I've invented a new gadget, something super cool, one of a kind nothing, there is nothing else like it on the market! And because I think you're super cool, I've given it to you, a gift to use as it was intended! The only catch is I didn't give you instructions.
So you spend countless hours, days, weeks trying to operate this super cool invention, and trying to figure it out. Along the way your lack of understanding may have caused you to have even broken a few pieces here and there. And through many hours of trial and error you manage to figure out a few features of my super cool invention, and you're using those features but you know that you're not using this invention to its full capabilities. As a result you find yourself frustrated…after a while it dawns on you to go back to the inventor and ask for help, instructions.
The solution seems so simple yet so many of walk around doing this very same thing with our own lives. We have no idea what our purpose is, and instead of going to our creator we look to the world to figure it out.
“He has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts.” (2 Corinthians 1:22)
Your faith will grow stronger as you focus on your identity in Christ (Galatians 2).
This requires that you abandon any image of yourself that is not from God. You stop accepting what others have said about you, how others have labeled you, and how others have defined you. We must return to the one who created you and start believing what God says about you, that he is pleased with how he created you, and that God defines you.
For so long, I allowed the world to identify me, the opinions of other, my circumstance, my failures, my education, my career. My identity, my purpose was wrapped up in those things. There was a whole in my heart and I was looking for the world to fill it. The truth is God created that whole and only he can fill it.
I went through a season in my life where Christ stripped away everything I had depended on to form my identity. I had lost m y job, my home everything! During that dry season I had nothing but Jesus. I was forced to not only depend on him but to to really get to know him and his thoughts toward me. It was during that season that all distractions were stripped away and I began spending daily time in the word (instruction manual) and I began to truly understand my creators original plan for my life.
It is my prayer that you come to understand that you are not defined by the opinions of others or by your circumstances. You’re not defined by your successes or failures. You’re not defined by the car you drive, the money you make, or the house you say you own when the bank really does.
You are defined by God and God alone. He identifies you as his own (2 Corinthians 1:22).
