Identity Crisis?

Who are you?  Who am I?  Does this question ever cross your mind?  Occasionally it does mine.  A devotional I read this morning was titled “Discovering your true identity”.  My first thoughts were…I know who I am!  But as I read it, it reminded me who I truly am.  I consider myself, as a Christian, saved by grace.  Well any of you who claim to be Christian’s would say…well that’s exactly what you are.  Ultimately that is the truth & facts.  But, since the day Jesus saved me I have been given a new identity as “His Saint”…Praise the Lord!  This is God’s perception of me and the perception He wants me to have of myself.  Do I still sin?  Yes, of course, we all do.  We live in a sinful, imperfect, fleshly body that will not be perfected until Jesus Christ returns.  But how we see ourselves affects how we live daily.  If we see ourselves as sinners saved by grace, then we are living in the past.  That’s what we “were”.  In order to change the way we feel, we need to change the way we see ourselves.  We should see ourselves in the “present tense” which is God’s Saint!  We need to each examine how we truly identify  with ourselves.  If not, we will rely on our feelings.  Many of us still feel so damaged by things that we’ve done, even though we know that God has forgiven us.  We should never feel like He patches us up and doctors our wounds yet we remain the same old unchanged sinner inside.   If we rely on how we feel, that’s when Satan steps in and reminds us of all of our failures, mental and physical disabilities, faults, and losses, etc…   The devil wants us to focus on all of these things and on the fact that we are still sinners.  He wants us to see ourselves this way because if we identify with ourselves as a Saint of God then we are going to feel and act like one!  It will cause us to feel empowered and to live our lives with motivation and experience true joy in life which only He can give.  God wants us to see/identify ourselves as His Saint and the result will be evident by our actions.  

As for me, personally, I know that this is what God wants for my life.  He wants me to focus on the fact that I’m His child/Saint and live a joy-filled life.  This is a daily battle for me with my struggle with Depression and PTSD.  I know that I’m His child and Saint, but I often feel so unworthy with all of the problems that I have, that I tend to dwell on the negative things in my life instead of the positive.  The devil knows this about me and he uses this weakness daily to tear me down…he is the one that causes me to feel like I can never be fixed or normal.  He causes me to have sad thoughts and hurtful and distressing feelings.  Then, he has a party when it makes me feel anxious or depressed, because he knows in turn, it makes me feel unworthy of seeing myself as a “Saint of God”.  I do, and will continue to, pray that God will give me the strength to fight the devil and his demons off daily.  I covet your prayers as well.  I plan to, with God’s help, correct how I often see my sinful, broken self and instead identify myself as HIS SAINT!