Welcome to another episode of “Coffee with Phil,” where your host, Phil, engages in meaningful conversations to make faith real. In this episode, titled “See the Real You,” Phil delves into the journey of self-discovery and the importance of understanding the essence of who we are. Drawing on his experiences in personal development, faith, and scripture, Phil challenges conventional approaches to knowing oneself, asserting that personality types only scratch the surface. He introduces the Maori concept of “te whare tapa whā,” a metaphorical house representing different dimensions of well-being—physical, family, emotional, and spiritual. Join Phil as he navigates the intricate path to seeing the real you and unlocking the gift that God has prepared within.
BONUS CONTENT
- Previous Episode: Episode 51
- Further Resources: Te Whare Tapa Whā
- Bible References: Ephesians 2:10
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Introduction
Good day and welcome to the podcast. Welcome to coffee with Phil. Of course, my name is Phil and I’m your host on this podcast where we have conversations. Hopefully that helps to make faith real. Living a life of faith on purpose. And just grappling with the journey of life and today you’ll see that topic in the headline if you’ve seen it, it’s “See the real you.” And I have a couple of extremely interesting thoughts I’ve got around this, so I’ll watch this and see how it goes.
But look I want to start by just saying thanks for listening. Make sure you share this podcast with other people. We’re trying to get this across to a couple of different languages. We’re putting it on YouTube. whether it’s available as just an audio, or a video. Which then allows us to… I suppose to access translations because I’ve just come back from Indonesia. And there is a bunch of people in Indonesia that want to connect and follow, so we’re doing our best to spread that around. So why don’t you help by sharing it with your friends?
Hey, I want to also give a shout out to my crew behind the scenes. I’m not going to name them to embarrass them, but there’s actually people behind the scenes that help make this work and they listen to this because they edit it, they transcribe it, they translate it, and they publish it. So, thanks to the team, I just want to say that without a team I’m actually hopeless. So, there you go. Just a little acknowledgement.
I want to get into coffee with Phil today and we want to talk about seeing the real you. I’ve had this phrase for years and years and years because I’ve been involved in professional and personal development for a long time, standing in front of launch audiences, running training seminars in the corporate world, standing in front of audiences all over the world, running workshops.
And obviously in my role as a preacher teacher. Then I travel and speak, really want to help people to grow. Become stronger (nowadays) stronger in their faith walk. And that requires us to know ourselves well, to see the real you and so I’ve had this phrase for years, know thyself. What I discovered is that actually, to be honest with you, most personal development programmes don’t meet the real truth. They don’t, allow you to access it because they’re missing the essence of life.
Now, personality types don’t reveal the fullness of who you are, and you know I’ve done every (almost every) personality type there is and they’re accurate for sure. They describe in part, but it’s almost like Paul writes in the in the in the Bible, he says, you know, it’s like looking at yourself at a reflection of a polished piece of tin. You’re not actually seeing the true you you’re seeing part of you.
And personality types like that they don’t see, or they don’t reveal, they don’t pull back their covers far enough to reveal the essence of who God made you to be, and that’s significant. And I want to talk about that a little bit later.
But let me say this. Why would you want to see the real you, if you’re not sure about that, and you’re sitting there, going, “well, actually you don’t know the real me and quite frankly, the real me is not someone that people would actually like.” I’d like to argue, and I’d push back. And I would say look, God doesn’t make mistakes. He didn’t create you as a test case or a crash test dummy that can be discarded. He didn’t create you as a “Whoops Looks like that one just slipped through the production line.”
No, no, no, no, no, you are genuine. You’re a masterpiece. You’re made in God’s image, and Ephesians 2 verse 10. says that God created you as that masterpiece for the gift that you’re going to become to the world. And so, I would say this right up front, hopefully as a benefit for you as a “why would I want to see me “I say this, when you see the real you that is when you truly become the gift that God prepared for other people. When you see the real you, that’s when you become the gift that God prepared for other people.
