Identity Deliveration

The Lord has been drilling a theme into my life the past few weeks, continued on through small group tonight and Oswald Chambers this morning.

Identity.

Paul tells us to model ourselves after soldiers, athletes, and farmers.

Soldiers who sacrifices their own desires for the sake of The Lord, who are loyal unto death, who seek justice for others.

Athletes who are disciplined and consistent. Take basketball. You show up every day, you do the sprints, you do the suicides, the lunges, the passing drills, the dribbling drills, the shooting drills. And some of it seems applicable and some of it doesn't, but even with the stuff that doesn't seem relevant, you follow your coach because you trust him.

Farmers don't farm for a living. Farming is a lifestyle. They live and breathe their work and do it with diligence. Not just because they want to but because they must. Every day is important in the life of a farmer.

That's the model of identity in Christ, but what about every day living?

NI people struggle with this especially. "Are we British? Are we Irish? We're Northern Irish but there's no checkable for that in the dropdown list." They don't know who they are as a people.

On an individual level, we each state our identities into life every day whether we think we do or not. "I'm crazy," "I'm such a bad friend," "I'm not good for anything," "I'm such a screw up," and those are just a few from the facebook status world.

We may consciously classify ourselves as sisters and girlfriends and daughters (or the male versions) but we speak ourselves into other boxes of identity daily. Those boxes of self-construction become stifiling to growth. If you constantly call yourself a screw up or a bad friend or a non-communicator or an over-communicator or a worrier or whatever it is, then you are disallowing yourself from becoming anything other than those things.

Oswald says, "God will not discipline us, we must discipline ourselves...Do not say, 'O Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts.' Don't suffer from wandering thoughts. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated out of your personality."

Does that not give you shivers? I'll say it again (because I have it both underlined and starred in my devo book. "Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated out of your personality. "

AMEN! Am I right? We spend so much time labelling ourselves and trying to find ourselves when all we need do is look into ourselves to see the truth of our identity as children of the living God.

And it doesn't feel that way sometimes. But I had a camp counsellor who once said, "Live out of your position, not your condition."

It works with God as well as other people. Feelings do not a friendship or a relationship with God make on any given day. Our position with Christ means that even when everything else sucks, we are still marked with his freedom and truth and must act out of it.

With others, we know not only our ultimate relationship to them but also our relationship with them in terms of how they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. That is our position. Thus, we must live out of that in any season.


Sermon over. I've just been very joyful recently, especially today. The Lord has been filling me with tranquility and freedom, a full release from anxiety because he is greater and stronger and more powerful than anything my personality could throw at him or tangle me up in life.

How beautiful, how wonderful is the grace of the God we serve.