Who Am I?
What is it, or who is it that you allow to define you? Is it your occupation? Your relationship status? The role you play in your family? The amount of people that follow you on social media? Your failures? Your successes? When you think about, “who am I?” where does your mind take you? The answer I would have given only a few years ago would have been a sheepish, “Ummm, I don’t know.” I recently found a letter that I wrote to an ex-boyfriend after we decided to “take a break” and the words that I wrote broke my heart. I instantly wanted to go back to that 21-year-old girl, hold her, and speak the truth that I am now confident in over her.
Inside of that very lengthy letter I wrote, “Without you, I have absolutely no clue who I am. And I don’t even know who I am in Christ. I have no clue what to do with myself or where to go. I’m not “_____ girlfriend” anymore, and I feel so empty, lost, and alone.” Dramatic? For sure. But also, very real emotions and thought process at the time. My family has always spoken God’s truth over me, and I had read scriptures that told me what God said about me, but at this particular time in my life, I wasn’t in a space to hear or believe those things. I was too busy trying to find my identity inside of a human, trying to prove that I was capable of being “enough,” when the reality was, I was already enough. In that process I was essentially laying out a welcome mat, opening the door wide open, and giving the enemy a bull horn to shout at me all the lies about who I was, or who I was not. I was allowing the enemy’s voice to trump God’s voice. And it still took me 3 years after writing those painful words to begin the journey of looking to Christ to find out who I was, to go back to Sunday School 101.
If you are looking to a particular human, a situation, a job, etc. to find your worth and identity, you will always come up short. Your TRUE identity can only be found in the One who created you, the One who knew you before you were even born and formed you in your mother’s womb. Your true identity comes from the man who said, “Oh we don’t have a Brooke Janes in the world? Yeah, we need one of her.” The Book of Genesis in the Bible says that God created us in His image. He created the birds of the sky according to their own kind, the livestock according to their kind, everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind, etc. But when He got to humans He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:25) and then we get to verse 27 and He says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Friends we were not thought up by some human imagination, we were carefully designed and thought of, so why would we ever look anywhere else but to our Creator to define us?
When I accepted Christ, I became His child. John 1:12 says, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” So, before I am anything else in this world, I am first and foremost a daughter of the one true King. When you come to accept Christ, before you are anything else, you are daughter, you are son. That is where your identity flows from. You are seen. You are chosen. You are loved. You are more than enough. I definitely still have days where I fall short in my thinking and begin believing the lies. As a matter of fact, I had one of those moments the other day, and immediately two of my friends started speaking God’s truth over me and covered me in prayer. I may not always have my thinking together, but I have people in my corner who are right there to defuse the lies with truth, and I’m now in place where I actually believe those truths. So how would I answer the question of who I am now? I am Brooke Janes, a daughter of the King of kings, I’m chosen, loved, and pretty stinking amazing. I am powerful, and I have been called to do great things.” Who are you? I want to leave you with a few scriptures, words from God, that you can read over and declare over yourself.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Luke 12:7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.
1 John 1:3 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
Psalm 139:14 I will praise You, for [a]I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.
Matthew 5:14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
There are many other scriptures that provide the truth about who you are and what God has to say about you. I encourage you to dig in your Word to find all the scriptures that you can, write them out, memorize them, and speak them over yourself until you actually believe them. I also encourage you to sit down and ask God directly, “Who am I? What do YOU say about me?” Allow His perfect truth to define who you are. Have a great week, friends!