So, it kind of puts the responsibility back on us really if we’re going to be faithful and obedient, if we’re going to honour the creator, the one who made us, God who dreamed us. But we became the sparkle of his eye before the beginning of time, and he was excited to see you birth and grow and mature and shine with all your radiance and the glory that he gave you.
Come on. That’s how we’re supposed to live our lives. This is a lifelong quest to me, and I’ve asked this question. What about me? What about Phil strong? What about the guy that sits here behind the microphone and shares stuff? But what’s going on? And I’ve got to say that God’s been really challenging me lately to climb higher. And I’m using my language but let me explain what it means to climb higher.
It means to get closer to God, to have God known by me in a greater capacity. So, you know, my quest is to know or, that I might know myself and I climbed the mountain like Moses did, and I say. “Lord, show me your glory.” He’s like, “dude, you can’t handle my glory.” And I was like, yeah, “I know, but just give me a glimpse.” because when I see God, I learn more about who he is. Then I can learn more about who I am.
What About Phil Strong?
And so, I’m grappling with this quest. This invitation to climb the mountain, that God would say come higher, come higher. You’ll see more, you’ll experience more. You’ll know me more. And as we climb the mountain, as invited by God, we have to get up there. Which requires learning who God says I am. And my point here is not to preach at you, but to share with you that my journey in this area truly has come from multiple sources.
The first one is a regular discipline of reading scripture and as I read Scripture, I learn what God says and I find myself in the text and by doing that I learn who God’s made me to be. And again, look if you’re a person of faith, you know this is true whether you’re doing it or not is another challenge. And I suppose I say this really, to spur you on, and to challenge you to get back to the Bible. And if you don’t like reading, well, either suck it up or, get the audio Bible and just have it playing in your Air pods.
But me climbing the mountain, as invited by God is about learning who I am? But here’s where I want to go with this. It’s actually also about letting go. It’s about letting go of what God has not said about me. This not God’s truth. So, I have a saying I use. Is this little ‘t’ truth, meaning is it true according to me. Or is it capital T Truth, meaning it’s true according to God. You see our reality is what drives us if I if I have a low self-esteem. If I don’t like myself, then that’s my reality. It’s my truth and I base my life on my truth. As long as I don’t subject it to God’s truth, you see, because if I carry my truth and I say. “Well, look, you don’t really know my story this is just me. It’s who I am.” I’m looking to argue with you,
Because I’m going to say it’s who you believe you are. But what I’ve had to do is learn to let go of the little T truth. Meaning what’s true for me, and I’ve had to make it subservient to God’s truth. Capital T truth, which means I’ve got to come back, and I’ve got to ask God this question, and I’ve got to hold it something to me, I’ve got to say. “OK, God. Is this true for you?” And if you say no, it’s not true for me. And then I’m like, oh, my gosh, I’m like, OK, well, then, you know, that’s clearly a lie because anything that’s not true to God is not truth and not truth means it’s a lie.
So, I’ve got to reject the lie. And I’ve got to turn around. And I’ve got to say, God, would you tell me what’s true according to you? What do you see? What do you say? What do you want to reveal about who you made me to be? And this is the journey that we’re all on all. Always on.
But I just sense for me and kind of in this transitionary season, I don’t feel I’m going anywhere geographically, but who knows? God only knows. But what I mean by this is in transitionary, I mean transitioning to the next level transition higher. God says come higher, come and see me come and know me. Come and be revealed in the glory that I’ve given you through Christ.
And so, in this season, it’s about asking these questions and what I find is as I go on this journey. It’s like I bump into people, and I get to chat with people, and I see different things revealed and I find myself in these conversations and God just continually shows me things and I want to share that with you and unpack some stuff because. It’s been remarkable on this journey to become clearer on what God says in order that I might help and that I might be helped by God to see the real me and my purpose in sharing this for you, my friends, as you listen is that you would see the real you.
