What is your gap?

I was recently sitting through a training session at work, and the topic of the training was personal branding. Before she started, the trainer asked everyone to write down one sentence on a piece of paper that identified "the brand" they wanted to be known for. I wrote that I want to be known as someone who appropriately represents Jesus Christ in everything that I do.The trainer then went on to give us more information and ask some thought provoking questions. After she finished going through her content, she asked if we wanted to change anything about our brand. Throughout her talk, I felt like God was showing me some thing about my "target brand" that was a little off base. If our vision and goals truly determine our activity, then it is important to answer this question correctly. It is important to know what our brand is, or what we want people to say when they describe us as a person. I ultimately decided to change my "target brand" description. The second time I wrote that I want to be known as someone who died, that Christ now lives in.This is drastically different than saying I want to work to represent Him. This is saying that for all intensive purposes my Brand is already dead. My brand was crucified with Christ, and I have given Him the freedom to share HIS brand with the world through me.Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."I wish I could say that there are no lingering tendencies within me that are trying to protect my brand, but the trainer asked another interesting question. She asked us to look at what we wrote for our brand at the beginning and then at the brand we wrote at the end. Then she asked what the gap was between the two?This question pertains to every human being who walks the earth. Essentially, the question is, "what is our personal gap between trying to be a good, respectable person on our own strength, and fully surrendering all to Christ?" What are we trying so hard to hold onto and take care of versus just surrendering to Jesus and doing it His way.In this example, my initial brand was my way of protecting my reputation. With such a mindset, it's easy to walk around with a legalistic mentality every day. Before, during and after every interaction with someone, it's not unusual for me to critique myself as to whether or not I am doing the right thing and wonder what others are thinking about me. Now, if I flip that to just simply allowing Christ to work through me, I can rest assured that He is doing exactly what he wants to do with whatever individual I am interacting with. It doesn't matter if they respond favorably or unfavorably to me, because it is the exact reaction Christ wants. In the same way, I don't need to constantly critique myself based on how they react. I can just rest in my dependence on Christ.There is definitely a gap for me between these two brands, and I need to repent and ask God for the grace to close that gap. What is it for you? What is your gap? Maybe you don't even consider Jesus in your brand. Maybe your current brand is something along the lines of being a person who is liked by everyone and never upsets anyone. Maybe you're trying to protect your reputation as someone who is courageous and does miraculous things for God, but you're doing it all on your own strength and it's wearing you down. No matter where you are now, as followers of Christ this target brand should be universal. Our aim should always be to die to ourselves so that He may live in us, and that peoples lives are radically changed as a result. But we all have a gap. What's your gap? You need not feel bad about it, but you do need to repent and surrender it.