If You Don't Know Who You Are, The World Will Tell You: Identity

If you know me personally you know that I am a thinker and I analyze everything....often to the extreme. Many of my friends make the "here she goes again" face when I casually bring up a random conversation but hopefully you'll hear me out?

 Identity is defined as the aggregate of characteristics by which an individual is recognized by himself and others. Everyone has one but few are intentional about what their identity is or what it represents. While this may not seem to be a big deal in our modern society, identity plays an integral role in determining the productivity of one’s life. Biblically speaking, a name represented character (or identity). When God called individuals out of darkness into relationship with him the first thing he did was a name (identity) change. Before Paul was Paul, a sold out follower and proclaimer of Jesus Christ, he was Saul, a murderer and persecutor of Christians. Once he saw the truth and committed his life to Christ, he was immediately given a new identity. Imagine if Paul had not had an identity change…would he have been as successful in his ministry? If he lived life dwelling on former things or guilt of his life before Christ or without a firm foundation from which to root his ministry I highly doubt that he would have been as successful at carrying out the purpose for which he was created.

 Let’s translate this into 2012. Before we were created God had a purpose for our lives. He knew the story that we needed to live out that purpose. He knew the parents that we needed, the people we needed to encounter, the pain we needed to feel, the personality that we needed to have, the joy we needed to feel, the traumatic experience we needed to have, etc. God planned out (in advance) every aspect of our lives all of a specific purpose. The problem is that because we have free will (Thank God for it! ) we are given a choice and unfortunately we don’t always make the correct choice in time. Many of us choose to use all that God gave us to give pleasure to our fleshly desires rather than for establishing our identity in God and allowing him to grow us in faith.

 I am a lover of wisdom and as a result I have a special love for elderly people because they possess so much knowledge. In talking to an elderly friend of mine she told me “If you don’t know you are, the devil will tell you”. That comment resonated with me because of the truth in it. If we don’t have an established identity the WORLD will tell us who we are! I’m African American and I live in a culture that often says that African American women are not smart, aimless, promiscuous, angry, bitter, etc. Thank God that his graces allows me to know that that is not the case but as I stated, that is strictly by the grace of the God that I don’t have to succumb to that train of thought.   

 The way that I identify myself is as follows:

1.      I am a Christian (follower of Jesus Christ). This will always be where my identity is primarily rooted.

2.      I am a Major. I remember as a child being chastised about something that I had done wrong by my dad. He would say “You are a Major. Major’s don’t do that”. Although I didn’t always understand then, now I understand that that was my parent’s way of instilling identity in me and establishing expectation for my life.

3.      I am an African American.

4.      I am a Woman.

5.      I am an advocate for health, justice and equality.

6.      Everything else falls thereafter.

 This is the identity that I have taken on. I want to challenge you to intentionally think about how you identify yourself. My prayer for you is that your identity be built on a solid foundation so that you will yield the highest level of productivity out of your life. Our life here on earth is but a vapor, let’s do something with it!

 I would love to hear your thoughts!

 With Love,

 Kris