How Losing Myself Revealed My Identity

As a young adult, I pursued a career, started a family, and did the occasional good deed, but I was always looking out for me. My finest mess-ups were (fortunately) not recorded on social media, but I know they happened. Looking back, perhaps the biggest regrets are the small, daily choices to live for me, and not for Jesus. This began to unravel one day when I heard these lyrics:

It’s gotta be more like falling in love, than something believe in; More like losing my heart, than giving my allegiance; Caught up, called out, come take a look at me now; It’s like I’m falling, it’s like I’m falling in love. (Gray, Jason. “More Like Falling In Love)

Those words really puzzled me. Falling in love? What kind of Bible-beating, Jesus freak would say that? I mean, I love God, and I go to church and stuff, but that’s a bit much. I don’t want to be a crazy church lady; I just want to be a good person who believes in God. Nothing wrong with that, right?

The Bible tells us in Luke 15 the story of a lost son who wasted his inheritance on foolish things, then found himself starving and poor. He came home in hopes of becoming a servant to his father, so that he could survive. The story says he came to himself, and went home. When his father saw him, he ran to him, kissed him, and threw an epic party to celebrate the homecoming.

That song in my car planted a seed about my selfish ways. I began to question my half-hearted attempt at this Christian life. I realized that I was not living for God, which meant that I was living for myself. Deuteronomy 6:5 tells us we should love God with every fiber of our being. Sounds a bit like falling in love, doesn’t it?

We can easily be drawn away from our identity as a beloved child of God. Maybe we are like the lost son and attracted to worldly things, or maybe we get so pulled down by life that we can’t imagine being loved by anyone, much less God. Sometimes, as in my case, we are so busy trying to make something of ourselves that we lose sight of who we are.

The story of the prodigal son gives us 3 steps to get back to our roots. First, we need to realize when we are lost and desperate. It took him being penniless and starving, and it took me being humbled, in order to see the need to surrender and go home. Second, we have to confess to our Father. The lost son told his father what he had done and that he wasn’t even worthy of being his son anymore, and we have to do the same. The third step: accept and walk in our new-found identity-from lost to found-starved to fed-alone to beloved-part-time churchgoer to full-time Jesus freak.

Our identity has always been a daughter of the king, a treasured child of God. Sometimes it just takes a while to figure it out. Once we know who we are, we have a solid foundation upon which we can build a life.

Reflection

1. Describe your relationship with God today. Do you feel close to Him? What does your relationship mean to you?

2. Which one of the three steps listed above are the next step for you to claim your identity as beloved daughter of the king?

3. If you are already grounding in your identity, what challenges or threatens that truth? What distracts you or pulls you away?

Goal Setting & Sharing

Name two to three specific things you can do to routinely be grounded in that identity. (Example: Routinely pray to God about His goodness, power, and love as both a praise to Him and reminder to you, or make a goal to determine which roles you are currently playing fit your identity and which don’t)