Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning.
[00:00:02] I am almost embarrassed to share this little story.
[00:00:07] I was 18 years old and I was in my bedroom and I'm standing in front of my closet.
[00:00:14] Behind me on the floor are several pretty large duffel bags that are starting to be filled with my clothes and my shoes.
[00:00:22] I'm getting ready to go off to college.
[00:00:25] And as I stand in front of my clothes and my stuff, the thought that's going through my head as I decide, should I take this or should I not take this?
[00:00:35] Is, who am I? And who do I want people at school to think of me as?
[00:00:45] I was a Jesus follower for a couple years at that point, and I think I understood the basics of, you know, Jesus died and rose and everything else. But when it came to thinking about my identity and who I was in Christ, I don't think I really got it. I don't think I really understood what that was.
[00:01:06] And Even now, today, 30 plus years later, there are times where I don't feel like I truly live out that theology of who my identity is in Christ, the way that I know what it is intellectually.
[00:01:23] And I'm guessing that there are many of you that could relate to that, that you would look at your own life and you would be able to say, you know, I kind of know the theology. I kind of know what it is to have an identity in Christ.
[00:01:39] But does that really correspond? Does that really link up? Is that clearly aligned with how I live out? Or are there other factors that are influencing what I think about myself and my identity, my value and my worth?
[00:01:56] That's what we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to look at our identity as believers in Jesus. But more than just looking at the theology, I really want us to think hard about how we came to those conclusions. And then what does it actually look like to live it out?
[00:02:15] So we're going to start in Romans, chapter 8, verse 14.
[00:02:23] For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
[00:02:30] The Spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again.
[00:02:36] Rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.
[00:02:42] And by him we cry, abba. Father.
[00:02:46] The Spirit testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children.
[00:02:51] Now, if we are children, then we are heirs. Heirs with God and coheirs with Christ.
[00:02:59] These four verses make a really clean case for what our identity is as a believer of Jesus.
[00:03:08] Verse 14, we are children of God. Verse 15, we are adopted into sonship or daughtership.
[00:03:15] Verse 16. We are children of God, verse 17. We are children of God and heirs with Christ and coheirs with Christ.
[00:03:24] That is really simple. Our identity as a believer of Jesus is that we are a child of God.
[00:03:34] That doesn't need a lot of explanation. That's a pretty simple theological tenet. We are children of. Of God if we have placed our faith in Jesus.
[00:03:44] And Romans 8 isn't the only place that that comes up. It. It comes up in John, chapter one. John writes, yet to all who did receive him, Jesus, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
[00:04:01] Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or of husband's will, but born of God.
[00:04:10] Or Galatians, Galatians, chapter three. So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.
[00:04:20] So as Jesus followers, the theology, the correct thinking is we are a child of God. It is through our faith in Jesus, in the finished work of the cross, that we receive that gift. And that is an eternal designation. It's an eternal identity.
[00:04:38] I am a child of God, you are a child of God, you are adopted, you are an heir.
[00:04:47] That is our identity in Christ.
[00:04:52] But like I said, knowing that in my head and seeing how I walk day by day, I recognize that there's some places I'm not being able to do that.
[00:05:07] And so I ask myself, like, why is that? Why is it that the thing that I know in my head, I have a hard time at times actually living out.
[00:05:20] And I think I understand a little bit more what that is.
[00:05:25] You see, when we think of our identity and we understand it to be a child of God, that is in direct competition with what our culture tells us our identity is.
[00:05:39] Our culture has a way different perspective on our identity than Scripture gives us as a child of God.
[00:05:48] And that cultural difference, that culture has an influence because I'm involved in it, you're involved in it, we're surrounded by it, we're engaged in it, and we absolutely should be.
[00:05:59] But it still has an impact on the way that we see our identity.
[00:06:06] Our culture teaches us that you achieve your identity, that it's something that you earn or grow into. And that's a huge contrast because identity is one of two things. It's either received, that is child of God, or it is achieved, that is culture.
[00:06:48] And what the Christian belief, belief is, is that identity is received, not achieved.
