Who Are You?(2): Recognizing Your True Identity

Having the right sense of identity is crucial to our lives. Our sense of identity guides our choices in life and is vital in living our lives to achieve or fulfill purpose.

Moses was born as Hebrew but was raised as an Egyptian Prince. He could have continued living in Pharaoh’s Palace as royalty as he grew into adulthood, but he recognized his true identity as Hebrew. This led him to fulfill his divine purpose in the emancipation of his people from their slavery in Egypt. Can you just imagine how different the whole of the history of the Israelites would have been if Moses did not recognize who he was?

Consider also our Saviour Jesus during His walk here on earth. Scripture records in John 6:14 & 15 that the people wanted to make Him an earthly King by force but He refused to bend to their wishes because He had an unshaken understanding of His true identity. Even John the Baptist who had been given a visible sign affirming Jesus’ identity as the Son of God began questioning whether Jesus was truly the Messiah at some point in time (Matthew 11:2-6, Luke 7:18-23). Jesus was firmly rooted in His sense of identity and that led Him to the Cross at Calvary where He purchased our everlasting freedom and eternal redemption. I shudder to think of what would have happened if by any chance, Jesus had become confused about His identity. We would have remained in our sins, hopeless, godless and eternally doomed!

Common Sources of False Identity

Unfortunately for man, since the fall of Adam and Eve, we have continually looked outside of God for identity. People rarely turn to God for the answer to the question that plagues the human mind “who am I?”. The following are some common sources of false identity:

1.       Physical appearance: Many people derive their personal identity only from their physical appearances and they go all out of their way to meet acceptable standards in their culture. Some young men would go to any length to develop well-toned muscles while some young women make huge expenses to modify their skin colour or even alter their body shape with a view to project themselves in a way that is acceptable.

2.       Performance or achievements: Many individuals derive their identity from their performance or achievements in different areas of life and this is where their value is found. Such people will always search for something to excel at to show superiority over others. This often results in individuals who are so focused in only such areas that they become shallow and isolated. Academics, athletics, job performance and personal achievements then become their only focus. If, however, anything goes wrong they then view themselves as failures which may lead to depression or states of emotional imbalance.

3.       Possessions: Many people derive their identity from their material possessions. This has been described as an “I am what I have” mentality. Many people own possessions that project their desired images. In fact, many people purchase items not out of need but to gain status among their peers. For such people, the brand they wear, the logo on their shirts, the shoes they wear and cars that they drive make them who they are. This usually produces people who are driven to obtain the best possessions among their peers and many times such people could go to any length to get these possessions. Eventually for such people, life will be full of greed, worry and jealousy of others’ belongings. In addition, any minor change in their financial state will almost completely erode this foundation. Scripture teaches us after all: “…one’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15)

4.       Past or prevailing circumstances: Many individuals derive their identity from either past events or current circumstances in their lives. Usually it is based on their interpretation of those events but such mental or psychological constructs are firmly rooted in people’s minds. It is very likely for instance that someone who perhaps failed academically at different times in the past would begin to carry a label of “failure” and perhaps adopt that as a personal identity. We find such an example in the life of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, who adopted a new name (Mara) to reflect the bitterness of the events she had been experiencing (Ruth 1:20 & 21).

Each of these common false identity sources or bases can be easily affected by any change in the life of the individual. All 4 described above are based on factors that are constantly changing. It means therefore that if we develop an identity based on them, it will be an unhealthy identity as it will always be changing. It will be an identity based on a weak foundation, not a solid foundation.

God Wants Us To Have The Right Sense Of Identity

God however, desires for each of His children to have the right sense of identity. He wants us to know and be assured of our true identity. His desire is that we are not confused by the perceptions from the culture around us or the deceptions of the devil. Our true identity is found only in our Creator. All through His dealing with people recorded in Scripture for us, God acted at different times to ensure that His people had the right sense of identity. Let us consider the following examples of such instances:

Abram and Jacob: In earlier dispensations, people’s personal names were sometimes descriptive of the circumstances of their conception or birth and at other times their names were reflective of their future endeavor or unique personality traits. Many times in those dispensations, people’s names became representations of their identity. God gave Abram and Jacob new names to emphasize to them their true identity. To Abram God gave a new name Abraham (Genesis 17:5) because He wanted Abraham to start seeing himself indeed as a father of many nations and to Jacob He gave a new name Israel (Genesis 32:28) so that Jacob would no longer see himself as just that serial deceiver who perennially schemed his way to his achievements. Their new names-Abraham and Israel were symbolic of the new identities that God wanted them to have.

