SEPTEMBER 14, 2025

  True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging does not require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.

― BRENE' BROWN

PROVERBS 25-27

19As water reflects the face,

so one’s life reflects the heart. (27:19)

2 CORINTHIANS 6

3We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

JOURNAL 

True belonging is not about fitting into every group or carving out a place in the world by changing ourselves. Instead, it is about standing firmly in the truth of who we are in Christ. As Proverbs teaches, just as water reflects the face, so a life reflects the heart. If my heart is aligned with God, then my life will naturally bear the reflection of His presence, regardless of whether I feel I "belong" to any particular circle.

Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians that life with God is filled with paradoxes: being unknown yet fully known, poor yet making many rich, sorrowful yet rejoicing. These tensions are not failures of faith but the essence of it. They call me to embrace the mystery of living in the world but not being of it. In fact, Jesus himself makes it clear that to gain life we must be willing to lose it, and to follow Him we must carry the cross and surrender even what is most precious.

This surrender, though, is not the erasing of self. Instead, it is the unveiling of who we were truly created to be. God has imprinted His design on every one of us, down to the uniqueness of our DNA. No two people in all of history bear the same exact design, and yet each of us carries the image of God. When I surrender my identity to Christ, I do not lose myself, I discover the self God has intended all along. My passions, gifts, personality, and even my struggles are no longer random fragments but part of a larger story that finds meaning in Him.

Belonging, then, is not secured by human approval or societal labels. It comes from surrendering my life so fully to Christ that He becomes the source of my identity. And in that place, my uniqueness is not diminished but redeemed. I get to live out the life He knit together in me from the beginning, one that cannot be replicated or replaced. As the psalm declares, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and in Christ, that wonder finds its fullest expression.

This kind of belonging demands cost. Jesus compared it to building a tower or waging a war, requiring careful counting, deep resolve, and willingness to let go of everything else to gain Him. Salt that loses its flavor is useless, and a disciple who clings to self cannot reflect the salt and light of Christ. True belonging, then, is not about gaining a place in the world but about living as one already possessed by God.

And in that surrender...when I no longer seek identity from the world, I discover the paradoxical freedom of the Gospel: I lose everything, yet I gain all. And what I gain is the discovery of my God-given uniqueness...the life I was created to live, fully alive in Him.

25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 27And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

28“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

31“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

34“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.

“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

LUKE 14:25-35