[00:06:58] Identity is received, not achieved. As a child of God, I have received an identity, and now I have the opportunity to live that out because my identity is received, not achieved.
[00:07:14] Now you Might ask, but what does it mean to have an identity that is achieved?
[00:07:22] What is our culture taught us about our identity?
[00:07:26] Well, our culture has taught us, number one, we are individuals. And that is the most important social construct, that we are unique individuals. And that as unique individuals, we have the opportunity to, to find our identity, to create our identity, to discover our identity.
[00:07:50] We have been given this idea that our identity is a solely internal thing, that all I have to do is look internally to find the answers and discover who I am, create who I am, find out who, who I am.
[00:08:09] And the question that our culture has given us. As we grapple with our identity of achieved, we need to ask ourselves, we are taught, who am I?
[00:08:23] All we have to do is ask ourselves, who am I?
[00:08:27] Because you are whoever you say you are.
[00:08:30] You define you. You, you can be whoever or whatever you want to be.
[00:08:37] That is what we are surrounded by. That is the message that our culture gives us. And often I find myself, I don't know about you, but I find myself buying into that.
[00:08:50] I can define myself, I can create my own reality in that way.
[00:08:57] The challenges mount as I start down that path though, because when I ask the question, who am I?
[00:09:05] The answer is coming internally and therefore the answer's most likely seeded from my feelings or my emotions.
[00:09:13] My feelings or my emotions direct my answer to the question, who am I?
[00:09:20] Sometimes that means I pull from my successes or maybe my dreams. That's who I want to be, it's who I dream.
[00:09:29] And I start to build or create that identity from that imagery.
[00:09:35] For some people, they don't take that perspective. They might even take the opposite perspective. And they say, it's not my dreams or my aspirations, it's actually the things that have led to failure that I will define myself by my failures or the things that have let me down as I've gone about my life.
[00:09:55] But as I ask myself, who am I?
[00:09:59] I have to find a place within me that I can pull from.
[00:10:04] Most of us pull from one of three places as we start to achieve our identity.
[00:10:09] Number one, we look at our occupation, we look at what we do, and we define our identity by what we do.
[00:10:17] Lots of examples of that. You could be a stay at home mom, you could be a stay at home mom raising kids. And you are defining or could be defining your identity by what you achieve in that role. How are my kids doing? How's their faith? How's their studies? How's their athletics? I can look at the things that my kids do and begin to achieve my Identity in that.
[00:10:42] That could be true if I'm an electrician or an engineer. I look to my occupation, I look for my successes or, or my feelings. And I begin to define my identity by what I do.
[00:10:56] If it's not by what you do, it very well could be by your talents.
[00:11:02] For example, I'm a world class musician or I'm a great musician and so I begin to define my identity by what I achieve through my talent of music.
[00:11:14] The same thing could be true of athletics.
[00:11:17] I define my identity by what I achieve through my athleticism.
[00:11:24] If it's not my job or it's not my talent, then I might begin to define my identity by my relationships.
[00:11:32] Who are my friends, who are my associates, who are my co workers.
[00:11:36] Or another way we look at relationships is we define it by the thing I am, I'm single, I'm married, and in all these circumstances I begin to answer the question who am I? So that I might achieve, create, discover my identity.
[00:11:56] I really believe all of us at some level are influenced by that culture that we live in, in this area that we know. The truth is my identity is received, not achieved. But yet we get drawn to our achievement and then we begin to define our identity off of that.
[00:12:18] The interesting thing in that is when we go that route, there are some natural results that will happen and these are things that we're seeing all throughout our culture right now.
[00:12:32] If I achieve my identity by asking who am I?
[00:12:37] What happens next?
[00:12:40] Well, we see it a lot. If I'm that mom and I'm raising my kids and that becomes my identity and then my kids graduate and they go off and they start to have their own lives.
[00:12:54] There's so many stay at home moms then end up in a place where they go, who, who am I again? I've got to start over and redefine myself because I'm still mom, but I'm not mom the way that I've defined it and now it's changed and what do I do with that?