The nation of Israel: 400 years of slavery in Egypt must have deeply damaged the mentality of the Israelites. They had never personally known any freedom, maybe some of them would still recollect stories passed down from previous generations of how they initially came to Egypt as free men and women. However, for that generation, the only identity they had was that of slaves. So, after Moses led them out of Egypt God made sure He told them about their new identity:

“...you will be My own possession out of all the peoples..., and you will be My kingdom of priests and My holy nation” Exodus 19:5 & 6 HCSB

They were no longer slaves, they were now to be God’s own special people, His treasured possession. That was their true identity and He made sure He communicated that to them.

Subsequently after God had established them as a nation in their own land they regularly displayed their rebellious nature towards Him, many times disobeying His commands. Because of their disobedience, they often went through times of tribulation. In some instances, they were invaded by foreign armies and taken into captivity in distant foreign territories. In each tribulation they went through, God always raised a Prophet to whom He gave specific messages reminding the people of their identity as His special possession. One of such Prophets was Isaiah:

“Indeed your husband is your Maker-His name is Yahweh of Hosts-and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; He is called the God of all the earth. For the Lord has called you, like a wife deserted and wounded in spirit, a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected, says your God.” Isaiah 54: 5 & 6 HCSB

Jesus Christ: In the life our Lord, there were specific events in which God gave public affirmations of Jesus’ true identity. At His baptism in the river Jordan by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:16 & 17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21 & 22) and also at His transfiguration (Matthew 17: 5), a voice from Heaven proclaimed Jesus as the Son of God.

In the same way, even today, God keeps affirming to His children our true identity. Our true identity is not earned but received from God. Your true identity is not about what you do, how you look, what you have or do not have, or what other people say about you. Your true identity is in who God has made you and how He sees you. Your true identity is not based on feelings but on spiritual facts and realities. This true identity of God’s children is clearly elucidated for us in the Scriptures and confirmed to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The link below is to a Youtube video that introduces us to the reality of our identity in Christ.

Your Identity in Christ

To be continued…

Who Are You?

I remember way back in the 80s watching a comedy titled “Walk Like a Man”. The story involved a boy called Bobo who was pushed off a sled by his older brother leaving him to die in the wintry wilderness of Alaska where their father had gone on a search for gold and fortune. 20 years later, Bobo was found by a Biologist. He had been raised by wolves and his behavior was like that of the wolves; he greeted people by licking their faces, barked, growled and ran on all fours. His sense of identity had been affected by his time with the wolves. He did not recognize that he was a human being, he apparently thought he was a wolf. He had to be trained to behave more like a person than a canine. He had to go through a process to regain an awareness of who he truly was. He had to recapture the sense of his true identity.

Identity is defined as who a person is or in some cases the way someone views himself. Along with acceptance, security and purpose, identity is a basic human psychological need. Identity developed from childhood into adulthood guides the future construction of adulthood. The choices we make are usually determined by our sense of identity. People with unhealthy identity usually have a low self-esteem, they are unable to withstand external pressures and are easily manipulated. Such is the importance of identity and so I ask the question: Who Are You?

Millions of Jewish prisoners were stripped of their personal identification in the Nazi camps. All their possessions were taken away and they received new clothes with only personal identification numbers sewn into them by which they would be known while in the camp. After having received his own number, Alexander Donat wrote in his memoir Surviving Slave Labor at Majdanek, “from that moment I ceased to be a man, a human being; instead I became camp inmate 7,115”¹. If they were asked who they were, they were expected to respond by reciting their personal identification numbers. But you see those numbers were not their real identities.  

While our personal experiences may not be exactly as harrowing as what happened to the Jews in those camps, the devil in different situations and circumstances we go through in life continually makes us question our identity. His aim is to confuse us and get us to the point of not recognizing our real identity. Looking through Scriptures, I have come to realize that this is a method the devil has always used in derailing God’s people from being at the maximum potential God calls them to be. In the biblical accounts of the temptation of Eve and even our Lord Jesus recorded in Genesis 3 and Matthew 4 respectively, a key aspect the devil attacked was their sense of identity. In Eve’s case, the serpent said to her:

“God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” Genesis 3:5 New Living Translation

But you see, we know from Genesis 1:26 & 27 that Adam and Eve were already created in God’s image and likeness. So, the devil was amongst other things, attacking Eve’s sense of identity in his subtle temptation. The serpent’s rhetoric may not have been so tempting if Eve had been well grounded in that knowledge. 

Similarly, when the devil tempted our Lord Jesus, he said to Him:

“…If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread” Matthew 4:3 New Living Translation.