Conversation With My Team Member
And so, I want to talk about a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with one of my team. The guy came in, we were chatting, sitting my office and he asked me this question said can I ask you a question? I said well, far away. “I’m not always promising to have answers. But questions are good man,” he says. “How do you approach people? How do you talk with people? how do you help people who don’t believe in spirituality.? Who say, ‘look I’m not religious or don’t want to go there because I don’t believe in spirituality’”.
And I sat back in my chair. I didn’t want to rush, but because mainly I didn’t have an answer. But I just leaned in to hear what the Holy Spirit might be saying, and the Holy Spirit reminded me of a concept that I want to share with you. And whilst I do this, I am giving a massive disclaimer. Right now, I’m not an expert. I might get it wrong; I might say it differently than you understand it, but. Just hear me out. And if you want to go further, you can study it online.
So, the concept is called te whare tapa whā, and just imagine a house, Wharenui in Te Reo Māori It means the house. And again, I’m being really, really simple in my white man’s understanding of this. So, apologies if I’m if I’m upsetting you but listen on. te whare tapa whā was developed by leading Māori health advocate. Sir Mason Dury in 1984, according to my research, and he was trying to present something that would help people to understand that their life, their well-being, the fullness of who they are, could be represented as Wharenui which is a meeting house. And in this he explained that our personal well-being is made complete when we consider all of the aspects of te whare tapa whā, meaning the Wharenui, the house our life as a house.
And he’s trying to help us get to understand that there are many aspects to who we are. And if we understand who we are and we understand the aspects that make us who we are, we can become more healthy. So let me just explain these and let me perhaps answer these questions as we go, because I’ve been, I’ve been journeying this in an idea that I might see the real me that I might walk with God, that he would reveal who he calls me to be. and beyond that, I can grow closer to the real me.
Taha Whenua
So, understand this though, the key elements that I find in this, there are four walls to the Wharenui, and I’ll explain those in a minute for you, there’ll be links in the show notes and beyond that. I’m sure you could do some research if you’re interested, but the key aspect of this, any safe house is grounded. It’s connected the land. And so, in Te Reo we call it whenua. If I might have said that Wrong. I’m sorry. But that’s the land. It’s our homeland. That’s where we’re grounded. It’s where we plant ourselves. And for me, this has been really important to reflect on. Because it a way to describe our place of belonging. And so in in Tikanga Māori you would introduce yourself, and you would start to talk about where you come from, your mountain and your river and your people and your tribe. And I don’t know a lot about that. So, I’m not going to get into it.
But let me explain what it means. for me it means me understanding my place of belonging. And I love my family; I love My Heritage. I thank God for my parents, my grandparents, and I don’t know much beyond that, but I give thanks to God for who he’s created me to be a part of genetically but greater than that and don’t hear me disrespect my family when I say this, but what is greater for me than that is the family that God’s grafted me into by the blood of Jesus Christ that now I am Brothers and sisters With each person that confesses Jesus as their Lord and saviour, and this is where I find my true belonging.
Those that would walk with me and understand me from the context of God’s truth. For me, it’s very important that I’m grounded and rooted in a Christian family, meaning a local context. So, I have a heritage, but I also have local context, the local church and we say church family on purpose because we want people to understand that we see our church family as we would believe a family to be in a healthy way.
We would love and care for each other. We would support each other, we would journey together, we lift each other up. We would learn from each other. That’s my place of belonging. So, everything I’m about to explain to you comes from a place of a strong conviction that the formula the land, my place of belonging, I am grounded in the family of God. He’s put me in a specific location in a church. Something that I highly value and for me, you know, just so you know, Zion, we’re based in Te Awamutu. We’re part of Acts churches, New Zealand. And I’ve been part of that denominational church in New Zealand here for over 20 years. 25 years in fact.
And so, there’s longevity there and that’s why I have such a strong conviction about. All of that to say the Whenua, the ground, the place of our belonging. It’s how we’re grounded, connected to reality. And then the Wharenui. The house is built on top of that. And as I said, Sir Mason Durie, who created this concept to explain well-being. He said there were four walls to the Wharenui, to the meeting house.
