Getting your bearing

<p>GETTING YOUR BEARINGS.  To be able to go in a direction that will make us sure that we reach the goal or destination we are meant to arrive at in life we need to know the answer to three questions; Who am I? What is happening to me? And What am I meant to do? We need to know who we are so that we can understand what is happening to us, and we need to know what is happening to us so that we can know what we are meant to do.</p> <p>Who am I?   In other words –How do you see yourself? If you weren’t sure you could look in a mirror and see your reflection! You see an image. But to know who we are in our inner self we have to get in touch with the self image we have of ourselves – reflected back to us by the ideas of other people that have shaped us and formed us.… we don’t do self-analysis as child – work out how to maximise our potential for a great future. We take on board what we are told we are – the positive - approved, encouraged, loved unconditionally -  or negative - criticised, discouraged or ignored, and we end up with a positive or negative self image, mostly a muddle of both. Some people cope with the negative feedback better than others and hurt feelings and woundedness is experienced by everybody and that can stay with us -  BUT God has made provision through The Holy Spirit for us to be healed from all the pain of that harm we do to one another in our lives. The one big and amazing truth that sets us free from that confusion and pain is the understanding of the wonder of  what God’s idea is of who we are - created in God’s image and likeness. Genesis 1:26…Let us make man and woman in our own image (selem) and likeness (demut)… Genesis 1:27… And God made man and woman in his own image… The complete plan of God for humanity was to become not just the image, shadow, but to also become the likeness, substance, reality. Three times in the New Testament it is said that the Old testament Law and Commandments were a shadow of the things to come, because the Substance, or reality was of Christ. (Col