Trevin Wax - Rethink Your Self: The Power of Looking Up Before Looking In

Trevin Wax is an insightful thinker and skilled writer. In Rethink Your Self he shows that following our own dreams and desires wont work; we must look to God to learn who we are and are meant to be. Nothing less can bring us purpose and delight.

Randy Alcorn , author of Happiness and Heaven

Trevin is a gift to church, and his book reflects this reality. In Rethink Your Self , you are going to discover your true selfself created in the image and likeness of a God who cares for us and cultivates our character to reach its redemptive potential.

Dr. Derwin L. Gray , lead pastor, Transformation Church; author of The Good Life: What Jesus Teaches About Finding True Happiness

The common advice to be yourself is easier given than taken. In the modern age, shaping our identities and orienting our lives is more complicated than at any time in human history. With clarity, knowledge, and wisdom, Trevin Wax explains the unique challenges this particular cultural moment presents us in being ourselves, and places these challenges into the context of an eternal designone that can equip each of us to be who God created and called us to be.

Karen Swallow Prior , author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books and Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah MorePoet, Reformer, Abolitionist

Rethink Your Self is a guide for people who long to soar in life. Trevin Wax exposes unproductive frames of mind, tackles big questions, and sorts out the complexity of the human heart in amazingly clear prose. Highly recommended!

Ren Breuel , author of The Paradox of Happiness

We live in a society that is obsessed with identity and yet filled with people who have no idea who they are. In this book, Trevin Wax gently persuasively questions the common sense of our day of being true to yourself and points to the paradoxical beauty of denying yourself and following Jesus. In a culture that says look within, we would do well to follow Trevin Waxs advice to look up.

Jeremy Treat , PhD, pastor for Preaching and Vision at Reality LA; author of Seek First and The Crucified King

Copyright 2020 by Trevin Wax

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-5359-9563-4

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 248.84

Subject Heading: HAPPINESS / SELF / CHRISTIAN LIFE

All Scripture quotations are taken from the Christian Standard Bible, Copyright 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible and CSB are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

It is the Publishers goal to minimize disruption caused by technical errors or invalid websites. While all links are active at the time of publication, because of the dynamic nature of the internet, some web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed and may no longer be valid. B&H Publishing Group bears no responsibility for the continuity or content of the external site, nor for that of subsequent links. Contact the external site for answers to questions regarding its content.

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For Timothy, Julia, and David

May you be renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator .Colossians 3:10

Introduction

T his is not a self-help book.

If youre looking for tips and strategies to improve yourself and feel fulfilled, you can find plenty of books with commonsense wisdom geared toward that end. This is not one of them.

My goal isnt to help you help yourself, but to help you rethink yourself. And the only way you will rethink yourself is if, before rushing too quickly to commonsense answers, you encounter a different set of questions. The first step in rethinking yourself is when you decide not to accept so easily the most common answers to the most commonly asked questions.

One of the best places to see what passes for common sense is the graduation ceremonycommencement services where young people stride across the platform, celebrate their achievements, and toss their caps as they step into a world brimming with possibilities. Youre probably familiar with the inspiring words you hear at these events, even though you cant remember the specifics because, unless they were out of the ordinary, they offered up the usual commonsensical fare about the future:

Follow your heart .

Chase your dreams .

You are enough .

You do you .

No matter what, be true to yourself .

If you were to discern a main point from graduation ceremonies across the United States, youd come up with something like this: the purpose of life is to discover yourself by looking deep down, and then express yourself to the world, no matter what anyone elsefamily members, friends, colleagues, previous generations, or religious institutionsmight say .

Common sense, right?

If youre going to rethink yourself, youll have to question those slogans and the ideas behind them. Youll need to stop assuming that the world works the way youve always thought it should work, or that your purpose is whatever youve assumed it to be, or that your road to happiness must follow the well-tread paths of everyone else.

A warning: rethinking yourself means first re- thinking, and rethinking can be unsettling. It requires you to put things on the table that youve never thought to examine. It means probing your inner motivations and the desires of your heart in ways that may bother you and upset your priorities. It means coming face-to-face with some of your deepest fears and anxieties. It will open your eyes to things youve taken for granted while making you doubt things youve considered to be basic truths about the world. Rethinking yourself means more than just looking inward to your heart; it requires you to see yourself in relation to the world in a different way.

Rethinking yourself also means rethinking your self . It means figuring out what it is that makes you you . How do you discover who you arewhat constitutes the core of your being? What is a self anyway, and what makes your self different from everyone else?

I assume youre not reading this book because you want me to tell you everything you want to hear, or because you want me to reaffirm everything you already believe to be true. With a title like Rethink Your Self, youve probably picked up this book for one of two reasons.

The first is that you may be facing some important decisions and you want to get them right. You want to be the best version of yourself you can be, and you want to fulfill whatever calling you feel is most important in your life. But you know how easy it is to fail to reach your potential, or to fail to discern your purpose in life, and the big decisions down the road frighten you a little (or maybe, a lot!). You want to be authentic and to make choices that align with the deepest part of yourself, but you wonder if the commonsense wisdom you hear everywhere else is adequate in equipping you to find and follow the best path in life.

The second reason you may be interested in this book is because youre on the other side of some decisions youve made in the past, and as you look back at your life, you feel the weight of more than a few regrets. Youve always gone along with what passes for common sense ( be yourself, follow your heart, chase your dreams ), but it hasnt led to the happiness you expected to experience by now. Youre anxious. Youre irritable. You worry youre missing out on something better. It looks like everyone else has found the secret to the good life, while youre just muddling through the day trying to keep up appearances. In fact, you wonder if youll ever get what you want out of life. In bleaker moments, you wonder if you even know what you want out of life. On the other side of life throwing you some curveballs, youre not sure you even know what it means to be yourself anymore.