How do you answer the question? What modifiers come to your mind when you attempt to define yourself?
If you’re like me, the first one that comes to mind is what you do occupationally. For a lot of us, what we do for a living is the leading descriptor for who we are.
God’s been challenging me to define myself outside of my job. As I seek to find value as a man, He’s been reminding me that I’m first and foremost His creation, His child and the apple of His eye (Ps 17:8).
We’ve adopted so many ways of describing ourselves. Not only our occupations, but we also focus on defining ourselves with gender, race, sexuality, political affiliations, age, hobbies and a slew of other things. But as believers, all of these labels are at best partial, graceless and temporal descriptions of the new creation God is creating in us.
Why does it matter how we describe ourselves? How you define yourself shows what realities control your peace and joy. If you are your job, then you’re hosed when you get a bad performance review. If you’re foremost a mother, your worth is held by the very hands of the ones you’re trying to grow and develop. If you’re a republican or a Democrat first, you’ve pledged allegiance to a system that wasn’t designed to care for day to day, much less your soul.
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
2 Corinthians 5:16-17 ESV
Defining ourselves as God does requires us to resist the labels the world is clamoring for us to embrace. Our identity should be found primarily in our eternal position and secondarily in our earthly one.
How you define yourself gives you a forecast into what or who holds contentment, comfort and purpose in your life today. I’m not sure about you, but more than ever, I desire God to hold me throughout my days and weeks. Today, I’m purposefully choosing claim the descriptions that God has already given to me. I’m a chosen child of God.