How do you identify?

It seems like the question of the day has to do with your identity. Meaning who you are and what you belong to. The culture has gone crazy with labels searching for illusive peace by figuring out one’s one’s belonging found in identity.

Your tribe, race, gender, political leaning, super bowl pick, religious beliefs, social status, inclusive, exclusive, conservative, liberal, right, left, pro, against, kneel, stand, mandates, no mandates, and on it goes.

This desperate search for identity goes back to how we were created. Your DNA was created to belong and from the time you were conceived you desperately long for it. Because our very first parents Adam and Eve listened to the lie that identity can be found in self as the center things have gone terrible wrong (Read Genesis 3). As a result fear drives our quest and the result will always lead to disunity, hate, isolation, and spiritual and physical death.

500 years ago the battle over identity was fierce in Europe. Two young pastors in Heidelberg, Germany had a passion to help young people find their true identity and came up with a teaching tool called the Heidelberg Catechism. If you can find a greater Biblical summary statement of how you experience true identity found in question and answer 1 & 2 let me know.

I believe the only hope for our fractured culture is an encounter with the triune God-the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-who bring true identity saturated by His healing love.

Take a few minutes and ponder the truths below let them flood your soul with a love that brings a lasting identity of true belonging as sons and daughters of the King!

What is your only Comfort in life and in death?

That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to Him, Christ, by HIs Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and make me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

Three things:

First, how great my sin and misery are;

Second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery,

Third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.

Speaking of super bowl, I didn’t get to watch it here in Africa but got to listen to a powerful testimony of the super bowl MVP Cooper Kupp.  When pressed on the pressure of the game and what winning the MVP meant, he gave glory and thanks to God and said:

“I’m validated not by anything I have done on the field but my worth from God my Father!”

Now there’s a statement of some one who knows belonging is not what we have done but what our Father through the gift of Christ has done for us.