How To Start Your Own Personal Growth Journey Pt. 3

by Brad Spangler

Now that you have been thinking about your purpose for this season of life and how you would like to serve other people, it’s time to come back to our original question. Who do you need to become to in order to fulfill God’s call or vision for your life? When you see a clear picture of where you want to go and what you want to do, it becomes easier to see the gaps, which means that your personal growth plan will act as the road map to get you from where you currently are to where you want to be. This leads us to the second component of your growth plan, which is identity-based statements. 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus made 7 “I AM” statements that were referring to His identity as the Jewish Messiah. Likewise, when we say things like, “I am an introvert” or “I am a hard worker,” we also identify ourselves as being a certain way, and how we see ourselves will ultimately determine how we behave. 

Recently I was talking with a coworker, and he asked me the question, “How is it that you have enough energy to go to the gym after you get off of work?” After thinking about it for a few seconds, my reply was simply, “It’s what I do.” You see, for 20 plus years, I have cultivated an identity as “someone who works out.” So regardless of how I feel from day to day, I will make sure that I train 3-4 times per week no matter what. I call this the “people like me do things like this” kind of mindset that we want to develop.

When you have a clear vision of who you need to become, I encourage you to write down “I am becoming…” statements in your personal growth plan. To me, this helps keep integrity between my heart and my head. I realize that I am not this type of person yet, but I do have the capacity to grow into this type of person. For instance, a couple of years ago, I fell into a common trap that many people in vocational ministry often do. I started prioritizing what I was doing for God more than I did my own personal relationship with Him. The result of this left me feeling empty and frustrated in many ways. When I identified this gap, I knew that to run my race well and last long term as a missionary; I needed to become a more devoted follower of Jesus. Not in what I did for Him, but in my intimacy with Him.

Even in the gospel account of Luke 2:52 NKJV, we read, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” Jesus was ultimately the Jewish Messiah, but He still had to immerse Himself in the Hebrew scriptures and grow in many ways during His life and journey to the cross. So who do you need to become? Will you commit to the process of growth that it will take to get there? In the subsequent week’s article, we will work with component number 3, called “The Plan.”