Who am I really? What is my identity?
Pastor Tom Hughes shares how asking ourselves questions can affirm our true identity in Christ and help us to leave a lasting legacy.
One of the benefits of living a question-led life is the opportunity to discover who we are and what we believe.
“That’s part of the power of a question-led life; it’s not just having answers that you say, but having answers that you live into with God’s help.”
Pastor Hughes shares the two most common ways in which people answer the question, ‘What is my identity?’
We answer it with what other people say about us.
“It can be true for a mom or dad who base their identity on whether their kid said something good about them that day or not good. It could be based on what our boss thinks about us, what our spouse thinks, what a friend or what a neighbor thinks.”
We turn to answering that question by what we’ve done.
“Accomplishments are a good thing, but accomplishments are not the primary way that the Scriptures would have us answer who we are.”
Neither of these reflect how God calls us to find our identity.
“According to the Scriptures, I would argue that the truest thing about us is what God says, and what God says about us is that we are loved.”
Asking God the fundamental question of ‘Who am I?’ will lead to a greater sense of joy and peace in knowing the truth about who He created us to be.
“Once we begin to live from a place that says, ‘I’m loved by God who created me in His image because He loves me that much; He is the one thought me up, He wanted me to be so He brought that about.’ That frees us in a lot of ways to live in a different way.”
This perspective of our identity leads to heart transformation and helps us to live out a selfless life.
“Instead of relating to people based off of what we want from them, now we can relate to them based on what we want for them. We can begin to serve them from the position of love and that’s certainly something we see Christ calling us to.”
Pastor Hughes encourages us to continue asking God questions as we create the legacy of a question-led life.
“Legacy-making comes down to saying, ‘As I follow you Christ, I want to be your ambassador. How can I live a life where I reflect on what you’re asking of me? Have the courage to take those risks? As I do that, trust that my life will be something that counts for something more than just simply me?”