[00:13:09] It leads to somewhat of a crisis of identity. We've heard of mid life crisises, identity crises, this is where they come from. We've achieved an identity, but then circumstances change and now my identity has lost some of its solidity. What if I'm an athlete? We hear about it all the time, right? Professional athletes, they go through their careers and then age catches up, injuries catch up and all of a sudden they don't have an identity because they can't achieve the academic prowess that they have had and been so accustomed to circumstances change and they lose that.
[00:13:47] If I define my identity through my relationships and I'm married, and maybe my identity is through my spouse or around being married, what happens if that relationship breaks apart? What if divorce comes?
[00:14:02] Now I don't have an identity.
[00:14:04] Who am I? And so what ends up happening for those that have an achieved identity is they have to go back over and over and ask the question, who am I? Because life situations change, circumstances change.
[00:14:22] And so one of the unintended consequences that is not talked about as we live in a culture that promotes achieved identity through the question who am I?
[00:14:34] Is that we create an identity that is unstable.
[00:14:41] It's unstable.
[00:14:44] Don't you agree? The one consistency in life, the one thing that's almost guaranteed to happen in life is change.
[00:14:52] Your job's gonna change, your relationships are gonna change, your talents are going to change.
[00:15:00] That is all guaranteed to change.
[00:15:03] And so if we build an identity on achievement in areas that are guaranteed to change, then we are guaranteed to have an unstable identity. And it's no wonder. The idea of midlife crisis, or just identity crisis in general, is normative. And we talk about it all the time. It's so easy to think about.
[00:15:27] What's the contrast?
[00:15:31] What if instead of just knowing the theology that I'm a child of God and that I've received that as a gift, what if I began to walk that out?
[00:15:40] What would my life look like? How would it look differently in that situation?
[00:15:46] Well, the first thing I would do is I would not ask the question, who am I? Because it's the wrong question to ask for someone living out a received identity.
[00:15:56] If my identity is received, then it has to be given by someone. Therefore, the question I ask is, whose am I not? Who am I?
[00:16:11] Whose am I?
[00:16:14] I'm a child of God. I am God's special possession. He loves and cares for me.
[00:16:21] He wants a relationship with me so much that Jesus would go to the cross and die and be risen in an attempt to create relationship with me, that I matter that much to him as his child.
[00:16:38] I'm a child of the one true king.
[00:16:42] I'm not a child of the beggar or the peasant. I'm a child of the king, the. The one who created it all, the one who puts it in motion. He is my father.
[00:16:54] If I understand whose I am, and I understand that he is unchanging, unflappable, never moving, he is solid as a rock, then all of a sudden, the identity I have is 100% stable, can't change it can't change. I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. My identity does not change.
[00:17:28] Yeah, but what if.
[00:17:30] What if this happens in my relationships?
[00:17:33] Still a child of God.
[00:17:35] What if my job changes or I get fired or the company? Still a child of God.
[00:17:41] What if I lose my ability and my talents?
[00:17:45] Still a child of God. It's unchanging. It never ever changes. I don't have to be in a place where I'm on unstable ground because my identity never changes. If I'm that musician and arthritis takes away my ability to play my instrument, I'm a child of God.
[00:18:05] Now I've lost some of my ability to execute the talents that God's given me. But I have not changed. My identity is. I'm a child of God.
[00:18:13] And I can live with that confidence and assureness.
[00:18:17] Scotty Scheffler if you don't know who Scotty Scheffler is, he's the number one ranked golfer in the world on the PGA Tour. Scotty Scheffler's been the number one ranked golfer for several years and he is at the pinnacle of his profession. He's made almost $100 million just in tournament winnings in the last several years.
[00:18:36] In fact, he's so successful that he is approaching in the next year or so. He will break Tiger woods all time earnings mark on the PGA Tour.
[00:18:47] But Scotty Scheffler is also a Jesus follower.
[00:18:51] This past summer he was playing in a major tournament, significant tournament. Prior to the tournament he was interviewed by some media and they asked him, how important, how significant is it to you to win this tournament? Here's what Scotty Scheffler said in response.
