WHO ARE WE?
The question of “who am I?” is so often asked and for good reason. It’s an important question. It determines so much of how we view ourselves, God, each other, culture and so on. To truly love others and the world, you must first learn to love yourself. Can that even be done if you don’t know who you truly are? If you don’t know who you’re really loving? While I will actually say that, to a degree, it is possible to love yourself if you don’t truly know who you are, we aren’t designed to operate that way. Discovering one’s identity is a process and sometimes a long one at that, with no clear “arrival” of one concrete epiphany.
But to fully unlock that potential of loving yourself and in turn loving others to the fullest, it requires a strong foundation of who we are in God. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to find inferior identities in everything else but God. Just in the political realm there are plenty. Right, Left, Liberal, Conservative, Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, etc. I’m not making a statement on any of those causes or saying they shouldn’t be supported if you believe in them, but to wrap identity in them is still selling ourselves short of what we’re designed for.
Even in the church/Christian world there are plenty of inferior identities. Pastor, Teacher, Evangelist. Whatever gifts you have, whatever title or position you hold in ministry. Again, not that they are bad, they’re inherently supposed to bring a unity in recognizing different gifts in each other. They are supposed to be an active part in our lives inside of the church. Still, they are inferior. Even more, many churches and people who call themselves those things (and truly may be those things) do so even outside of their identity with God. They can act solely out of identifying with their gift rather than identifying with God.
FAMILY IS THE ULTIMATE IDENTITY
I believe the ultimate identity is found in family. The family of the Kingdom of Heaven. Every identity falls short of the identity of being a son or daughter of God. We see that the language of family is heavy in the Bible. He is our heavenly Father. We are his children. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. The term “adoption” is used to describe how God has brought us into his family.It’s an interesting thought to me that we are never called “adults” of God but rather always “children” of God. That speaks of it being an unending position for us. It’s an eternal state we are to enter into of being his children. We aren’t ever to “grow-up” out of that.
The source of the family aspect in the kingdom clearly comes from our Father. While there are many other names he goes by, the closest one we can relate to is the one of Him being our Father. But how do we relate to him in that way? He certainly comes to us in so many different ways, right? He can shows up in different roles such as teacher, coach, mentor, doctor, business partner, consultant, etc. He’s so invested into all the aspects of our lives that he wants to meet us in those ways. Many times it will look like a relationship of coach and athlete, teacher and student, CEO and employee or even “business partner.” But he does not want to meet us and relate to us in those ways just so we get to know the way the kingdom does business or teaching. Many people can share on great kingdom aspects of business and be right, but still only see God as a CEO/business partner rather than a Father. If we can see God touching our business but miss his heart as a Father, then we’ve missed the main point of Him showing up.
FAMILY IS FLUID
Something about my personal family life. I’ve been fortunate to have a great earthly dad in my life. His occupation is a dentist, so naturally he’s been my dentist. Would be a little weird if I decided to go somewhere else ha!When I’m in his office and he is working on my teeth, I still call him dad. Even though the role in that moment is dentist to patient, it is still inferior to the role of father and son. There is no pressure to call him anything other than dad. Even in times when he’s helped coach me in athletics, I’ve never felt to call him “coach.” The role of dad is still superior no matter what the aspect is at that moment. Other roles can be compartmentalized depending on the situation but family is not meant to be that way. It is fluid because it is superior to all other roles.
God is not called our Heavenly Coach, Mentor, Teacher, CEO, Doctor, etc. Only Heavenly Father. The Father’s heart can not be stopped or hindered by inferior identities. Only we can hinder it to us when we want to settle for something less than being a son and daughter of Him. We can choose to operate as pastors, teachers, entrepreneurs, evangelists, coaches and let that define us as who we are, even if we are releasing certain parts of the Kingdom. But if we submit those identities to the highest identity of being a child, then we start to release an eternal foundation of Family here on earth.
HOW ARE WE SEEING HIM IS HOW WE SEE OURSELVES
I hope this helps someone. It has been helping me a lot this year of how to view my relationship to God. He wants to meet us in every part of our lives both big and small. To see how He wants to Father us in those moments makes all the difference of how I start to see myself. When I start to see Him as a Father, I start to see myself as a son. When my heart is positioned in that way, there is no limit of the Kingdom that can grow in me. The cap is taken off of how much true confidence, love, peace that I can see in myself because there is no situation that will hinder that if I see the Father.