Unlike Eve, our Lord Jesus was firmly grounded in His identity. In Luke 2:41-50 we read an account of an event in which at the age of 12, He was already displaying a clear understanding and awareness of His real identity. He did not need to prove to either the devil or even Himself that He was the Son of God, so the devil’s rhetoric was not effective.

The late Dr. Myles Munroe related in one of his books The Spirit of Leadership, a story he was told by a Zimbabwean Village Chief that lucidly illustrates the importance of having the right sense of identity. An old shepherd found a lone shivering cub one day while tending to his flock of sheep. He took the cub home and raised him among his sheep. The lion cub grew with the sheep and became a part of the herd. They accepted him as one of their own, and he acted like one of them. After a while, the little cub had become an adolescent lion, but he acted, sounded, responded, and behaved just like one of the sheep. He had lost himself and become one of them. From here on I will tell the story exactly as Dr. Myles Munroe told it:

“One hot day, four years later, the shepherd sat on a rock, taking refuge in the slight shade of a leafless tree. He watched over his flock as they waded into the quiet, flowing water of a river to drink. The lion who thought he was a sheep followed them in to the water to drink. Suddenly, just across the river, there appeared out of the thick jungle bush a large beast that the lion cub had never seen before. The sheep panicked and, as if under the spell of some survival instinct, leaped out of the water and dashed toward the direction of the farm. They never stopped until they were all safely huddled behind the fence of the pen. 

Strangely, the lion cub, who was now a grown lion, was also huddled with them, stricken with fear. While the flock scrambled for the safety of the farm, the beast made a sound that seemed to shake the forest. When he lifted his head above the tall grass, the shepherd could see that he held in his blood-drenched mouth the lifeless body of a lamb from the flock. The man knew that danger had returned to his part of the forest.

Seven days passed without further incident, and then, while the flock grazed, the young lion went down to the river to drink. As he bent over the water, he suddenly panicked and ran wildly toward the farmhouse for safety. The sheep did not run and wondered why he had, while the lion wondered why the sheep had not run since he had seen the beast again. After a while, the young lion went slowly back to the flock and then to the water to drink again. Once more, he saw the beast and froze in panic. It was his own reflection in the water.

While he tried to understand what he was seeing, suddenly, the beast appeared out of the jungle again. The flock dashed with breakneck speed toward the farmhouse, but before the young lion could move, the beast stepped in the water toward him and made that deafening sound that filled the forest. For a moment, the young lion felt that his life was about to end. He realized that he saw not just one beast, but two—one in the water and one before him.

His head was spinning with confusion as the beast came within ten feet of him and growled at him face-to-face with frightening power in a way that seemed to say to him, “Try it, and come and follow me.” As fear gripped the young lion, he decided to try to appease the beast and make the same sound. However, the only noise that came from his gaping jaws was the sound of a sheep. The beast responded with an even louder burst that seemed to say, “Try it again.” After seven or eight attempts, the young lion suddenly heard himself make the same sound as the beast. He also felt stirrings in his body and feelings that he had never known before. It was as if he was experiencing a total transformation in mind, body, and spirit.

Suddenly, there stood in the river of life two beasts growling at and to each other. Then the shepherd saw something he would never forget. As the beastly sounds filled the forest for miles around, the big beast stopped, turned his back on the young lion, and started toward the forest. Then he paused and looked at the young lion one more time and growled, as if to say, “Are you coming?” The young lion knew what the gesture meant and suddenly realized that his day of decision had arrived—the day he would have to choose whether to continue to live life as a sheep or to be the self he had just discovered. He knew that, to become his true self, he would have to give up the safe, secure, predictable, and simple life of the farm and enter the frightening, wild, untamed, unpredictable, dangerous life of the jungle. It was a day to become true to himself and leave the false image of another life behind. It was an invitation to a “sheep” to become the king of the jungle. Most importantly, it was an invitation for the body of a lion to possess the spirit of a lion.

After looking back and forth at the farm and the jungle a few times, the young lion turned his back on the farm and the sheep with whom he had lived for years, and he followed the beast into the forest to become who he always had been—a lion king.”²

Who are you? Who do you think you are? Have you bought into the devil’s dangerous deceptions or listened to his artfully spun rhetoric? Or are you firmly rooted in the awareness of your true identity?

To be continued…

Notes:

1.            Niewyk, Donald L. The Holocaust. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

2.            Munroe, Myles. The Spirit Of Leadership: Cultivating The Attitudes That Influence Human Action. Whitaker House, 2005