beautiful orchestra, and then all of a sudden the strings on the violins all break, the percussion cymbals drop and crash and everything beautiful about it turns into mass disorder and brokenness. This is where our identity crises come from. We wrestle with who we are because sin has separated us from the One who defines our true identity.
Your identity is broken. In fact all of humanity is walking around sporting a broken identity. We are separated from our identity created by God. But there is good news for our broken, dark, and dry souls…Jesus loves us too much to leave us grasping for meaning in the dark. At the very moment man broke away from God to rebel and followed his lusts and desires in Genesis 3, what was unknown to Satan and Adam and Eve is that by so doing God’s plan of redemption was put into action. The very moment that Satan thought his plan had worked, he had already been defeated. He had forgotten the fact he was taking on the all-powerful God. God confronts Satan in verse 15 of Genesis 3 announcing that the victory had already been sealed by God. Even though Satan thought he had won, he had just signed his own death sentence. WE WRESTLE WITH WHO WE ARE BECAUSE SIN HAS SEPARATED US FROM THE ONE WHO DEFINES OUR TRUE IDENTITY. “ We now have a way for identity to be restored in our lives. We must understand again why we were created. Ephesians 1 tells us we have been adopted, bought back and made sons and daughters of God the Father through the sacrifice of Jesus. We now have the same eternal inheritance that belongs to Jesus. Our identity, as Christians, now flows complete- ly from our adoption into the family of God. We are sons and daughters; we are heirs; He is ours and we are His. That is where our identity must come from. The Westminster Catechism tells us our “chief end” in life is to Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. John Piper simplifies this phrase and puts it into terms for us today by saying, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. When we realize we are image bearers of the Creator God who formed us and breathed life into our very bodies, then will we begin to understand what we were created to do. Only then can we start living our lives in such a way that we fulfill our given purpose...to glorify and enjoy Him. My identity is more important than my location. You can be in Hong Kong, London, Sydney or Grand Rapids, and the reality of who you are will not change. You may need to speak a different language, but at the core of who you are, you will be the same person.
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ then by definition of a Christian you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). Before the term “Christian” was coined, the followers of Jesus were called disciples.
These are the men we read about in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts. They had one of the same questions you are asking yourself, “Who am I?”. The disciples were confused, scared, timid, and unsure. But when these disciples under- stood who they were because of Jesus, they were later described as men who “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). This meant they could not be stopped as they lived passionately for Jesus. If you have stuck with me this far, you are most definitely asking yourself, “ What in the world does any of this have to do with missions?” . Only when we understand and begin to live our life purposefully aligned to God’s intention will we begin to live missions-minded, Christ-motivated, and Gospel-saturated.
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