Everyone and everything seems to want to tell us who we should be and how we should live. It's like the world is trying to squeeze us into its mould. The problem is – we don't fit.

It never ceases to amaze me how the rest of the world wants to kind of squeeze us into its own mould. It tells us that we'll only be happy if we buy this particular product. We're only really right if we agree with the things that other people think. We're only really valuable if we're wealthy and attractive. We've only really succeeded if we have all those things that everybody else wants, but never really makes them happy.

Have you ever tried to put on someone else's prescription glasses? It just doesn't work does it? In fact it can end up making you feel sick and dizzy, because those glasses weren't made for you, they were made for someone else and that someone else is different to you. And have you ever tried on someone else's clothes? You know someone else who is obviously quite a different shape to you. Well they're not going to fit too well are they? Have you ever tried to do someone else's job, I mean, someone who has quite different skills to you? Well we're not going to be able to do too well at that are we? So why is it that the world wants to keep squeezing us into its mold, remaking us in its image instead of letting us, encouraging us to be who we are? Blind Freddy can see it just ain't going to work.

Last week and this week on the program we're chatting about "Discovering Your Destiny". And it's pretty obvious that you and I are not going to fulfil our destinies, if we keep trying to dance to someone else's tune. Pretty obvious isn't it? So why is it that so many of us care so much about what other people think? Why is it that so many of us keep wanting to please others to the point where their expectations rob us of our identity and our destiny?

When I was growing up, I always felt so different. I was never any good at sport, running and jumping and ball co-ordination, it's just not me and yet I grew up in Australia which is a sports mad society where we idolise and worship our sports superstars. The teachers and the other kids made me feel like a complete failure. On top of that I have a very high IQ; I mean I'm academically very strong. Other kids may not have been, so they'd ridiculed me for being a geek. I was a veracious learner, I love learning. Imagine how the other kids reacted to that, particularly since I was no good at sport. Instead I was a musician, give me a piano and I can make it sing, I love playing but you couldn't get any farther away from sport so that made things even worse.

Now I can see what was going on – the world was trying to squeeze me into its mould, instead of encouraging me to be who I was meant to be. So I grew up with this really uncomfortable feeling that I just didn't fit, I was different and you know we all like to fit in, we all like to be liked especially when we're young.

That's my story and I'm sure you have your own story and my hunch is, to a greater or lesser degree, we all have this sense that somehow we don't quite fit and when we don't fit, the world tells us, 'you're no good, you don't measure up. There must be something wrong with you,' and we carry around this burden. Some people carry it round all their lives.

Low self-esteem is going around in plague proportions and this is what it's all about, "I don't fit". Have you ever asked yourself, what exactly you don't fit into?' Here it is – you don't fit into someone else's mould, into what other people say or think you should be, what perhaps you think you should be when you look at all those beautiful people whose whole persona seems to scream out at you, "you should be like me."

I don't know what it is but we all want people to be like us, to have the same outlook, to agree with us, to behave in the same way. Wouldn't life be a whole lot easier if we were all the same? You are it would – but imagine how boring this world would be if everyone was like me, or everyone was like you.. The Apostle Paul knew that a couple of thousand years ago. Here's what he writes in the book of Romans Chapter 12 in the New Testament:

Look, don't go conforming to the pattern of this world. In other words don't let the world squeeze you into it's mould but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you'll be able to know what God's will is and agree with him, his good and pleasing and perfect will. People often want us to say and be and think and behave and live according to some set of standards or rules that they've come up with. Expectations that people have dreamt up and Paul says, 'NO, don't go there, don't let the world stuff you into its mould because you are never going to fit – do you get it?"

Last week and I'll just like to read a small part of it again, we looked at Psalm 139. It says this:

God you created my innermost being; you kind of knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are so wonderful. I wasn't hidden from you when I was made in that secret place; when I was woven together in the depths of the earth; your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before even one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts O God. How vast is the sum of them.

You and I weren't made to be stuffed into someone else's mould, particularly not the world's mould, particularly not some of the bizarre, horrible things the world comes up with, this whole 'do whatever you like and it doesn't matter. You and I were made in a certain way, we're unique, we're different – that's how it was always meant to be.

And so I want to encourage you not to be afraid of being you – did you know that you're the best you that there is on this planet. No one else can be you. Enjoy who you are, do the things that you're good at – and when the world tells you you don't quite fit in – it's time to smile to yourself inwardly and whisper … that's because I'm me. I'm being the me I was always meant to be. I'm living the life I was made to live.

Pretty good thing that because who you are is God's choice and that's a wonderful thing. It's His sovereign choice that he made you who you are and you know how silly it is for you and me to look at each other and compare ourselves. For me to look at a man who wrote to me from Tauranga in New Zealand – he makes furniture in his shed when I can't even nail two pieces of wood together straight – and say, "I am worthless because I can't make furniture." Well he probably can't do what I do either. I'd love to be able to make furniture but you know something, I just can't.

We need to come to a point in our lives where we stop pleasing other people, I don't mean be belligerent, I don't mean be a deliberate misfit … but stop dancing to other people's tunes, to stop thinking that meeting their expectations is the most important thing. Stop living to please other people. You know it's okay for that man to love building furniture in his back shed, it's okay for you to love doing the things you do because you can and you enjoy them, it's okay for us to want to follow in Jesus' footsteps rather than being squeezed into the world's mould I'm talking about a quiet contentment that says, "you know something, I know who God made me to be and I'm comfortable with that."

Are you trying to please the world? Are you trying to please a whole bunch of other people? Are you trying to live up to some image that someone else has created for you? Or do you want to please God? Do you want to have a life of pleasing Him?

IF you let the world stuff you into the mold they made for you – know this – it's never going to feel comfortable because you're never going to be able to fit in it.