Who Am I?

Who am I?

Why is it easier to talk about the other people in your life than it is to talk about yourself?… more about that in a bit.

A little about me, I fill many roles, as most of us do.

Aside from the roles I fill, I tend to be a quiet, wallflower type of person, but also love to sing, write, and teach. (These don’t always go together.) I absolutely love women’s ministry, specifically connection to women in and around the Bible.

Thankfully, there is more to each of us than the people and things we can list in an intro or bio. 

We are created in the image of God.

This is our best quality so why do we always look to ourselves and those around us to find our identity instead of finding our identity in our Creator? 

I believe that we are, as a culture, and yes, even a church culture, facing a crisis of identity. We see this in our world in so many areas. From the way we idolize and imitate the celebrity life, to the gender identity that so many in our society find themselves confused about or experimenting with, and the many other things  or roles that we “identify with”.

There is a struggle to know where we fit into the world, the church, or even our family.

 This struggle often leaves us with questions like,

Where do I belong?

How can I better fit in?

Who even am I?

In the devotional book, Beholding and Becoming, Ruth Chou Simons says,

“Everyone tells you to just “be yourself”,

Unfortunately, “yourself” is not always an easy thing to discern, at least not for me. I’m 43 now, and sometimes—sometimes I’m not sure I really know exactly who “I” am.

We look to career, age group, interests, location, ethnicity, political alliance, achievements, enneagrams, titles, or roles to define who we are….To read bios and profiles online these days us to discover how many people define themselves by how they take their coffee, their job titles, or by their wildest dreams. Are we the sum of our likes, dislikes, awards, and associations?”

First of all, I have loved this devotional book! Second, what she says here has been so true for me.  Whenever I have been tasked with writing a bio it is a struggle to take that perspective. I was dumbfounded at how little I knew about myself. Nothing of value came to mind. All of the things that came to mind were things I do, or things about the other people in my life.

Think about the many roles that you fill in your life. What are the “hats” you wear….

Do you ever get lost in the long list, or feel like there has to be more fulfilling things about life? Surely I should have a bigger purpose than this stuff. Are these the things that we were created to do or be?

Or perhaps you find yourself in a season of life that everything that once brought you purpose and fulfillment are over, grown, or just gone. So many things in our life are seasonal. Are you in a new season that seems to lack purpose in comparison to a more fulfilling season of the past?

The truth is, Our life and the roles we have change a lot as time passes. This is ok. It is supposed to change, and we are allowed to grow through those processes.

I am so glad that In His Word, God assures us that we are valuable and have a great purpose with Him in His kingdom. We have value, purpose, and calling no matter what changes we encounter in the ever changing seasons of life. Our kingdom here can crumble, but our value and purpose in Him, stays the same.

How do we go about discovering what we are created to do, or what our calling is?

Let’s start with looking at what we are created to be, and even more importantly, looking at the Creator.

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you,

for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth — everything having the breath of life in it — I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day.” Genesis 1:26-31 CSB

This of course is the creation of humanity, the first man and woman to be created. This is the beginning of it all, mankind created in the image of God.

God had already created an array of fawn, flora, and the vastness of the cosmos yet, nothing that bore His resemblance, nothing in His image. So, this was different, this was special. He even said, it was very good.

All of creation brings glory to the Creator simply by existing. I believe that we, as those created in His image, are primed to bring Him the most glory.

“Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7 CSB

No other created thing was given this gift of the breath of life. As God gave this gift, He set apart humanity for a higher purpose than that of the rest of creation. This placed mankind into a category all their own…beings that are created in His own image.

This is further evidenced not only by the direct communication to man, but also, what He was communicating. His conversation with Adam from the beginning is evidence that man is separate from the rest of creation. We don’t actually have any record of God giving detailed instructions to the animals or plants. He spoke and they were formed, but with Adam, God continues in a dialogue. This 2 way communication was special. It was then, and it’s special today. I am thankful to be included in dialogue with the God of Creation. God is intentional, then, now, and forever.

This ongoing dialogue helps me stay grounded in the truth that I am created in the image of God for the purpose of bringing Him glory.