Identity, Authority, Power (I) What is your true identity?

It is interesting to me that we ask children “What do you want to be when you grow up” rather than “What do you want to do when you grow up?” We are not what we do, we are human being, not human doings. For the first twenty or so years of my Christian life I saw myself as “Phil Heath super Christain.” I now see this as Christain workaholism with my trying desperately to find my self worth from what I did for the Lord. Unfortunately this cannot happen without, at least at some level, neglect of family responsibilities. But there are so many ways to get our identity and our sense of self worth, wrong. I am not my circumstances, I am not my mistakes, I am not my failures. I am not my addictions, I am not what I needed to do to survive!

Last night I attended the first session of a program called “Hope mental health.” It is a faith based ministry dealing with guess what, mental health. This very first session is entitled “Your true identity.” And it’s right on the money, knowing our identity is foundational, because no matter how well or how ill we are, we operate out of who we think we are. If I think I am a looser, I will act like a looser. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy! I am not talking here about the power of positive thinking, although there is some truth in it. The danger there, is operating out of overconfidence, believing we are something we are not. Believing a lie and/or building our lives on one, is always at some level dysfunctional.

We are neither our success, nor our success. Perhaps the world values us for our success, for what we do, but we are not valued by God for what we do, we are valued by God solely because we are His beloved children (1 John 3:1). In a loving, functional home children are valued, but are they valued for what they can do for the parents? Clearly not! The problem is that we live in a fallen world, and the world far too often beats up on us, or only values us for what it can get our of us. And for far too many of us, we are our own worst enemy beating up on ourselves. Actually we need to make war on the lies we have believed, and on the negative self talk and putdowns. You and I are God’s beloved children, this is our true identity, and we need to start believing it.

Father, the song by Godfrey Birtill comes to mind this morning “Do you believe what I believe about you?” It is Your love song to us Father, and as the song says, You think we are amazing. Help us Lord to believe what You believe about us, and at least to start to care more about what You think about us, than what the World thinks about us. You believe in us Lord, even if nobody else does. So Father help us to believe in ourselves, so that we may operate out of our true identity in Jesus Name Amen