Category: Identity

WHO ARE YOU? Identity is Destiny

WHO ARE YOU? Identity is Destiny

The question stumped me. I was in my early thirties, wrestling with deep disappointments, anxieties, and frustrations. Phil was a retired pastor and WWII vet who had become my mentor. Ever so gently, he asked again, “Who are you?”

My mind flashed back to some things my father had said to me in anger, to memories of singing in church and musicals, to adventures with friends, and failures as well. But did those things define me?

“I guess I don’t know,” I said.

The answer I found over the next couple of years changed my life for the better, and it can change yours too.

Some of us look in the mirror and see only disappointment. Some of us see failures or victims of childhood abuse or at least parental malpractice. Some of us see the unlovely and unloved. But that is not what God sees. Consider what scripture says about us when we become believers.

  • Col. 2:13 – You have been “made alive with Christ” and are no longer “dead in trespasses and sins.”
  • Col. 3:1 – You have been “raised with Christ,” and your life is now “hidden with Christ in God.”
  • Heb. 10: 10 – You have been “made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Christ once for all.” 
  • Rom. 5:1 – You have been justified – completely forgiven and made righteous in the sight of God. (See also 5:19)
  • Rom. 8:1 – You are free forever from condemnation.
  • 1 Cor. 1:30 – You have been placed into Christ by God’s doing.
  • 1 Cor. 6: 19-20 – You have been bought with a price; You are not your own; You belong to God.
  • 1 Thess. 1:4 & Jude 1:1 – You are loved by God, chosen by him, and called by him.

In Christ, you are a righteous, complete, accepted, beloved, and chosen person. You may not feel like it all the time or act like it. And it is not an excuse to indulge in sin.[1] But this is what God says is true of you and every believer.  This is what Christ accomplished for us. Christ exchanged your life with his. Christ secured your future in him. We were taken out of Adam’s lineage, adopted as God’s children, and given the inheritance of Christ.

But some of us have a hard time accepting that. We see ourselves as something less than God sees us, something inferior. That stifles our development because what we believe about ourselves determines our destiny.

An example.

Tom Friends of The New York Times asked Coach Jimmy Johnson what he told his players before leading the Dallas Cowboys onto the field for the 1993 Super Bowl.

“I told them that if I laid a two-by-four across the floor, everybody there would walk across it and not fall because our focus would be on walking the length of that board. But if I put that same board ten stories high between two buildings, only a few would make it because the focus would be on falling.”

Johnson told his players not to focus on the crowd, the media, or the possibility of falling, but to focus on each play of the game as if it were a good practice session. The Cowboys won the game 52-7.[1]

What kind of people will we be if we see ourselves as unholy, unlovable, unworthy, and incompetent: depressed, insecure, resentful, and angry, right? Why? Because life for a defeated Christian feels like a script you can’t remember in a play where you don’t belong, a set of expectations that are impossible to meet. It feels like crossing a two-by-four ten stories high. Jesus didn’t rise from the dead to leave us feeling like that!

Depressed people don’t dream dreams. Insecure people won’t take risks. Angry people can’t build loving relationships.

But what happens when we believe in our worth, value, competence, and goodness? We become world changers. We invest ourselves in life, in dreams that change things, and make life better for everybody.

What does God think of you? Is he proud of you? Does he love you? Who are you?

[1] See Romans 6.

 

THE LIGHT IN THEIR EYES

It has happened too many times to be a coincidence. My wife and I will meet someone new and comment to one another later, “I think she’s a believer. I just sense that she is.” Sure enough, as we come to know the person better our intuitions are confirmed.

I call it the light in the eyes. It’s the reason we tell people about Jesus, invite them to the Alpha Course, and invite them to worship with us. That light is indicative of much deeper and greater things, things that give me deep joy.

But wait a minute; aren’t we supposed to be concerned about where people spend eternity? Heaven and hell and all that stuff? Well yes, but that comes later. Salvation, as the Bible calls it, is what happens now and continues to infinity. Life in Christ, eternal life, begins here, on earth and has definite earthly effects.

Let me outline the ones I’ve witnessed and see if you agree.

The light is the first thing and always a pleasure to see. The shadow is gone from the countenance. The expression takes on a new kind of clarity born of inner peace. The Apostle Paul called it “the peace that passes all understanding,” and he wasn’t kidding. We’ve found, sometimes after years of searching, our ultimate identity in Christ as one of God’s chosen creatures. His Spirit has taken up residence inside and filled us with … well it is not easy to explain. It just is. Love, joy and hope come close, but there is more to it than that. There is something, Someone, where before there was nothing and no one. Life will continue to have its difficulties. There will be ups and downs. But we are never again alone in the universe.

