Seeking Identity

Psalm 139:13-14 Amplified Bible (AMP), "For You formed my innermost parts; You knit me [together] in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks and praise to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well."

Psalm 139:13-16 The Message (MSG), "Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day."

When you read verses such as this, it makes you ponder why we so desperately struggle with finding who we are. Plain and simple it states just how marvelous and well known we are; yet, at the end of the day none of us know exactly who we are or what we are here for. I mean there are those stereotypical Christian answers of: "For God's glory and my good," "To obey and seek the Divine," "To follow God's will and do great things for Him," and "Love God, love people." Do I believe each of these statements? Of course! I try to live by them daily. But like many clichés that are used too often without genuine meaning, these answers begin to create bitterness and a void within our hearts. Many of us, "do" the answers well and still are not seeing the results we desire. Some may even have invested their entire lives into such statements...said it, preached it, used it as advice for others, wrote it down and prayed genuine prayers towards it...HOWEVER our identity becomes swept up in actions.

As a society, we are driven to act and succeed. But the entire basis of a relationship with Jesus is to accept there is nothing you can or will do to earn the love of the one who so uniquely created you. Therefore, instead of acting out of love from God, we act in order to receive love. You may be wondering...how does this relate to my identity? Many of us find who we are in what we do, who we hang around, whose hitting us up on the insta, or how many texts we receive in an hour. Others find their self worth in DOING things for Christ and not IN or BECAUSE of Him. Numerous people find self identification in family. Even some push hard to achieve those stereotypical answers. But when I look within myself and get to know others we are all slightly miserable, in constant discovery of who we are, and are working long and hard towards goals we may or may not even enjoy but were told we are excellent in such tasks so we just did them. We have all been swept into a cultural frenzy of actions, approval from others, dreams we made up and decided were good for us, money earnings, family status, and the determination to do EXACTLY what the Bible says.

The whole concept of Enjoy the Journey was founded from a place of sincerely attempting to find freedom in the mundane...yet, myself as well as many of you lost sight of this. I have been thinking long and hard about where we might have gone wrong. As I have cried on my knees, surrendering to a Father that knows me better than anyone else, including myself, one question keeps coming up, "What are your dreams and why have you chose them?"

Since age 13 I have been seeking going into full time ministry. I made up my mind early on what that would look like based on what my parents did, what I was told I was good at, and the HUGE desire to live in a mega city and to escape where I grew up. From that moment on I have done nothing but make decisions based off of these presumptions. Many of you may be like me...chasing dreams that we thought we wanted, others may have never had goals, even some may just feel stuck in the midst of fulfilling their longings and desires. Wherever you are in this journey, how to answer the question "What are your dreams and why have you chose them," goes back, not to the day those so called plans melted into your heart, but rather God DID form you in your mother's womb in a specific location for a reason. He DID make you amazing at certain things for a purpose. The Creator DID instill within you certain things for something bigger than yourself; however, many times our human side pursues what is easy, what we think is best, and we twist ourselves into believing what culture says would work best when in reality God doesn't use the expected but the unexpected. Oh dear, I have gotten ahead of myself here.... to put it in laymen's terms... In order to answer the question that keeps popping up is to seek our identity. This demonstrates itself in things like pursuing deeply who we are when no one is around, to dive within our entire self (not just the spiritual side or the human side or the side we only let people see or just the parts we like but the ENTIRE being), who God sees and loves, how we see and love our own entity, and allow ourselves to be fully known by both God AND ourselves.

I am unsure of what this series is going to like but I am extremely excited to share my revelations of Jesus's love, forgiveness, mercy and the journey of finding who I truly am and being confident within becoming fully known by myself and my Creator. Unashamed of my deepest sins because they are made into robes of pure white and the reason why I am who I am. I invite you along with me on this quest to press onward to who we are. Will you join me?