Essential No. 4: Know Your Character
Noah Webster (whose namesake is the man who weathered history's worst storm) has a way with words. He is the author of the 1828 Dictionary of the English Language. It has been a good guide for me when I study the etymology of words.
Webster defined character as: "The peculiar qualities, impressed by nature or habit on a person, which distinguish him from others; these constitute real character."
"These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation." Genesis 6:9a, this verse puts Noah in a wicked world and yet stood out because of his character. It's interesting to note that while character matters, it was preceded by God's favor over his life.
Often people mistake this truth as something that is simply automatic, not realizing the amount of work that is needed to develop one's character. Living a righteous life does not automatically happen just because God's favor is upon you.
How many people do you know have the grace of God in their lives and yet their character has not caught up?
Know the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
As Webster stated, character is about "peculiar qualities impressed by nature or habit on a person, which distinguish him from others. In other words, that's being aware of our talents and giftings while being aware of our weaknesses and deficiencies as well as knowing our "bad baggage" and ugly habits.
Why is this important to storm-proofing one's life? Because storms tend to come when they are unexpected. When they do come, and they will, knowing our character, the good, bad, and ugly allows us to leverage the moments of struggle.
We are able to dig deep and know that our talents and giftings can be used for the moment. It gives us a real picture of where we are weak and can leverage the moment to deal with the bad and the ugly, or better yet to know that we will need friends who can stand with us because we are self-aware of our weaknesses and uglies.
Being aware also affords us the time to prepare whether by getting help in the form of enhancing our strengths, or counseling to assess, understand, and overcome our weaknesses and bad habits.
What Character is Not
The reason why character is not just about our strengths is because character combines that which we have been gifted with and the ability to deal with our weaknesses and issues. True character is not simply playing to our strengths but the ability to know and overcome our deficiencies.
This is why we find successful bankers who are terrible husbands and fathers, or brilliant students who can't handle stress. There are gifted artists and athletes who can't balance a checkbook. Or even ministers or men of the cloth who are good family men can handle stress, if not help others in their time of stress, manage their finances and yet fall into immorality or substance abuse that nobody knew was even there.
Why? Because they were self-aware of their strengths but not their weaknesses and uglies. Digging deep is not just about the ability to summon our strengths, it is also about uprooting roots of weaknesses that often lead us to sin. Roots that could have been there from previous generations but were never dealt with.
Character is Shaped By Storms
Godly character is shaped by the storms of life.
Romans 5:3 says "…but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character." In essence, it's telling us to welcome storms and trials because they cause us to muster endurance and it is this endurance that shapes godly character. It continues saying, "…and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
This amazing verse tells us that it is not our own power and abilities that will cause us to overcome our trying circumstances but the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit works in us as we endure. Take note that endurance is produced by trials and suffering.
We are told to rejoice when the trials come knowing that the process of building godly character has begun and that process will lead us to a storm-proof life.
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