identity in Christ

The Life-altering Truth of Identity in Christ

The Life-altering Truth of Identity in Christ

Sometimes people question my slight obsession with teaching people to differentiate between lies and truth when it comes to identity messages. I am, indeed, very focused on doing this because I believe it makes such a difference in how you live life.

I think most of the identity messages we have received that really derail our lives are the negative ones like being a failure, unworthy, unloved, invisible, or rejected. These identity messages become part of who we really believe we are, most of the time because we are trying to get needs met in people when only God can really meet those basic needs. Some of these needs are love, acceptance, value and worth. When we go to a person or people to try to get satisfaction of these, we end up not getting what we wanted and often getting the opposite instead.

Of course, as humans we tend to go to humans first to try to have someone tell us we are ok, and to tell us who we are. When we get responses that are painful and rejecting, we tend to believe them and try to prove them wrong or fix ourselves so we don’t believe they are really true. Unfortunately, though, people are never going to be able to really give us unconditional love, true acceptance, and a communication of worth like we desire deeply. When we realize this, we can actually go to Jesus to get the truth and change our perspective and our source for life.

Freedom in Knowing Your Worth

Freedom in Knowing Your Worth

People with whom I work are probably sick of hearing me talk about their identities in Christ. But I find it is such a foundational piece of living that it must be discussed often. We also have been so steeped in lies that the truth of who we are in Christ seems laughable. We go about trying to prove we have value and worth through our productivity, our kindness, or some other circumstance or behavior. But this puts things in the wrong order. We do not love others or achieve success (however that is measured) in order to prove we have value—we must first understand we have value, and then we can behave as one who is loved.

Sometimes we try to use circumstances to prove our worth. We look around at what we have achieved, how productive we are, how we define success and if we have achieved some level of it. This is then supposed to help us understand that we have value. But when we place our value on these things, we end up with two problems. One is that we cannot control a lot of our circumstances, and if we struggle with physical health, financial difficulty, or some other external factor, we can end up deciding we have no worth because we cannot perform in our circumstances as we used to. The other problem is that once we attain whatever level of success we have determined will give us value, there is usually another step to take to keep increasing that value. There is no ending point. If we attain education, power, money or status, there is always another level that we have to keep pushing towards.

Failure

Failure

How many times have you found yourself stewing on all the failures of your day, or your life? This obsessing on stupid decisions, words spoken and actions left undone, will lead us eventually to feeling as though we are failures. There is a big difference between failing sometimes and being a failure. And I haven’t found that beating ourselves up is the answer to that distinction.