The identity that you walk out in your life is determined by your faith. If you are living out of a false identity, it is because that is what you believe about yourself. Change is possible through knowledge and faith. You must first know who you are, and believe it, and eventually, it will become your reality. For most of us, where we are and who we are now is usually not who we were intended to become. If you are reading this, then know that you are on a journey, and God has already drafted you into the process of becoming who He intended for you to be. If you ever believe for a moment that you have arrived, you have done yourself a great injustice. Not knowing our identity in Christ is what it means to dwell or walk in darkness. Men love darkness because ignorance to who they are in God is what frees them to pursue the pleasures and gains of the world.
Until you become a perfect reflection of Christ and are able to do what He did and the greater that He spoke about, you are not yet walking in your true identity. Below, I have listed and discussed in brief five false identities that congeals our real identity in Christ.
- This is how I am!
This may be true now, but it can’t be your absolute truth. The spiritual born again experience is similar to the natural birth. You are born as a baby and must go through the process of becoming a matured adult. At every stage in the process, you must be taught by someone who knows more than you (that is, the need for a mentor). The one who becomes an adult and stops learning is like a baby getting stuck in the birthing chambers, because there is always a greater version of ourselves that is yet to emerge and we are yet to experience, no matter how old we get. The one who says: “This is how I am!” only highlights the fact that they are stagnated and stuck. This is where most people find themselves doing the same thing, and expecting a different result.
- I can’t!
God explicitly tells us that we can do all things through Christ, so these two words must be removed from our vocabulary and belief system. As one of my mentors once said, there is no such thing as “I can’t.” Either you don’t want to or you don’t know how to. “I can’t” is a lazy retreat from tapping into the creative and learning power embedded in us as human beings. We can do anything we set our minds and hearts to do, because that is the power we have.
- My parents had it, so I have it.
According to God, under the old covenant, parents pay for their own sins and children pay for their own sins (Read Ezekiel 18). We sometimes take on stuff that was never meant for us because of what we have been taught. Our faith will make it real. There is a practice to go into the bloodline and deal with what is there, but I have been told that when you do that, you actually activate that thing, instead of get rid of it. We must base our belief system on the merit of our personal relationship with God and nothing else. God is not seeking to punish you for another man’s sins. Our personal sins are enough to merit consequences we can hardly bear, if not for God’s mercy and grace, much more to take on the sins of others. We must free ourselves from this perception. Even if God was to pass down the consequences of sin (by those who hate Him), it will only last for three to four generations, but the one who loves God will secure a blessings that a 1000 generations can benefit from (See Exodus 34:6-7).
- This is how it will always be!
This cannot be true if we serve a diverse and unpredictable God who is able to do far more exceedingly and abundantly above all we could ask for, think or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). There is a very famous saying that “This too shall pass.” From a Biblical point of view, “It came to pass” can be interpreted several ways, but I especially like the interpretation that says it (calamity, difficulties, trials) will come, but it comes and passes. Hope and faith are spiritual technologies we can use to partake of the future in the now. If our hope was only in this present time, we would be men most miserable, according to Apostle Paul. Keep hope alive. Change is coming.
- I am nothing.
Even if this is true outside of Christ, once He indwells the believer, the temple is no longer insignificant. There is value added to the one who is possessed by God’s Spirit. God sees you as a house that is worthy of housing the fullness of who He is. It is no light thing that God has come to live inside the believer, without measure, without limits. It becomes really bad theology to put great value and significance on God, while disregarding His house. Start seeing yourself as one of great value. You were worth God’s life; and the whole world is of a lesser value than your soul.
