Discover why knowing your identity in Christ is so important to your walk with God.
My phone rang one evening and when I looked to see who it was, I was surprised to see my brother’s name show up. My brother has many wonderful qualities, but picking up the phone to chat is not one of them.
“Char, I hope you are sitting down,” my brother told me over the phone. I braced myself for what was to follow. “I met with Robin (our stepsister) today at the Swenson house and she told me Joan (our stepmother) took us out of the trust and gave all of our inheritance away to her three children. She didn’t leave us anything. She even gave them the Swenson house.” (This was the house our grandparents had built.)
I was stunned. I sat there in shock. Why did she do that? How could she do that? What did we do wrong that she would take all that our father and she had built together over 38 years of marriage and with the swipe of her pen blot us out of the inheritance as though we meant nothing to her? How could she tarnish all those years of memories we made with them as the patriarch and matriarch of our blended family?
I felt rejected, betrayed, forsaken, and heartbroken over the swift dismissal of yet another mother in my life. An age old wound came flooding to the surface as I struggled to make sense of this betrayal. It wasn’t about the money and things we would not get, it was more about the relationship that was now forever changed and redefined as unloved, unimportant, not enough, and not worthy.
We finished our phone call and I did the only thing I knew to do- reach out to my heavenly Father. I knew if I did not grasp for His hand I might sink into a pit of sadness I did not want to fall into. As I reached out to Him, He lifted me up, and reminded me of who I am and who I belonged to. Like water rushing from the mountain top down into the rivers below, His words flowed through my mind and into my heart. He gently reminded me that I was His daughter as He repeated a prophecy that He had spoken over me a year earlier, “You are beautiful to Me, My Darling, and I see no blemish in you.” Then, the verse that sprang to my mind was Psalm 27:10 “Although your father and mother forsake you, I will receive you.” I happened to be at my sister – in law’s house that evening, so I asked her for a bible so I could read this verse with my own eyes. In t version this verse said, “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close” Next, another prophecy came to mind where God said I would learn to walk in “understood union, harmony, and acceptance with God.” Finally, God reminded me that I have a living hope and an inheritance that is incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for me, kept by the power of God through faith. All these truths came flooding into my mind within minutes as I turned my heart to my Father. He wanted me to clearly know above all else in that moment who I was as His beloved daughter and that what He has done for me and given me remains true and is guarded by Him. How important is our identity in Christ?
God gave me the promise that He will receive me and hold me close because I was His daughter and I belonged to Him no matter what. This was a comforting and sustaining truth to cleave to as I learned to find rest in my Father’s presence. As I meditated on Psalm 27:10, my heavenly Father told me to just stay there in my mind as He went to work healing my heart. He assured me in that moment that I am His daughter, and all that He says I am, and all that He says that I have in Christ is true and eternal. I was reminded that my true identity in Christ and the inheritance my Father has given me no man can ever take away. Knowing my identity and inheritance in Christ anchored my mind and heart during this stormy season that my siblings and I were suddenly in.
At the core of every human heart is a need to know who you are and whose you are. There is a need to belong and to be loved for who you are apart from what you do, or what you look like. All other relationships in life hinge upon this need being fulfilled by God Himself. He alone can tell you who you are and love you with an unfailing and steadfast love. We find this love manifested towards us through His Son Jesus Christ. John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes on him will not perish, but have everlasting life. When we believe on Jesus Christ as our Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead we enter into a father-child relationship with God and God completely changes our identity from lost and dead in sin to His beloved child who belongs to Him. Knowing you are His child and that you belong to Him is central to your walk in life with God and His Son Jesus Christ. It is a truth that will liberate you to be all God is calling you to be and to be free from the constraints the world and religion put on you that tell you there is a need to earn this place in God’s heart.
Jesus Christ learned the importance of knowing his true identity in order to walk in this life and fulfill the calling on his life. He knew who he was as God’s Son, and he knew who God was as his Father. This understanding liberated him to fulfill God’s calling on his life. So, it is to Jesus my Lord I turned to learn how to walk in my true identity in Christ as a woman in this current situation. Here are truths the Father has taught me in my quiet time with Him.
True Identity
“And behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ ” Matthew 3:17
Before Jesus entered into the fullness of his ministry as the Messiah, God, his Father, affirmed to him who he was as His Son. Who was Jesus? He was God’s Son, he was beloved, and his Father was pleased with him. This is who God publicly declared Jesus to be before Jesus was led into the wilderness to learn how to walk by the spirit and how to engage in the spiritual battle. It is a word just for Jesus given by God to establish his true identity.
What was the first thing that the Devil spoke to Jesus in the wilderness?
Matthew 4:3 “And the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ ”
The first thing the Devil attempts to do is to question Jesus’ identity by questioning the integrity of God’s word in regards to who God said Jesus was. He doesn’t try to offer power, position, or authority first in the temptations in the wilderness; he goes after Jesus’ identity as God’s beloved Son. How important is identity?
Jesus does not defend who he is to the enemy. Jesus quotes the written word of God as the sword of the spirit, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.“ Jesus stands on the word that came from his Father’s mouth in regards to who God says he is, and it is His words that sustain him in the wilderness. Jesus is declaring right here that what God says about him is true, that it needs no defense, and he aligns himself with his Father. There is power in coming into agreement with who God says we are as well, and it shuts the enemy’s mouth when we stand firmly in what God says.
