Who do you want to be?

My students in youth group are doing a study on "Becoming a Young Woman of God."

In our last lesson we looked at a list of characteristics, the girls circled what they wanted to be: popular; mean; kind; sympathetic; passionate; musical; arrogant etc.

In that lesson we talked about the ways that our choices determine the women that we become. We watched clips from 13 going on 30 and had a very good time.

Tonight we talked about goals, about short term and long term gratification, and about the steps we need to take to become the women God is calling us, and we want to be.

The name of this blog is becoming what we love. It was a quote I had just come across this quote "We cannot help conforming ourselves to what we love."by Francis de Sales on the Sojourners blog, and it really struck a chord. I want to be loving, I want to be kind, I want to be generous. I want to be a reflection of Jesus. Yet, my life shows that I'm conforming to something else far too often. There are things that I love that cause me to conform to different patterns than those that I want to be.

One of the verses that we read tonight was Proverbs 14:12*

¹² There is a way that appears to be right,

but in the end it leads to death.

So here's my prayer for myself, and maybe it will become your prayer as well.

Lord, help me to fall more in love with you, so that the thing that I conform to is you. Help me to make choices that help me to become the woman [or man] that you'd have me to be. I want to be like you, I want to love you.

*For Richard's take on this verse check out his posterous "Vespa de los muertos." (When I told him that we had read this verse he started repeating it but SCREAMING the word "death." so that it lasted at least as long as the rest of the sentence.)