"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; The old has gone, the new has come."

Sometimes the line between who you really are and who you pretend to be is hard to find. Why is it that I've been living for almost 22 years and I still have a hard time really knowing who I am, or more importantly, who I am in Christ. I'm in a new place and with that makes me believe that my old self was left behind as well. The old has gone, the new has come, but I'm afraid the old will come back. It scares me to think that in some ways I'll lapse back into being the thoughtless jerk that I used to be.

Today, two different things happened that served as a warning to me that I am forgetting myself. For one, I met a nice girl in one of my classes and then later in the day I told one of my friends about the fact that I met a new girl today as if he'd bring out a chalkboard and mark another tally underneath the name "Josh." Then later in the day I was told by the assistant pastor of the youth group I work for, that my cell phone message wasn't the best for an intern like myself to have.

The message said: "If you're a guy, leave a message... If you 're a girl, (in charming voice) leave a message."

Now obviously I'm not really breaking any laws and this message could be glossed over as a joke and seen as harmless. I could probably see it as that too, but to be honest I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the guy who's full of himself and stores his worth in how many girls he can get to like him. I know that's not me, but today I realized I'd forgotten myself. I'm not that guy, and I don't need to be joking about girls like this, and I don't need to be treating girls like my trophies. Instead of treating them like the fake plastic gold trophies on the shelf, I want to treat them like real gold that's stored away and treasured deep in my heart.

"A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies." Proverbs 31:10