Wounds begin to be healed. Bad habits begin to be broken. Internal peace is followed, sometimes rapidly, sometimes less so depending on the level of obedience and maturity, by external peace; peace in relationships, peace in the life as it takes on more of God’s order of things. Trivialities are put aside, essentials are elevated and prioritized. Christ is at the center of the life bringing balance to the whole.

The yield of these things is fullness of life as the order and peace enable the development of capacities inborn but heretofore obscured or misdirected. The gifts of the Spirit are deployed and untapped potential is discovered.

As the believer continues to grow and these potentials come online they begin to point to purpose; the intersection of our gifteddness and passion with the needs of the church and the world. Life becomes more focused and more fruitful; confident in its identity, stabilized by the order, encouraged by capacities newly discovered resulting in the revelation of why we were put here in the first place.

Then the greatest thing of all happens. The fruit of a life formed in the image of God, filled with the Spirit of his Son begins flowing out into the blessing and encouragement of others. Others see the purpose strengthened by confidence and carried out with competence. They experience the blessing of being served by someone who seeks no personal glory. They observe the fullness of the soul and the order in the life and sense the peace that flows from inside under-girding it all.

And finally, if they are truly seeking, they too begin to see the light in the eyes and wonder where they might find it.

OLYMPIC IDENTITIES: Who You Are is Greater than What You Do

Michael Phelp’s amazing return to gold medal form for the 2016 Olympics is the story of a man with a new mission in life. He was contemplating suicide in 2014 when his friend, Ray Lewis, an All-Pro linebacker and Christian, convinced him to enter rehab and gave him a copy of Rick Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life.”

Phelps recovered and thanked Lewis, saying to an ESPN reporter that the book “turned me into believing there is a power greater than myself and there is a purpose for me on this planet.”[1]

Phelps isn’t the only American medalist whose identity is anchored outside the pool. The silver medal winning U.S. 10M platform synchronized diving team of David Boudia and Steele Johnson also gave credit for their poise under pressure to something other than their training: their “identity in Christ.”

What’s going on here?

Ask the average Christian about their identity according to scripture and you often get a blank stare, or sometimes, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace.” But the New Testament fairly bubbles over with illustrations of the principle that once we have been “born again,” as Jesus said, or “regenerated and renewed,” in Paul’s idiom we are no longer simply saved sinners, we are “new creatures in Christ. The old things have passed away, and new things have come.”

Here are just a few Scriptural phrases that articulate the concept:

  • Colossians 2:13 – You have been “made alive with Christ” and are no longer “dead in trespasses and sins.”
  • Colossians 3:1 – You have been “raised with Christ” and your life is now “hidden with Christ in God.”
  • Hebrews 10: 10 – You have been “made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Christ once for all.”
  • Romans 6:3-4 – You died with Christ and were raised with him to a new life.

Athletes are, by definition, under loads of “performance pressure.” How they do on the field or in the pool will determine not only whether they win or lose, but often how they feel about themselves as persons; their self-worth measured by the few tenths of a point or hundredths of a second between the bronze medal and fourth place. At the highest levels, as was the case with Phelps, they often have no identity outside of their sport and once they age out, or can no longer compete with the best, become depressed. The internal need to succeed is enormous.

That’s why Boudia’s answer to how he handled the pressure was so important.

“You know,” he said during an interview after their dive, “it’s just an identity crisis. When my mind is on this, thinking I’m defined by this, then my mind goes crazy, but we both know our identity is in Christ.”

His diving partner, Johnson, agreed, “I think the way David just described it was flawless. The fact that I was going into this event knowing that my identity is rooted in Christ and not what the result of this competition is just gave me peace. It gave me ease, and it let me enjoy the contest.”[2]

Take a lesson from these athletes and remember: if you’re a believer your identity is greater than your performance. You are accepted in Christ, you are loved by God, you belong to him and whether you have a gold medal day or come in somewhere back of bronze, nothing can change that.

[1] Michael Phelps is Driven; Breakpoint Daily, August 11, 2016, with Eric Metaxas.

[2] http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-morris/us-olympic-divers-following-silver-medal-performance-our-identity-christ