“Reinvent yourself.” It’s common advice for those trying to get past a bad relationship, overcome an addiction, or simply shift and refresh perspective on life. It’s not a new idea. In reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth (Ephesians 4:22-24).

Reinventing ourselves doesn’t seem too difficult. It’s empowering, and we can easily rationalize that if we have power, we’re in control. However, power is defined by God. We’re not in control no matter how much we rationalize it. We certainly control what choices we make, but we don’t know the full impact of individual choices, so we’re not ultimately in control of what’s going on. We can say we’re “taking control,” but are we actually taking control from God? What we have comes from the source who gave it to us. We are created in the image of God.

Looking around our society, it certainly looks as if we can be successful at becoming something God doesn’t intend, but the truth is, no matter how far away from the image of God we appear to be, we’re still created in the image of God. We’re able to distort the image, but we can’t fully negate it. No matter how we live today, we do not eliminate the truth of who we were created to reflect. The wonderful thing is that we don’t have to reinvent ourselves. God not only knows the purpose He created us to fulfill but also the path that is best for us to fulfill it. When we trust Him to constantly weed out the old and develop the new, we will become more and more like Him. We will glorify Him in the process.