The Most Important Thing About You

When I look back over the years, and even more recently, there have been times when I felt like I was carrying ten different versions of myself around at the same time. You know what I am talking about!

There was the version of me trying to be a good husband. The version of trying to be a good dad. The version of trying to be successful at work and climb the corporate ladder. The version of trying to be an influential leader or even a volunteer at church. The version of trying to be dependable for other people. Every role came with expectations, responsibilities, and a quiet pressure that seemed to follow me wherever I went. It got overwhelming.

For many years, I thought that pressure was just part of being a man. In some ways, it is. Honestly, life asks a lot from us. People depend on us; they need us. There are so many bills to pay, countless decisions to make, relationships to steward, and responsibilities that can’t simply be ignored. None of that is the problem. The problem begins when those responsibilities slowly become the way we measure ourselves.

I don’t think that happens overnight. I think it happens so gradually that most men never even notice it. We start attaching our value to how well things are going. If work is successful, we feel confident. If we’re leading well, we feel secure. If people appreciate us, we feel significant. But when those things begin to get shaky, something inside us starts to shake too. Honestly, I’ve experienced that more times than I’d like to admit, and that feeling sucks.

One of the harder lessons I’ve had to learn is that the things I care about most can quietly become the things I depend on most. Marriage, work, ministry, and even serving others can become that. We tell ourselves we’re pursuing good things, and often we are. They become things we ultimately serve. The danger is that somewhere beneath the surface, those good things begin answering questions they were never meant to answer.

Questions like: Am I enough? Do I matter? Am I valuable? Am I wanted? Am I successful? The trouble is that every one of those things eventually changes over time. Careers rise and fall. Relationships go through difficult seasons. People let us down. We let ourselves down. There are moments in life where something we worked hard to build suddenly looks different from what we imagined, and when that happens, we find out very quickly what we’ve been standing on.

I’ve had seasons where I thought I was asking God to fix a circumstance, but looking back, I think He was trying to show me something deeper. Something about me, not them. He was revealing how much of my identity had become attached to things that were never designed to hold it. At the time, I didn’t see it that way. I just knew I felt unsettled. I felt anxious and overwhelmed. I felt frustrated and even angry. I felt like I was trying harder and harder to regain control of things that seemed to be slipping through my hands. The more I tried to control, the more those things fell apart.

What I didn’t realize was that God was exposing a foundation problem. It’s amazing how quickly we discover what we’re leaning on when life starts shaking. We often think our identity is rooted in Christ until something threatens a role, a relationship, or a dream that matters deeply to us. Then all of a sudden, fears we didn’t know were there start surfacing. We become overly defensive and extremely discouraged. We become obsessed with outcomes and try to take even more control than before. The circumstances reveal what was underneath all along.

For me, one of the greatest gifts God has given me has been the painful realization that many of the things I wanted to build my life around were simply too small. Not because they weren’t important, but because they weren’t ultimate. They couldn’t carry the weight I was placing on them. The more I walk with Jesus, the more convinced I become that being a son of God is not one role among many. It is the foundation beneath every other role. If I forget that, everything else becomes heavier. Marriage, parenting, leadership, and even work all become heavier. Every setback feels more personal because it isn’t just threatening something I do; it feels like it’s threatening who I am.

But when I remember whose I am first, everything begins to settle into its proper place. I can be fully invested in my marriage without making it responsible for my identity. I can care deeply about my work without allowing success or failure to determine my worth. I can pursue growth without living in constant fear of falling short. The pressure doesn’t completely disappear, but it no longer owns me or gets to tell me my place.

I think that’s why this conversation matters so much. Most men are trying to improve areas of their lives without first asking what those areas are built upon. We focus on so many things: habits, goals, leadership, marriage, fitness, discipline, and purpose (just to name a few). Don’t get me wrong, those things matter. But eventually every man has to answer a deeper question. When everything else is stripped away, who are you? It’s not what you do, and certainly not what you have accomplished, or even what people think about you. Who are you really? The answer to that question shapes everything else.

I’ve found that the healthiest seasons of my life haven’t been the seasons where everything was working perfectly. Frankly, they never will work perfectly. They’ve been the seasons where I remembered that my identity was secure even when everything wasn’t. Those moments don’t make me passive. They actually make me stronger because I’m no longer fighting to protect something fragile. Everything changes the moment you know who you are.

The most important thing about you is not your title, your accomplishments, your income, or even the roles you faithfully carry. The most important thing about you is the foundation beneath all of it, Jesus. Everything else will eventually be tested. That foundation is what remains.