Remember whose you are…

He is the only One allowed to define who you are.

I was tired of hearing and of seeing what the world thought I should be, as a wife, a Mum, a business owner, a friend, a leader. I was wearing all the hats, trying to fit all the labels, until one day I realised I couldn’t. That one day ended with a crashing halt to all my performing and I was left wondering… well who am I really?

The voices are all around us, especially in these days with an overload of social media, shouting at us; look like this, dress like that, cook this, eat that, stay home, go to work, and perhaps you are familiar with those voices too…perhaps you know what I am talking about.

Just because the culture around us has the loudest voice does not mean we should listen. Who we are, our worth and value should not be determined by someone or something other than the One who created us.

And the One who created us is not interested in all our performing. He is interested in our presence. From the beginning He called us to follow Him. I believe this was really a call to belong. To belong to the One who knows us deeply and deeply loves us.

When you get to know whose you are, you’ll get to know who you are. Who you are meant to be, who you were created to be was written in His heart long before the voices of this world even knew you existed.

I read something today by Ann Voskamp that jumped off the page and stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t read another word. In her latest book The Broken Way she writes “Activity for God – is not the same as intimacy with God. And it is your intimacy with Christ that gives you your identity.”[1]

Yes!!! That’s it!!! The revelation that had been unfolding in my heart had been echoed in another. The journey I had been on to discover who I really was, was a shared journey. And I knew it was true – I am not the only one who struggles with or has wrestled with this vital and formational truth – our identity.

Who we really are is only found in our being with Christ, not our doing for Him.

For the One who made you, who calls you to belong, is the only One who gets to define who you are, and He calls you His Beloved. That is who you are and that is who I am.

I still wear all the hats. Only now I am learning, that God is the only One who can tell me what that hat should look like and who I am meant to be when I wear that hat. I am learning – because it’s a journey – that unless I take time to be with God, unless I carve out intentional intimate time with Him, I cannot know who I am.

I need to be with Him before I do anything for Him.

Otherwise the voices of this culture will start to infiltrate my heart again and place demands or definitions upon me that were never meant to be there. Only God who made me can define me. I only need to be close to and listen to Jesus for the truth about who I really am.

 Thank you Ann Voskamp for reminding me of that today…

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[1] Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016) 185