Taha Tinana
I just want to quickly talk about those. Number 1 Taha tinana is about your body, so for us English speaking people, we would say this is our physical body. It’s our health. It’s about caring for our physical well-being. It’s understanding that our body sends signals. It gives us messages and clues. Our body is a machine, but it’s a machine that you’ve got to take care. That is about what you eat. It’s about how you live. It’s about the choices you make. It’s about not abusing yourself. It’s about allowing your body time to rest and heal and repair. It’s about fueling the machine with the with the fuel that it’s designed to work best on so. Taha Tinana is understanding that the core aspect of our well-being is our physical well-being.
And confession time. I’ve been speaking with a couple of friends and had a conversation with my son this morning about, you know, about physical exercise. For me, yeah. Something I’ve been ignoring lately, and I know that it’s not good for me to ignore it. I listened to this podcast last week and oh my gosh, they tricked me because the headline wasn’t the first thing they talked about. They spent 20 minutes talking about physical health, and particularly these two pastors were talking about life in their 40s and their 50s. And the older you get when you cheat, the cost is so much higher. And I must say, the conviction of the Holy Spirit came upon me while I was driving, and I was just like, man, I cannot avoid this if I avoid it, I will pay a heavy price and I say that so if you bump into me, you can hold me accountable. You can challenge me and perhaps you could encourage me along the journey.
Taha Whānau
That’s the first element is our physical well-being. The second element, Sir Mason, calls Taha Whānau which is family. So, he explains this essential element of our Wharenui our well-being as our family connection. And I’ve said to you, you know, I think I’m well connected to my family. I Claim that I honour God for my parents and my grandparents. I love my brother and sister and their children. Of course, Kathy and my kids are a core part of that and a very critical part of my Taha Whānau. And that’s Something that I’m treasuring and I’m trying to invest in, and you know like. Not as a rude advert, but I wrote a book called Building a strong family on purpose because I value family so much, Whānau meaning family.
But I want to go a little bit further and I want to explain to you that Taha Whānau this idea that this wall. And the thought of moving in Our well-being. Let me explain it this way. Listen carefully. It’s who you care about and who you share your life with. And for me, that obviously flows out of where I’m grounded. You know my church family. I spend a lot of time with her. I journey with representing the family as a wide range of people.
And to be honest with you, I prioritise my time my efforts and my priorities are all driven by who I consider family and that’s reciprocal, so part of that is determined by those that flow back into my life. And I’ve spoken about that previously on a podcast. We’ll put the link for that in the show notes. At the bottom for you.
But I find that my emotional well-being with the fullness of my well-being hinges a lot on this one. You know, how well do I feel connected to those that I care about? How well do I feel connected to those who I share my life with and, how healthy do I feel that connection? Is it a mutually beneficial way? And I’m not saying this to be selfish, I’m saying that it’s give and take and that’s how I assess it. So Taha Whānau is very important to me as they all are.
So, understand that firstly you’ve got to know where you’re grounded. Secondly you got to know… you’ve got to be very aware of your physical well-being. Secondly, you know, assess your family connection and who you’re connected with.
Taha hinengaro
And thirdly in the model here we have Taha hinengaro. And this is in white man’s language, this is our emotional well-being. This is the mental and emotional aspect of our lives, and I would describe this as our mind. How healthy is our thinking, our self-talk and our belief structure I’d also include our emotions the inner feelings and, in some cases, the roller coaster you know, acknowledging these things. You know, so mind, emotions and our feelings, Taha hinengaro. And this is what represents our emotional aspect of our life and. And I want to remind you something that I learned this year is that I believe, and I’ve been taught this, and I now believe it. I’m not saying I created this, but I believe that God uses our feelings as signposts to point to something he wants us to pay attention to.
