Why not?

This summer an amazing friend of mine did an internship as the pastor of a church.  I had the opportunity to hear him preach on two occasions, and at first I thought, am I really going to get anything out of this?  It sounds horrible that I would think that, but I've known this guy for many, many years, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  However, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard on of his sermons.  I can't remember the exact context that this was in, but he talked about the need to clean our inner selves, not just the outside.

In today's world we are so concerned with how we look, how others perceive us, what kind of hard/soft exterior we show others, etc.  but we often forget the introspective part of ourselves.  We all have baggage, some of us more then others, so what do we do with this baggage?  How do we deal with it?  How can we cleanse ourselves?  I'm not purposing to have all the answers about this, nor do I claim to be an expert at ridding the baggage of my own life, however I think I have a few ideas on this.

Inner baggage can cause a huge stress in our lives and effect our relationships with others and God.  If we are not willing to look inside ourselves and see what kind of baggage we are carrying around with us that is going to strongly effect our relationships with others.  We need to look deep inside ourselves and ask ourselves some of those deep, underlying questions that we hate to ask:  What is bothering me?  What am I really like?  Who do I want to be?  How do I do that?

We can not have an effective relationship with others if we don't truly know ourselves, too often people are afraid to look inside themselves and have a real conversation with themselves about what drives them.  If we can not be honest with ourselves, how can we be honest with others?  And if we can't be honest with others why would they want to invest time in establishing a relationship with us?  I realize I am just asking questions instead of providing answers or solutions, however I think that everyone needs to answer these questions for themselves, because I don't have the answers for you.  Everyone knows the answers to these questions if they are to be really honest with themselves, and if you can't think of answers to these questions I have just one more question for you.  Why?