I.D. Please

IDENTITY: Who someone is.

TRUE IDENTITY: What God sees I am.

I attended a conference over the last two days where I was reminded and challenged to live out my true identity. There is an inheritance of promise and provision for who God created me to be. Everything God has for me (he has everything and is for me!) is to make me see past the distortion to the truth. To see and more importantly know my true identity.

(present and future identity)

I sat down and asked God to help me come up with 50 characteristics of my identity. The first half came in a gentle rolling wave. Then a couple more. The last 10 came painfully slow. Occasionally, a negative would pop into my head like "selfish" or I would disagree with the word I had thought of, "Humble... yeah humble sounds nice. God wants me to be humble. But if I type that then I'll have to remove honest..." The point is - the negative isn't my identity, but it does point to parts where there is a disharmony between what I see and God sees in me.

As each negative arose, I thought of its opposite and metaphorically set it ahead of me. This is the identity I am headed towards.

Identity is defined as who someone IS... not WAS. I am sooooo glad about that. Somewhere along the way I started believing that certain things had become a permanent part of my identity, like a branding that scarred me for life. Guess what!?! It isn't part of my identity anymore. Instead of looking back and seeing "soiled", God said to look ahead and I saw "pure". Where it once said "fearful", now says "trusting".

So many new features it was time to get a new id card - the old one didn't look anything like me anymore!
I'm still heading towards the finish line, but I know what He's promised and that He will be the provision.