A great example is Job. When tragedy fell upon him, his friends tried to convince him that it was because he had sinned against God. They pressured him to testify about that sin and repent. But when Job searched his heart to understand what he had experienced and felt, he could not agree with his friends’ spiritual-sounding diagnoses and advice. He remained true to himself, and in doing so he did not sin against God.

Another example is the man born blind in John chapter 9. After Jesus healed him, the religious leaders pressured him to denounce Jesus. They used strong Biblical arguments and relied on the solid, conservative understanding of the law common in the Jewish community at that time. But the formerly blind man did not give in to their pressure. He held fast to his own experience of what God had actually done in his life. He remained true to himself, even though it cost him dearly, and through that experience he learned that Jesus was the Christ.

There are plenty of other examples in the Bible, and I’m sure that you and other people can find them.

When God truly calls a person to defy the common wisdom and differentiate himself from his family and community, he will experience opposition and rejection. People will mischaracterize his motives and call him ungodly. But you raise an interesting question: How do we know when God is leading us to deny ourselves, to submit to others and follow the conventional wisdom? And how do we know when God is calling us to do something different? There is no easy answer. In order to do this, we need to have a robust personal relationship with God and an awareness of how he is working in our lives. And we need to understand ourselves better than we currently do. We need to know how to search our hearts in light of God’s word so that his Spirit illumiates our true motives. Knowing oneself is not wrong; it is essential.

Writing testimony is a tool that can help us crystallize our love relationship with God. But like any method carried out by fallen man, it can easily degenerate to habitual ritual, legalism, a sense of duty, writing before people, feeling guilty if I don’t write, thinking/feeling I earn browny points (with God and my shepherd) if I write, assessing and judging others based on what they write or whether they write, etc. Thus writing testimony, though potentially good, can easily become a form of “pharisaism,” don’t you think?

Let me give a concrete example. This past week, we had group Bible study on 1 Samuel chapter 17: David and Goliath. When we have studied this passage in the past, we have emphasized young David’s fighting spirit, his boldness, his faith in the living God, his outrage over the fact that God’s name was being dishonored by the Philistines, etc. All of which are true and useful to discuss. But this time, the focus of our Bible study was David’s astonishing level of emotional maturity. Although he was still a young man, he knew his own self — his own strengths and limitations, his background and experiences tending his father’s sheep, his skill with a sling, etc. — and using that self knowledge, he understood that God was calling him to do something outrageous and unheard of. His elders kept telling him to be quiet. His older brother accused him of being wicked and conceited. King Saul was intrigued by David’s spirit, and Saul gave David his own armor and sword to help him look and act like a “proper” soldier. David tried them on, but soon David realized they mismatched his body and skill set. David said, “I am not used to them,” took them off, went down to the stream and selected five smooth stones. David’s trying on the armor and sword is a powerful metaphor. As we go about our lives, we are often tempted and pressured to put on other people’s armor. This pressure comes from society, from the expectations of family members and other people close to us, from our own desires for honor and popularity, and from well-intentioned people who, out of ignorance, try to mold us into an image that suits them but does not suit us. Resisting this pressure can be incredibly difficult, especially for a young person. Young David successfully resisted these pressures and was greatly used by God, not simply because he knew God, but because he knew himself.

But I digress. To study this passage, our Bible study groups met twice. In the first meeting, we did a standard UBF-style group study: reading the passage carefully, noticing the details, answering questions about the characters and events, etc. which were all very necessary and helpful. In the second meeting, we devoted the entire time to understanding and discussing how the passage personally applied to us. The questions that we used began with this instruction: “Make your answers about yourself, not about the characters in the passage.”

For example, one of the questions was:

“Describe an experience in your own life where you either (a) overcame pressure and remained true to yourself, or (b) gave into pressure and became something that you were not. Did your relationship with God play a role?”

And another question was:

“What forces or pressures from people and circumstances cause you to shrink back in fear, or to ‘wear armor’ that does not fit?”

Needless to say, our members found the second meeting *very* challenging. After many years of inductive Bible study, we found it easy to answer questions about the characters and events in the passage. But it was incredibly difficult to talk about ourselves and share these feelings and experiences in a group setting. Not because we were shy. Not because we were trying to hide something. But simply because we did not know ourselves very well.

The fact is that, for many of us, our true selves are hidden because we have spent so much of our lives trying to be someone else. In our pursuit of acceptance, honor and love, we have tried to force ourselves into lifestyles that do not match our character, backgrounds, resources or circumstances. We live vicariously off of other people’s spiritual experiences rather than directly interacting with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Rather than doing the things that God has truly prepared us for and is calling us to do right now, we live in a world of make-believe, imagining that we are one day going to become someone else.

Knowing ourselves is very difficult because the heart is deceitful. But Jesus is the true light who illuminates and shines. The Spirit of God searches our innermost places. The word of God is the mirror that reflects our true nature back to us.

If our Bible study is not helping us to become honest with ourselves and understand who we truly are, then we are not handling the word of God correctly.