S4 E11: Is Your Identity Keeping You From Living Your God Designed Purpose?

Did you know  There’s a reason you think and feel the way you do, You were wired to experience and move through life in a certain way? 

God designed each of us internally with a unique personality, thoughts, feelings and dreams, and desires

Those qualities are the true seeds that God placed inside of you when you were being formed in your mother’s womb.

It doesn’t take long for some of those seeds to be affected as those around us start to shape and influence our way of being in the world. This doesn’t mean your family or those closest to you didn’t love and care about you.  It means that we all tend to exert some type of influence or control in our relationships.  This means our true self gets shaped and molded to all the different personalities around us.  This is in no way a negative thing. There is a lot of intentional shaping and molding that needs to happen in our lives.  That shaping and molding should enhance and bring strength and clarity to your core.

I started this off by reminding you that God is the one that formed you. And it is also very important for you to be reminded that there is an enemy that wants to kill, steal, and destroy everything that God has planned for you.

We see this in Scripture that the enemy had the same strategy with Jesus. God came and declared “This is my Son, whom I love; and am well pleased” Matthew 3:17

And it’s no time before the enemy comes to him with questions and testings.

Jesus modeled for us that true freedom comes when we no longer need to be anything to anyone else because we belong to God, he loves us and he is pleased with us. We aren’t loved because of our “doing”  but simply by being.

This is why this foundational belief that we are made in the image of God and loved and purposed by him is the core foundation of the course I have been working on around IDENTITY that is coming SOOOOON!!!  We can take all the personality test and I believe having a good awareness of how you are wired is so important and that’s part of the course too, but unless all that self-awareness is built on the foundational fact of whose image you were created in you will still have a big hole you’re desperately trying to fill.

There weren’t many classes in college that interested me but one that did was Sociology.

sociology as the systematic study of society and social interaction. I had been aware of my interest in this area and the fascination has continued...

So it’s been very interesting to me all the relational discomfort and disintegration that has happened during this season of dealing with COVID.

I had the thought the other day… could these feelings of feeling so desperate to make such life-altering decisions in the midst of “not so normal” life be the ultimate example of us not being comfortable with our true self.

Meaning… we live our lives in a certain way that makes up our identity… 

How we view ourselves as well as how others view us.

So what happens when the normal ways we live that out are turned upside down?!?

When all the things that prop up our identity are no longer standing…

Who are you then?

So the thought I had, was the discomfort people are experiencing been there,  so what has changed??  what changed was the lack of options to ease that discomfort.

No job or office to run off to distract instead of sitting in the discomfort.

No friend to chat with in person to ease the discomfort

No stores to casually wander and buy “non-essentials”  to distract our hearts and minds

I could keep going but I think you get the picture…

So many of us are so scared of what we will discover in the nothingness 

When it’s just us and our raw thoughts and feelings to deal with.

But guys… that’s where the good stuff is!!

Space where you are stripped of everything that validates this false self you are clinging to and find that no outside illusions of success or achievement is leading us home to who we truly are.

All those things that we use as distractions keep us lost! 

Dictionary.com  “One's personal characteristics, or the sense of who one is, as perceived by the person or by others,”

Father, I ask that you would give us a revelation of who you designed and created us to be.

I ask that you awaken purpose in each and every person that is listening to this and remind them that they were your idea.

Your life is not insignificant. There is a reason you are here and Father we are trusting and looking to you for insight and clarity in our lives.

Give us peace and strength for these days we are living in and may we bring forth the light that shows your life and love to all those around us.

amen