In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples to abide in him, in his love, and in his word so that they will know the love that the Father has for Jesus, is the same love God has for them. Knowing they are beloved by God will bring them fullness of joy. Throughout the gospel of John you see that at the heart of Jesus’ ministry is the knowledge and understanding of who he was as the beloved Son of God in whom God was well pleased. Jesus also prayers for us in chapter 17 “for those who will believe in me through their word, may all be one just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” That’s us. God wants for each of us to live in union with Jesus and the Father and with one another as Jesus and his Father are in union with each other. That is where we will find our true identity- in union with Jesus Christ and God our Father.
Throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry he declared that he only spoke what the Father told him to say and did only what he saw his Father doing. Even at the end of his ministry his identity was questioned time and again. The chiefs and scribes demanded him saying, “If you are the Christ, tell us.” The rulers scoffed saying, “He saved others, let Him save Himself, if He is the Son of God, the Chosen One.” Jesus never defended who He was, but at the very end Jesus cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Like the waters flow through a fountain from the springs below, so Jesus’ life and ministry flowed from the Father’s heart into his, and he poured that life into the lives of the people he encountered. His relationship with God as His Son defined all he said and did, and the power and authority he walked in stemmed from that relationship. We are to be following our Lord in the same way. Only God and His Word have the right to define who we are as His children in Christ. That is where we find our true identity as women and men. It is out from this relationship that our ministry will flow as well.
Jesus never grasped at all that being the first and only begotten Son of God offered. Philippians 2: 5-11 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the cross, Therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed upon him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
On the contrary, in Isaiah 14:14 Lucifer says, “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High”. The Devil desired to lift himself up and he grasped at being like God and it caused a great fall. He longed to be more than what God had called him to be and do. In grasping for that which was not his to have, he lost all that he had and more.
We have two clear examples before us: Jesus Christ who humbled himself before God to become a servant in doing God’s will and was, in due time, exalted to the right hand of God, and you have the devil who tried to lift himself up to be like the Most High God and was cast down. As we live in a world filled with people in an identity crisis, we need to choose who we want to be like- Jesus Christ or the god of this world, the devil. Where does your identity come from? Where are you looking to find your identity? We will never find what we are looking for when we spend our time and energy grasping at what someone else has or trying to be who they are.
Throughout scripture we find God speaking a declaration of who someone is with words that define who God sees them as and who God is calling them out to be. Abraham was called a “Father of a Multitude” long before he had any children. Gideon was called a “Mighty Warrior” as he was living in fear of the enemy. He viewed himself through the lens of his failure, family, and circumstances while God called him according to how He saw him. David was called to be king over Israel while he was young and just a shepherd over his father’s sheep. Mary was just a young girl, a servant, when God sent an angel to tell her, “You have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”. As each of these people stepped into what God had for them in light of who He said they were, God’s life giving words became the catalyst to what He was calling them to be. God being with them empowered them to go and do what He called them to do.
The same is true for us. When we look to Him and listen to who He says we are we can also step into our true identity that God has given us and allow God to fulfill His will in our lives. Philippians 2:13 states that “… it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” We need to listen to who God says we are in the scriptures and to what He says to us through prophetic words spoken to us. We need to come into alignment with God and step into the path He is leading us down knowing He is with us.
In our day and time, men and women are struggling with finding who they are in a world that has led them to look within themselves and how they feel, or look out at those around them to discover their identity. Neither of these places will bring light and truth to a person’s true identity. Our past, our experiences, our family, nor our circumstances can give us the truth about who we are. These sources will only lead us into bondage, bring constraints, and trap us in a space too small for us to grow in.
Women in particular are taught in our culture to grasp at what men have, or to be like men, and in the process they lose the beauty and strength God meant for them to have as His beloved. On the contrary, women who learn to place their trust in God and to quiet themselves down before God in order to learn His voice are a force to be reckoned with in the kingdom of God. She is a woman who learns to walk like Jesus walked because she learns her Father’s voice, and knows how to speak what He tells her to speak, and do what He tells her to do. She knows how to walk in the authority God has given her in Christ and understands the permission she has been given to minister in the Body of Christ and wherever her feet shall trod. There is no need to grasp at anything someone else has because she will be satisfied and filled with joy as she walks on this earth in the fullness of who she as a beloved daughter of God.
Satan has set the course of this world to promote the false idea that if women have what men have they can find their true identity, satisfaction, and the freedom to be all they can be. She has been told that she will somehow lose her identity and be constrained if she does not have every opportunity man has, or if she submits to God’s order of authority. However, there is a strength that God intended women to walk in that comes from aligning herself under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and if married, her husband, that will liberate her to fulfill God’s calling on her life as a daughter of God. It is within the spiritual order of authority that allows God’s power, blessings, and protection to flow freely over her life as she submits to God’s will in this way. 1 Corinthians 11:1- 3 states this, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
Jesus Christ remained submitted to God’s authority over him and to His will and that liberated him to fulfill what he was called to do. He knew who he was and that gave him peace and certainty as he walked with his Father. He was faced with the same temptation in the wilderness to grasp at the authority, power, and recognition being offered to him by the Devil if he would just bow down and worship him. But, as Jesus stayed true to who God said he was and what he was called to do, in due time he was exalted to the right hand of God and given a name above every name. Women can also have that same peace and certainty in life as we humble ourselves to submit to the spiritual order of authority God has set up for our protection and provision not our doom. We will walk in the power and authority given to us by God as we walk humbly before God rather than grasp for that which is not ours to have or be.
So, it is our identity in Christ that is the answer to the identity crisis in this world. It has nothing to do with what men say, have, or do, but what Jesus Christ has said and done that has given us what we have that will liberate us as women to walk fully into the adventures God has waiting for us. So, this day, look to God and His Word alone to define who you are and enjoy the true satisfaction and fulfillment God intends for you as His beloved daughter in whom He is well pleased.
