Messing With My Identity
In the summer of 2000 I went through one of the hardest 3 month periods of my life. To make a long story short, I was a young businessman with a great job, the beginnings of a beautiful family, and a cut and dry, picture perfect future ahead of me. Text book. That is, until God stole my water colors and started painting His own picture of my life (don’t you just love when He does that?).
For three solid months God did a complete DNA transplant in my spirit. It started slowly but became a complete tidal wave of fear, anger, nausea, delirium, sleeplessness, and countless other emotions that often cause you to stare at the over the counter med shelf at the local pharmacy. You see, God wasn’t playing fair (and really, is it ever a fair fight with the Creator of the universe?). He was changing the way I saw myself and it was painful. He was messing with my identity.
We all have a definition of ourselves created by our dreams and desires, our gifts, our culture and those around us, or sometimes just by the circumstances of life. Over time, right or wrong, that definition is forged deeply into every fiber of our being. We become Bill the singer, Debbie the accountant, Phillip the guitarist, or Sheryl the wife and mother of three. Or on darker days, we turn into Robert the divorcee, Carrie the sexual abuse victim, Chris the unemployed loser, or Laura the girl who was never as good at anything as her sister. Our identities are cast. And then, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we become everything it has defined us to be. Don’t feel bad. We all do it. On some level it’s just the natural progression of life.
In the book of 1 Samuel 16 we see a familiar young man (if you’ve been around church circles for any length of time) who also had a very distinct identity (or so he thought). David (of Goliath-slaying fame) was the youngest of 8 sons, the runt of the litter, whose main job was to take care of his father’s sheep. When God chose his family to supply the next ruler of the nation of Israel, David’s father didn’t even call him in from the fields to meet the prophet Samuel. David was a shepherd and just a little boy. He knew it, his brothers knew it, his father knew it. It seemed everyone knew David’s identity - except God, apparently.
Where David and everyone else around him saw only a shepherd, God saw the next king (you can read the whole story for yourself in chapter 16 - it’s pretty cool). And so the DNA transplant began and the future of a nation was changed. So what’s the moral of the story? Worshippers don’t form their own identity. They let God do it for them.
I wonder how many of you out there reading this have defined yourself as something different or even far below the God-ordained identity for which you were created. Some of you may be completely oblivious to the unrivaled potential that lies deep inside of you. Some of you might be in the midst of wrestling with God has He changes your name (see Genesis 32). Wherever you are, I want to encourage you to let the DNA transplant begin. Give God the water colors of your life and let Him paint His picture of your identity. It might hurt a little at first, but I promise you won’t be sorry.
David’s story is not unique to the Bible. God desperately wants you to see yourself the way He sees you. He can change the world through you if you live His identity for your life. You might look in the mirror and see a beggar, but God see a prince. You see a shepherd, He sees a king. |
