“Lord, as I pray, write, and speak with and for You, please help us to sink the roots of our identity deeply into the soil of Your marvelous love. Help us to hear the words, ‘You are Mine.’ Please fill our hearts with Your loving kindness so that we don’t look elsewhere searching for our value or significance. Satisfy us with Your love so that we don’t desire or strive for something temporal to make us feel good when we become stressed and uncomfortable. Draw our hearts back to You. Recapture our attention. Create in us a longing for more of You. Please forgive us for all of the times that we forget about You, do the opposite of what You want us to do, and pursue whatever we feel like doing. I pray that You will be more and more at home in our hearts as we live by faith. Free us from distractions, distortions, and destruction. Help us get to know You and love You more each day. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
As our identity is being formed, we may spend years trying many things, hoping to belong and to be “the best version” of ourselves. Unfortunately, years of endless striving to find worth and significance usually ends up in frustration, pain, and brokenness. We can only find out who we are by coming back to God, our Creator. God made us in His image. He patterned us, male and female, in His likeness. God determined who He made us to be, and how He designed us was very good (Genesis 1). If we want to discover what our identity and true nature is, we must discover who God is.
If you find two mating birds who build a nest and lay eggs and if the eggs hatch, what gets hatched? (birds) If you go to Whit’s and if they’re mixing together ingredients to create your favorite flavor of ice cream, what will it taste like when you gobble up your favorite flavor? (ice cream) If you go to Goldberry’s where they roast and brew your favorite blend of coffee, what will you be drinking? (coffee) When the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit create us in Their likeness, what will we be like? (God)
While the world tells us that we can be anything that we want to be, God is the only One with designer rights. He decided to create us in His likeness. The only way to really find out who we are is by entering into a never-ending relationship with our Designer. The more that we get to know God and to discover what He’s really like, the more that we come to know ourselves and what we were designed to be and to do. God is the Potter, and we are the clay. We’re purposely created differently from each other to be and to do what God has called us to do. We’re not supposed to be like the people around us. We’re supposed to be like Jesus.
Art ministry by Cynthia Berry
Transforming selfish sinners into obedient friends happens when we daily position ourselves to know the Lord more and to allow Him to change us from the inside out. If you want a snapshot of who you are now, just listen to your internal dialog. Listen to what you talk about when you open your mouth. Tune into what your heart is desiring right now. Start praying, and your prayers will become a window into your soul. You’ll quickly discover what your life is all about. Do you like what you’re discovering? Who are you becoming like? Whose approval are you searching for? What are you doing to try to fit in?
Oftentimes, we form our identity from those around us. We develop an image of what God is like by watching our earthly fathers. We begin to form an image of who we are by observing and experiencing how people treat us and what they say about us. When we’ve formed our God-image and our self-image, these images shape how we see and treat others. Some would say that the most important image we have is how we see God, for it impacts everyone and everything else. Go ahead and spend some quiet time reflecting. When you search your heart, do you find God living in your heart? What is God like to you?
If you search your heart, are you good friends with yourself, or are you at odds with yourself? How do you treat yourself? Are you kind or mean to yourself? Do you say good things to yourself or are you critical of yourself? Do you love yourself like God made and loves you?
If you search your heart, do you love the people whom God has placed around you? Are you accepting of them or judgmental of them? Is it easy for you to welcome and get to know people, or are you shy or withdrawn, or do you push your agenda on what you want from them? Do you talk or listen more? Why? What do you really believe about the people whom God made around you? How does that impact how you will treat them?
If your image of God has become distorted over time, all the rest of your controlling images will likely be distorted. When God melts your images with His love, you will become loving. Your life will become a fresh expression of the love of God. When you spend more time pursuing God and responding to His endless ways to capture your attention and melt you with His love, your life will become a fresh expression of God’s incredible love. You don’t have to be afraid if you’re off. God already knows it, and He’s waiting to heal and restore you and your controlling images. He wants to sanctify your imagination and have you crawl up into His lap, feel the warmth of His loving heart, feel the strength of His embrace, and feel His love as you look up into His loving eyes.
Setting aside “face time” with God and faith-building time with God will help prepare you for the daily challenges that you will face in and around you each day. Life won’t work unless you are deeply connected with God. You can organize your day around what you want to do or have to do, but God wants to order your thoughts, ways, and days. He’s already recorded each day in His book with your name on it. If you want to know God’s will, why not ask Him? He’ll gladly tell you and show you what He’s designed for you to do each day with and for Him. He’ll lovingly lead you and connect you with people who also need to learn to know, trust, and love Him.
Why not open up the Bible and read one of God’s letters to you today? Why not take some time to write God a letter or a prayer? Watch what happens if you keep doing this each day. Your image of God, yourself, and others is going to radically change. Take some time today to share what God is showing you.