Identity Crisis

 by Barbara Latta

We all carry ID cards

Do you know who you are? You know your name, your relatives, your career, where you live, and what you like to do. We all carry some form of identification to reveal our identity to others.

But is that an indication of who you really are? If you are a believer, you have an identity in your spirit exactly like Christ.

The dictionary gives four definitions of identity:

1. The state or fact of remaining the same one or ones.
2. The condition of being oneself or itself and not another.
3. Condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is.
4. The state or fact of being the same one as described.

“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your  mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11 NASB).

“That they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:23 NKJV).

“And you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10 NKJV).

These verses are only a few of many which give us the truth about who we are in Christ. When he dwells in us, we are like Him. When God looks at us, He sees Jesus. (II

Satan tempts us to question

Corinthians 5:17).

When the devil looks at us, he sees Jesus. “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them for greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world” (I John 4:4)

While our spirit is new and like Christ, our soul (mind, will, emotions) can only become like Him through renewing our minds in the word. This renewing will bring us to believe who we really are and our actions will come in line with what is in our spirit.

Without renewing our minds, we will question who we are because we are relying on our feelings. In the Garden of Eden, the devil tempted Adam and Eve with doubt about who they were and what God said (Genesis 3:1). God had made them perfect and they were in complete fellowship with Him. They were as much like God as they could possibly be. Yet they yielded to the thought that God was withholding something from them they didn’t have yet.

Satan did the same thing when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. He whispered to Jesus, “If you are really the Son of God” (Matthew 4:3, 5). Jesus countered all these temptations with the Word of God.

The Bible is our identification card

Evil will do the same thing to us. If he can get us to question our identity, we will not walk in the fullness of the Spirit and we will be weak in our walk against worldly influences. We must do the same thing Jesus did. Counter those doubts with what God says about us.

The Bible is our spiritual identification card. We are as the definition stated, “the same one as described."

Join the conversation and share how you know who you are in Christ.