[00:19:10] I would say my greatest priorities are my faith and my family. Those come first for me. Golf is third in that order. And I've said it for a long time, golf is not how I identify myself. I don't identify myself by winning tournaments, chasing trophies, being famous or whatever it is.
[00:19:30] My victory was secure on the cross and that's a pretty special feeling to know that I am secure for forever and it doesn't matter if I win this tournament or I lose this tournament. My identity is secure forever.
[00:19:50] Scotty Scheffler lives out a received identity. You can see it just in that statement alone that he says my identity is secure. Yeah, I want to win the tournament for sure. But if I don't win the tournament, it doesn't change who I am. It doesn't put me in crisis or anything else because I don't have to achieve My identity.
[00:20:13] I mentioned Tiger Woods. Tiger woods is the all time greatest golfer. Tiger woods had to achieve his identity. And when his golf game slipped, his world went to garbage.
[00:20:24] He is a total mess because he believed what he was taught by his culture. That identity is achieved and identity is received, not achieved.
[00:20:38] Another area, you've got this idea of stability and instability. But there's another area where your identity affects tremendously. Whether you believe it is received or achieved and live that out.
[00:20:51] Think about the way you are loved and receive love and the way you give love.
[00:20:56] If my identity is based on what I achieve, then love is based on performance.
[00:21:02] Who I am.
[00:21:04] What have you done for me lately?
[00:21:06] How good have you been lately?
[00:21:09] And as a person, I can't love myself because. Because I have not achieved success recently.
[00:21:17] And actually, the crazy thing about it is it plays both ways negatively. If I go with an achieved identity, if I don't achieve, then I can't love myself because I'm unworthy. Or I look at someone else and I say they have to achieve my love. And the way they achieve it is performance. And they're not performing so they don't get my love and affection at this moment.
[00:21:39] But it goes the other way. What if I don't? Or what if I do achieve?
[00:21:44] What if I achieve wildly? What if I'm so successful in my job? Everyone should adore me.
[00:21:50] Everyone should love me. How do you not love me? I'm the most successful.
[00:21:55] You see, when my identity is based on achievement, then love is based on performance. And if it's based on performance, then either you ought to worship me for my success or I'll worship myself, or I'll worship you for your success, or I'm unworthy and you're unworthy based on performance.
[00:22:16] What that means is that if I live out an achieved identity, I am loved.
[00:22:24] If that sucks, I don't want to be loved. If the opposite of that is. If I live out a received identity as a child of God, I'm loved. Period.
[00:22:41] Sentence over.
[00:22:44] But what if I fail? Loved.
[00:22:47] What if Scotty doesn't win the tournament? Loved doesn't matter.
[00:22:51] The stability of that identity that is received and lived out. I know that I'm loved. Therefore I can love people even when they don't succeed.
[00:23:01] Even when they live out a life that disappoints the prodigal son. We sung about that earlier.
[00:23:08] Even if I don't succeed, I know I'm loved. And I can live in that love.
[00:23:16] Just to make sure we have the scriptural Basis for that.
[00:23:20] Couple passages for you. First John, chapter three.
[00:23:23] See what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called the children of God. And that is what we are.
[00:23:34] First Peter, chapter two.
[00:23:36] But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession. Am I a special possession if I get fired? Yep. Still loved. Ephesians, chapter one.
[00:23:51] For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love. He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ. And this goes even further, because if you go into Romans 5 and you read the first half of Romans 5, he loved us even when we were his enemies.
[00:24:14] That's the advantage of received over achieved.
[00:24:19] As a child of God, you are his special possession and that is it.
[00:24:25] So we've got a contrast to figure out what we want to do with.
[00:24:31] If I want to live out my identity as received and not achieved, I need to be asking the question constantly of myself, whose am I?
[00:24:40] And that will be stable and I will be loved in that if I choose, which I do far too often, I far too often say, yeah, I want to achieve it right now. Thanks God for that. But I'm going to try and achieve it right now.
[00:24:59] My experience, I think your experience is we begin to ask that question, who am I? And we try and figure that out, and then it's a moving target and it changes and it's unstable and it leads us to this place of love where it's based on what we do or don't do.
