Where is Your Identity?

Where is Your Identity?

By Nicolena Barnet

One of the biggest questions and expectations that face teenagers and young adults today is “Who am I?”  While we may spend a lot of our life asking and re-asking this question, for high schoolers and college students this becomes a focused question for others as well as ourselves.  Relatives ask what our plans are for our life, high school teachers ask us to summarize who we are in an ice breaker, and the media tries to drive home the fact that we need to be something before we can be someone.  

We ask ourselves questions like: What am I good at? What should I do?  Do I fit into categories or groups, and can those categories change?  Among all the labels and categories that society, media, family, friends and even we ourselves try to use, God tells us clearly who we are.  We are his children, made in his image, and called according to his purpose.

God is a creative and loving being.  He knew you before your parents even met.  He knew what you would look like, what you would enjoy, and what your talents and gifts would be.  He created you differently from others with a unique purpose in mind.  You are intelligent, important, and loved by the God of the universe who looked at you and said, “You are special and I love you!”

So what does that mean for you?

I’ve always really liked analogies.  I love taking an abstract or complicated problem and finding a way to explain it.  Disclaimer – God cannot be boiled down to any one analogy or identity.  However, a few years ago I came up with an analogy for identity that I’ve shared with others and reminded myself of to help organize who God made me to be.  I call this analogy the solar system identity.  

When we think of our solar system, we may think of the disk pictures with the sun in the middle, surrounded by planets.  Yet did you know that our solar system is moving through space?  Not only does our planet revolve around the sun, but it follows the sun as our entire solar system moves through our galaxy.  There are so many moving parts and, while I won’t explain all the physics of gravity, there are two very important things to know:  

1. Every object in space has a gravitational effect on the others. Larger planets have
   bigger gravitational effects while moons have a much smaller effect.  
2. The sun is the largest gravitational pull and the most important in our system. 
   Without the sun, the planets, moons, asteroids, and debris that make up our system would scatter across space or never meet.  They would not move together through the galaxy in any way that mattered.

Our identity is a lot like a solar system.  So many parts of our lives –   experiences, talents, hobbies, friends, physical appearance, or culture – all come together to form our identities.  Some things play a larger role or have a bigger effect than others, but each one affects the rest.  Something needs to hold our identities together and drive us forward.  This sun, or central feature, will shape every other aspect of who we are and what we do in major ways and drive the choices we make.  The biggest question you need to ask yourself is “what is the center of my identity?”

Spoiler alert: God is the only thing that can be the stable and steady center for our identity.  Many people might try to put their skills, culture, or even accomplishments as the defining and driving point of their identity, but all of these things are temporary.  An accident can take away our physical or mental abilities.  We could move or our cultures could shift in light of new historical facts or modern changes.  Our accomplishments may be remembered for a time, but there will always be something new, bigger, and better that comes along.  

Everything in this world is temporary, and if our identity is built on something temporary, we will eventually have a moment when our identity falls apart.  This can lead to hopelessness, anger, depression, and even violence against ourselves and others.  The emotional turmoil of our identities crumbling around us is a crushing event.

But you never have to experience that terrible moment.

God has come and said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart….” Jeramiah 1:5a (NIV).  The Psalms echo this sentiment.  “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Psalms 139:13 (NIV) 

God knows you because he created you, and he knows who you are as the best version of yourself.  When you center your identity on being a child of God, you have centered your identity on something eternal.  No matter what happens in life, nothing can change who you are to God and what he did for you.  Everything else will fall into place if you allow God to take the lead of your life.  When you trust him, your identity will never be called into question and who you are will never change.

“Do You Know Your True Identity?” By Joyce Meyers

“Your identity in Christ” by Rebekah Black

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® NIV®Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society®Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. 

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