Ephesians 4.20-24

That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Put off the old self. Not him but me doing it. An active discarding of everything to do with the pre-Jesus self. Take it off. Take off old attitudes, old ideas, old desires. Rub away the tarnished marks of lies once believed. Throw it all away. Put in under lock and key and don't be tempted to check it's still there. Be rid of its corruption and deceit, its empty promises and whispered undermining. Don't be deceived. Watch your steps. Check your tongue. Analyse your intention. What you think you want is not what you really want. Why then the jealousy? Why the niggles and the nudges? The fear of missing out, being overlooked. Becoming judge of others and their behaviour in order to avoid judgement of myself. Madness. A quest for the intangible sense of being ok, a futile search for approval.

And so. Be made new. Be made new. Be made. Be new. Be. How to be? Let your mind be filled with his truth. Do not conform to the status quo but love the conformers. Be transformed. Be changed. A being that is simultaneously human effort and divine doing. Let him do the transforming but don't just sit there. Peel off the encrusted layers of past, scratch hard, dig deep, prise away years of clung to attitudes and manufactured defences. Put it on. Put put put on. Do it when you don't feel like it. Practice what you can't yet bring yourself to do, to feel, to think. This is not pretending. This is becoming who you already are.