[00:25:19] Man, that is just a rough deal.
[00:25:23] But I know so many of you that are struggling with that idea.
[00:25:28] You are struggling with, am I lovable?
[00:25:32] But my marriage is this or my job is this or what?
[00:25:37] It's because all of us gravitate toward achievement. It's a cultural identity to us, and it's a struggle.
[00:25:47] But the Christian, the Jesus follower, their identity is received, not achieved.
[00:25:53] So how do we live that out?
[00:25:55] How does that actually happen? Rather than just be theology that we know, how do we overlap those as much as possible so that we don't get sucked into what our culture is lying to us about?
[00:26:09] I think that depends a little bit on where you're at.
[00:26:14] So let me speak to those of you that are either here on site right now, or you're online and you're not a Jesus follower. You haven't gotten to that place yet. You're checking things out, you're thinking about things, investigating whatever it might Be. First off, you are so welcome here.
[00:26:31] We are so happy that you would choose to honor us, to include us as part of that investigation or searching in your life.
[00:26:42] But if that's where you're at, it's almost certain then that your identity is shaped by culture's concepts of achievement. Who am I?
[00:26:53] And the question I would ask you in this moment is, how's that going?
[00:27:01] How's it going for you right now? As you try and achieve that identity, do you recognize the instability? Do you recognize love as a condition in your life? I mean, there's so many other ways this plays out. I just picked two that I thought were helpful.
[00:27:18] But how's that going for you? And if you would be someone right now and you would say, you know what, honestly, it's not going great, then I would ask a follow up question of you. I would just say to you, would you be willing to maybe give God's way a try?
[00:27:35] Would you consider God's way as a way forward?
[00:27:40] Would you be willing to receive the gift that is offered to you by placing your faith in Jesus, by bowing your knee to him and allowing him to be the direction in your life, allowing him to lead your life?
[00:27:53] And then you can answer confidently, whose am I? I'm a child of God.
[00:27:58] You may be someone who's like, I'm there, but I don't know what to do.
[00:28:04] Lots of ways you can go forward, lots of next steps. One, you could just pray a quiet prayer that just says, God, I recognize my way's not working and I want to turn control over to you. I want to follow your way. I want to receive my identity as a child of God.
[00:28:21] You can just pray that prayer. We're going to have communion here in a minute. You'll have a time where you could just pray that prayer reflectively.
[00:28:29] You may not be there. Maybe you have some questions or your concerns or whatever it might be. So then I would say to you, you might need to talk to someone.
[00:28:37] We got options. You want to talk to somebody. After we finish with the service on both ends of the stage, there'll be people at the prayer tables there, they'd love to answer your questions, pray with you, hear your story, hear your concerns, whatever it might be.
[00:28:50] You may not be someone who wants to come forward. You might want to go back. I get it. No worries.
[00:28:56] Anyone who's got a lanyard on, anyone who's been on stage, any staff member, grab them, ask your questions, tell your story. We'd love to help if that's Uncomfortable.
[00:29:06] Another option, you can fill out a connect card. You can go to journeyboseman.com and do that. You can go to the lobby and fill one out on one of the iPads. But you fill out a connect card. I. On the Connect card, there's an option where it says, I'm new around faith. You can check that box. If you check that box, I will follow up with you personally. I'll text you Monday, Tuesday, this week, I'll text you. We'll figure out a way to connect and we can have a conversation. So lots of ways. If you're that person who's uncertain, but you're trying to figure out, is received better than achieved.
[00:29:39] Okay, the second group of people I want to talk to is basically everybody else.
[00:29:45] You guys are Jesus followers. You know the right theology. I didn't tell you anything you don't know. You know you're a child of God.
[00:29:52] But there's a pretty good chance that at least a majority of you are like me. And you revert into that achieve mode constantly.
[00:30:02] How do we deal with that? How do we, as Jesus followers not be people that are out there trying to achieve our identity? How do we live out a received identity over and over?
[00:30:18] If you're trying to do that, what I would say to you is, you have to start by being loved by God.
