True Identity: Discovering the Real You
Follow your heart. Be who you are. Do what makes you happy. Discover your true identity. We are bombarded by these messages on a daily basis. Our children are being raised in a culture that preaches these messages in nearly every outlet they are exposed to.
On the surface, these messages are good and wholesome. I want my daughters to be the best they can be. I desire their happiness and success. And I would love to see them discover something they love and excel at it. There is just one problem…
When it comes to our true identity, there is a big difference between being who you are and being who you were created to be.
Apart from Christ, I am a sinner. We all are. We all fall short of God’s standard. And none of us deserve God’s grace and forgiveness. The Bible tells us that the heart is deceitful and wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), yet the world tells us to use our hearts as our guide.
How can a deceptive heart lead us to anything good? The truth is that it can’t. Following our own ambitions and desires will always lead to an unhappy ending. In our quest for happiness and fulfillment, our hearts will always lead us to disappointment and dissatisfaction.
Our true identity is found when we stop being “who we are” and start becoming who we were created to be.
We were created in the image of God, and He has amazing things planned for us if we would simply surrender our lives to Him.
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. – Ephesians 1:4-5 (NLT)
When we choose to surrender our lives to God, we are adopted into His family as sons and daughters. We not only gain a heavenly Father, but we naturally inherit a family of believers – brothers and sisters in Christ.
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. – 1 John 3:1 (NLT)
As children of the King of Kings, we are royalty – princes and princesses in the royal family of God.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. – 1 Peter 2:9 (ESV)
Many of us (myself included) have struggled with an identity crisis. Who I am in the world’s eyes and who I am in God’s eyes are at constant war with one another. The enemy does everything in His power to keep us from discovering our true identity.
When we as believers discover who we are in Christ and what we are capable of through Him, it is then that we can reach our fullest potential. It is then that God can work mightily through us. And it is then that the enemy knows he’s in trouble.
Lord, help me to discover my true identity in You. Show me how to be the person You created me to be.
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