Last week, we looked at the first half of the phrase, “I am who He says I am because He is who He says He is.” I am excited to dive into who God says He is in this post, but today I want to look at what happens to both halves of that statement when we don’t define our identity.
Struggling to separate who I am and what I do affects how I view God’s love for me, and ultimately, who I believe Him to be.
One of my favorite identity encouragements is my practice of personalizing scripture to speak over myself. I replace we/us/our/(name) with I/me/my/Lauren. It is a good way to remind myself of God’s truth for me, even if it takes work to get to know the Bible and apply the right verses in the right situations. For many years, I would say the new verses but still couldn’t help feeling that they didn’t apply to me.
Because of things I did (or that happened to me), I felt unworthy (undeserving, ineligible, unqualified, beneath, unmerited, inferior) of God’s love. I struggled to believe that it was unconditional. Even though I felt that I was forgiven, I struggled to believe that God was good enough to still offer me things like healing, blessings, and wisdom. Instead, I would say,
“I’m too broken. I’m too sinful. I’ve made too many mistakes. I allowed it. I enabled…”
I can’t say that this theme has completely left me. It can be easy to tell you all the ways God loves and sees you and everything that He has for you, but it can be difficult for me to embrace it for myself (especially when I have a period of depression and CPTSD). When I struggle to believe that He still loves little ol’ divorced me, when I’ve sinned and fallen short, I begin to place false identity on Him. He isn’t a good father. He isn’t my savior or friend. I can’t call Him my source of joy or comfort.
Those are all lies.
He is always faithful. He doesn’t think or feel any of those things about me. He endures. His promises are for me and they don’t fade. He WANTS me. He wants to forgive me. He wants to love me. He wants to open my eyes wider and my heart deeper to His goodness all around me. His death on the cross wasn’t momentary. He is infinite and eternal, along with everything that He has for me.
I am His and He is mine.
(P.S. throw “YOU” in the paragraph above.)
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