[00:30:28] And I know that you're going, but I'm loved by God. You already said that.
[00:30:33] I did say that, but what I'm saying is you have to be in a place where you can receive it.
[00:30:38] You have to be willing to receive God's love in that place and rest in that love.
[00:30:46] We are called children of God. Child of God.
[00:30:50] What does that little child do in a safe environment with their parent or their grandparent?
[00:30:56] They climb on their lap and they snuggle up tight and they lean in. And they don't need anything in that moment.
[00:31:04] They don't need entertainment, they don't need whatever.
[00:31:08] All they need is to be in the presence of that loving parent.
[00:31:15] So I've been thinking about that a lot this week and last week, and I realized that it's so rare that I just sit in the father's lap.
[00:31:28] It's so rare to just receive it because I'm always trying to do stuff for God. I want to do stuff for God. I want to make a difference. I want to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:31:39] I want to do stuff. I want to achieve. I want to achieve because I want God to love me for what I do.
[00:31:47] But what God wants you to do is receive.
[00:31:51] To just sit in his lap, to accept his love, to allow that to just wash over you, to rest in that.
[00:32:06] The child in their parents lap isn't worried about the next meal or the clothes or the job, or the provision in their life.
[00:32:16] The child in the father's lap who's receiving the love is just present in that moment.
[00:32:24] It's hard to do.
[00:32:26] Our lives are so busy, we're all over the place.
[00:32:30] But the reality is to receive God's love and to just be in that. We have to stop, we just have to sit there. You want to know honestly what I've been doing for the last two weeks? I literally have this chair in my living room. I'm sitting in, looking out a window. No phone, no Bible, no nothing. I'm just trying to receive his love, to accept that he loves me in spite of everything I've done, everything I will do.
[00:33:00] Like it's really hard, like it shouldn't be that hard. I have found it excruciatingly difficult to just sit in that and. But what I have realized over these last couple weeks is as I've sat in that and I have received that love from him and allowed that to just be present, that then I am so much more capable and able to launch out into the world and try and love God and love people. Well, because I'm receiving what he's offering, I can actually then pass on what I've received when I haven't received it. How do you pass on what you haven't received already?
[00:33:43] I think that's the challenge that I've experienced as I've been walking through this over the last couple of weeks.
[00:33:52] Now today we are going to be doing communion. And the thing that's great about communion in this moment in my mind is what better opportunity to sit and receive God's love, stand and receive God's love, that we could for a moment pause and just accept his love for us? Because what is communion?
[00:34:15] Communion is a time to remember what Jesus did for us on the cross.
[00:34:20] That's why we have the wafer, the cracker. That's the representation of his body.
[00:34:26] We have the wine or the juice, the representation of his blood. And we take those two elements. We take the cracker, we dip it in the wine. And when we do that, we take it in remembrance of what Jesus did, the thing he did because he cares for us so much. That created our identity as a child of God. That is what communion is. That's what he did for us.
[00:34:53] So as you partake in communion today, that's what I'd love for you to be thinking about. Can I sit and be awash in his love?
[00:35:03] Just a couple logistics. As you, as you get up and you come forward, that's how we do communion around here. Just come up the right side, get your cracker, dip it, and then you can go back to your seat. Go back up the right side. We've got time. You don't have to be in a rush. But as you come forward, that's what you're thinking about. How do I receive the love that God has for me? Let's pray.
[00:35:29] Father God, thankful for where you've met me these last couple weeks. As I've just sat in that chair and thought about the love that you have for me, I think about how many times I had the counter argument. The yeah, but don't you remember when this happened or that happened, or I was thinking this or thinking that? And yet in that moment, you can reassure me that I'm your child and I'm loved and that's not changing.
[00:36:02] And I just pray, Lord, as we move throughout our weeks, that you would be there, that we would be able to receive our identity as a child of God and most importantly God, that we would be able to live it out that as we receive the love that you have for us, that we then are capable of passing that love on to. To those around us.
[00:36:26] Thank you for all that you have done and all that you will in Jesus name, amen.
