dive into the epistles. The teachings of Jesus and letters written by the Apostles will ground your faith and help you discover your place in the Body of Christ.