And so, firstly, that requires us to acknowledge our feelings. You know, we might say, you know what? I’m feeling really angry. Or you want to feel really sad? Let’s not deny it, you know that’s not negative self-talk. That’s honesty, you know. Hey, how you doing? Uh, actually not that good. I feel sad today. And if someone’s willing to be honest with you about that or if you’re going to be honest to yourself. First of all, as you say. “OK well, let’s invite God to reveal why he’s showing us that. what is that pointing to?” So, we bring it back to the Lord and we say “Lord, thank you for feelings, they are a gift from you the Lord is an emotional God. But what might this be pointing to that you want to draw my attention to?”
I’ve shared openly in this podcast season about the emotional journey I’ve been on and the desire to find emotional health and well-being and asking the right questions. Having the right input, joining with the right people because Taha hinengaro, which is this mind and emotional aspect to our Wharenui to our well-being. It’s really important and I would say that if you don’t pay attention to that, seeing an aspect of your world, your life is going to be a house with three walls, not four. And there’s going to be all sorts of chaos because you’re not paying attention to the real you.
Taha Wairua
Finally, #4 in this model is Taha Wairua, and this is the spiritual dimension of our lives. And when I Spoke to my colleague my one of my team about this. This is really where the conversation led because his questioned to me was “how do you approach people who don’t believe in spirituality?” And I would say te whare tapa whā is validating the fact That every single one of us Has a spiritual aspect to our lives, and if we disregard that, we’re leaving ourselves open to the chaos that will come into our world when we are not fully alive and who we’re created to be.
And again, I’m speaking this from a context that I believe that we’re created by a creator. And so, if you don’t believe in that, if you believe you came from monkeys, then you might say, well, monkeys don’t have taha Wairua. And I’d say, well, how do you know Ask one. so, tongue in cheek. I know. Sorry bit cheeky, but for me this aspect of Wairua which is Te Reo (The language) for spirit. It’s the truth that we are made by God and that we access our true self through personal relationship with him.
Now firstly we’ve got to believe or accept at least that we are spiritual beings, and if someone’s not willing to believe that, then it’s not my job to convince them. But I would just say consider the possibility. And then in assessing if you’re open to that, then assessing well-being, for me, this is not my weakest area. I have for a long time dedicated myself to this journey and I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’m saying I’m paying attention to it. So, it’s not a risk for me because I spend a lot of time Focusing on this aspect of my life Taha Wairua how healthy is it?
Well, it changes week by week, but at least I’m focused on it and by confession I have said to you, Taha tinana, the physical well-being is not something that I’ve paid a lot of attention to. And so that’s something I’m trying to correct. What’s my point in sharing this? I believe for you to see the real you is vital because when you see the real you, that’s when you can become developed and to grow and to evolve and to mature the gift that God has prepared in you for other people.
What I’m proposing to you and sharing a little bit of my journey around, understanding where I’m grounded, and then te whare tapa whā this idea that we’re a Wharenui a house, a meeting house that has four walls. And if I focus on each of those walls in my life, I can more fully access what God wants me to access by understanding as he helps me to see the real me. And as I sat to prepare some notes to to share with you today, this is what I felt to share.
So, look, I hope that inspires you. I hope it challenges you, I hope you go and think about it. Where am I grounded? What’s my physical health like? What’s My family connection like? What’s my emotions like? What am I doing to strengthen my spiritual journey and connection with God as my creator? I hope you go on that journey. I hope that you sit with God in the quiet space long enough that you would hear him. And that he would help you to focus on those areas that will truly take you on a journey to see the real you because I believe when you see the real you, you become more of who God made you to be, and then you can not only just reveal yourself to others, but truly reveal the glory of God that he’s deposited inside of you.
And well, that’s just a whole other subject for another day so look. God bless you. Have a fantastic day wherever you are. Enjoy your coffee. I’m going to keep enjoying mine. Now you can be sure of that, and I look forward to catching up with you real soon on coffee with Phil, take care.