A Sense of Identity
Genesis 1:27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
I watched a TV cop show recently about a young boy who thought he knew who his father was, but he discovered that this man had snatched him from his real parents as a young child and so now as a teenager, he had to come to grips with the fact that he’d been living a lie.
He wasn’t who he thought he was.
Okay, it was fictional, but it’s something that happens in real life too. This whole notion of identity is, for all of us, incredibly important. It’s like a bedrock beneath our feet. If something you thought was rock solid, is all of a sudden pulled out from under you, if the very foundations of your existence are taken away, it rocks you to the core.
I was thirty-six when I realised that, in a very real sense, I wasn’t who I thought I was. It felt as though I’d been kidnapped; kidnapped by the world’s lies about who I really was. I was living out this lie that I had to work harder and harder, be richer and more successful, live in a bigger house, drive a big, flashy car, in order to amount to something.
I’d been kidnapped by the lie that I only had value, if I delivered, if I became successful. Then I discovered the truth.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
It’s a truth that turned my life upside down, because to bring me back from that identity crisis, to bring me back from the lie that I’d been living, to bring me back from a life that was lost and that would one day perish and spend eternity apart from my Dad in heaven, God sent Jesus to suffer and to die for me.
We often don’t make the connection between what Jesus did for us on that Cross, and the day-to-day realities of living the life we live. It’s as though the two are completely separate.
But they’re not. When you look at Jesus hanging there on that Cross, suffering for you, dying for you, what you see is the price that God was prepared to pay for you. The price He was prepared to pay to bring you back. The price He was prepared pay to buy you out of slavery to all these worldly lies about who you are, and restore you to where you belong. With Him.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
What you see, when you see Jesus hanging there on the Cross, is who God says you are, and what He says you’re worth.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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