Discover your Identity in Christ –it’s time.
In your youth, you pick up many different cues about your identity. If you grew up in a family that spoke carelessly and used their words as weapons, you may still walk around with those words cemented in your mind. If your peers picked on and called you negative names, those words pierced you and made you feel left out or as though you didn’t quite fit in. You became the black sheep of the family, the one who everyone looks down on or assumes something isn’t quite right. Experiences and messages like these can shatter us. It can leave us feeling hopeless, rejected and abandoned, and simply not good enough. Have you ever found yourself in a toxic relationship over and over again? Displaying harmful behaviors to yourself and others? Then, you may have believed the lies that you’re unworthy or unlovable due to your experiences.
The Truth…
The truth is every one of us struggles with a level of identity issues. It is not something we’re only faced with when we’re in our teenage years of figuring out who we are or where our value lies. It is something that we have to reevaluate and at times will learn all over again depending on what season we find ourselves in. Can you relate?
When we know who we are in Christ, we become an unyielding force in a world full of vain pursuits, filtered images, and highlight reels. Knowing who we are in Christ is not something that comes naturally to us. BECAUSE our identity has been stained by the lens of sin, deception, perversion, shame, and guilt. We must pursue passionately and live out shamelessly to better understand who we are in Christ. If not, we’ll just keep traveling through life recklessly and getting the same poor results time and time again. That’s called insanity!
We have misplaced our identity
The reason for our identity issues is we tend to answer the question of who we are with what we do, where we come from, what our interests are, and what has happened to us.
Although our line of work, our hobbies, our background, or our positions as a wife, mom, aunt, and/or friend do play a role in shaping the person we are, it is not where our core identity lies. We cannot rely on ever-changing positions and opinions to provide us with a stable sense of identity. Nor can we rely on other people (a foe, family member, stranger, or friend) to define our identity.
The only solid basis for our identity comes from the one who has created us. Think about it! What happens when we lose our job, our children leave the house, or (heaven forbid) our spouse passes or our friend moves away? Does who we are, falter with those changes? Does our identity get lost because it was solely built on those aspects of our lives?
Here’s the Inside Scoop
As a woman in Christ, there are two extremely important truths that I believe impacts every other area of your life. The first one is knowing Christ, and what you believe about Him. And the second one is knowing who you are in Christ, and what you believe about yourself. When your belief about Jesus is skewed, you can’t even begin to walk in the newness of life that He has to offer you. It’s when you truly see Christ for who He says he is in the bible, show up like that in your life. When His unconditional love and acceptance overwhelms and overshadows you till you feel safe and secure in Him. When truth from His Word speaks to your heart to break down the walls and dispel the lies about you – about who you are, what you’ve done, who you’ve become, and what you will be.
The good news is that it is never too late to learn who you are in Christ, or be reminded of truths that have taken a backseat in your mind.
Who we are is found in who He is
Our identity starts with Christ. It moves from who He is, to who we are. That is why we refer to it as our identity in Christ. This is not an identity that can hold water if it is outside of Christ or if our view of Him is wrong or our relationship with Him is none existent. We get to know ourselves as we know Jesus, so having a relationship with Him is vital for walking in your identity.
We all carry certain beliefs about ourselves that we’ve acquired throughout the years. The events of our lives have a significant impact on the way we view ourselves and the way we live in the world. From my personal experiences, I believed the lies I heard in my youth–that I was stupid, lazy, not good enough, and too skinny. I once felt these negative, deceptive opinions from others because I suffered from multiple childhood traumas and falsely thought I was unworthy of love and needed to earn love from those who were toxic to me.
If what has happened to you in the past, things you have done, or the circumstances you’ve lived through have impacted how you see yourself today. I just want to say one thing. When you accepted Jesus in your life, He made you new. Just like that. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you have to deal with from your past and heal from, but you can face them with the reality that you are new in Christ. Shame doesn’t have any ground because Christ has renewed you.
Why it’s important to know who you are in Christ
It’s so important to know who you are in Christ because we live in a world that is constantly trying to define what we should look like or who we should be.
When we know who we are in Christ we can easily spot counterfeit identities that the world tries to push on us. The better you know who you are in Christ the less prone you are to fall into the world’s identity circus.
The world is all about competing. All about one-upping one another. Who can dress the best, who’s the smartest, who’s the fittest, and so on? It’s exhausting to keep up! That is not the way of Christ, in knowing our identity we can combat jealousy and envy, comparison, and competition. Being secure in your identity in Christ means being able to celebrate who others are in Christ and not feeling threatened by those who live by worldly standards.
What Knowing who you are in Christ can do for you
Knowing who you are in Christ helps you to stop striving. Striving to be beautiful enough, smart enough, worthy enough, worth it enough, and all the other nuisances of being enough. Let me just say this –You’re good enough because God made you. He made you in his likeness and image and that’s way more than enough. He has equipped you to be a sufficient enough mother, daughter, wife, friend, auntie, and niece.
Whatever position or role you stand in, know that because of who you are in Christ, you are Enough! Jesus has made you all of that, you have to learn to walk in the truths He has spoken over you. It begins with having Him be your audience of one, not the world. Look to Him and He’ll show you what I’m speaking of. He will help you believe this and get you to a point of comfortability and assurance in Him.
What scripture says about your new identity
The way to walk in your identity in Christ begins with knowing your identity in Christ. The word of God reveals these truths to us. Here are a few scriptures that remind you of your identity in Christ.
You are known by God
Jeremiah 1:5 ~“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;..”
You have been redeemed and forgiven
Ephesians 1:7 ~ “ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.“
You are made in God’s image
Genesis 1:27 ~ “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
You are a child of God
John 1:12 ~” Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
You are God’s special possession & chosen by Him
1 Peter 2:9 ~ “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.“
You are Loved
1 John 4:9-10 ~ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
You are Forgiven
Psalm 103:12 ~ As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Isaiah 43:25 ~ I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.
Christ lives through you
Galatians 2:20~ “ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
You are a friend of God
John 15:15~ “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
You are God’s work of art
Ephesians 2:10~ “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
You are more than a conqueror
Romans 8:37~ “ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.“
You are a new creation!
2 Corinthians 5:17~ “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
The Good News about your Identity in Christ
Your identity in Christ is something the world can never take from you. The more you get to know Him, and allow Him to shape your heart and mind, the more you will become the God-gifted self that He has always purposed for you to be. In seeking Him you will find you.
Learn more about scriptures that help you to understand who God says you are!