Identity and Purpose
It is currently 1:18 pm and I've been awake for a little over two hours. I decided that it was ridiculous to get up early if I didn't have to, so I had Reese's Puffs at a better breakfast time... 11:00. It's my last day of unemployment!
In my free time (which is all the time this week), I've been catching up on some lives overseas. Friends in India/Haiti. Dare I use the word "missionary"? I have friends who ended up in unlovely places because they felt Jesus call them to go there- to find the ugliness of poverty-spiritual and physical- and stand right in the middle of it. To show and tell people who Jesus is- to live for that and not be so concerned about the other details.
If you are in transition right now there are two questions to consider:
1. What is my purpose?
2. What is my identity?
Number one is what drives our worries and it's what we focus on. My purpose is to pay these debts, to save money, to be a good (insert career here), to be happy, to find love, to make good grades, to become a __________, to make it through ____________, to fix this, to buy that, to help _______. Most of the time we're not consciously thinking about our purpose. We're probably worrying about it. Or considering how to be happy or how to make some unlikeable part of life better.
Number two is what drives our decisions. If we know exactly who we are, decisions are much easier. I won't do this. I will do that. It also comes into play when you're in transition because if you don't know what your identity is, you'll just change it to fit the place where you are. It's more comfortable that way.
If you're on the reflection train with me right now, think about the last time you felt really confident about your purpose. And then identity, because it may have been two separate times.
I distinctly remember when I went to Nepal for the first time. I was 19. I signed up for a trip to South Asia, which I thought would be India. It was through a Bible study I'd been involved in in college- the organization sent students everywhere and telling people about Jesus sounded like a good idea to me.
My first flight was canceled and I ended up traveling alone to India, not sure who would be at the airport in Delhi. We had some "cultural training" there and then I boarded another plane to Nepal. I stayed in three villages in the Himalayas for about a month and a half, teaching English for a few hours a day and following a translator around to various houses to drink tea the rest of the time. I brought two shirts, two pairs of pants, and two pairs of shoes. I knew exactly what my purpose was. I went over there knowing that purpose. I knew the purpose weeks before I went. My purpose was to share the love of Jesus with people who didn't know about Him. As it is with any place you only stay for two months, I didn't know the language and could barely communicate with anyone. I did learn to pray though. It was all I could do. Pray, and smile, and watch and learn.
Every day around four it would start raining and rain all night. I was tired and hungry a lot of the time- the hunger was psychological because the food was so unfamiliar and I just wouldn't eat it and I missed what I was used to so much, and I don't know why I was so tired all the time. Jet lag, processing an entirely new place, less oxygen, whatever. I was unhappy, but I knew what my purpose was. A month after arriving, laying in my bed, God broke my heart for Nepal. I fell head over heels in love with it. It was entirely internal and I had nothing to do with it. At the end of everything I felt Him telling me to come back. And I did, the next year. That next summer, I remember telling Him I couldn't come back alone. I still don't know what He thinks about that.
I won't bother you with identity but this morning I was reading Acts 10, when God tells Peter to eat what he would never in a million years consider eating. It went against everything that he thought was right, everything that was comfortable for him, everything he was used to. But Peter knew his identity and his purpose, and so he went to someone's house who wasn't Jewish to talk to them about Jesus (which he didn't think would ever happen), and then when his recipient fell at his feet, Peter told him to get up, because he was just a man. He knew what his identity was and he wouldn't compromise it to be polite.
I am still trying to get a grip on this but my purpose and identity haven't changed since I put my trust in Christ. Every time I go to a new place it is tested.
My purpose is not to make myself look older so people will respect me and impress the people at my new school with my awesome work ethic, my purpose is not to save kids who can't speak English from a life of poverty, my purpose is not to change my language so I don't sound so much like a college hippie from the beach, or to buy enough clothes so that I feel comfortable as a professional, my purpose is not to pay off my school loans or to hurry up and make friends or to be happy every waking second to prove to myself that moving here was a great decision and I will be successful and I did do the right thing. My purpose is to wake up every single morning and ask the Holy Spirit where He wants me to go and what He wants me to do that day. My purpose is to offer my body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12), to share the Gospel. To share the Gospel with my words and with my unconditional acceptance and love of others.
"And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:15-21)
As for identity, mine does not lie in who my friends are or what I've done that's interesting or productive or how funny or likeable I am or what sort of impression I make on people or whether my nose ring is in or not or, to sum it up, what I do. I think that might be a very ingrained American mindset. Your identity is what you do. No it's not. My identity is the freedom I have in Christ- the freedom to be joyful no matter how I'm feeling or what's happening, the freedom to hope in the future regardless of what's going on now, the freedom to listen to God and follow Him and not feel any less or any more because of what other people think or say.
"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; no many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things- and the things that are not- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God- that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)
I think about everyone I know in transition right now, and me too, and the growing pains that come with it, and how often we'll do strange things to avoid those growing pains, but they're good. They're good and they're temporary and they're just feelings. So your identity and purpose is the same right now as it was when you were doing something you're still waiting to get back to.
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." ~ Romans 12: 12
In my free time (which is all the time this week), I've been catching up on some lives overseas. Friends in India/Haiti. Dare I use the word "missionary"? I have friends who ended up in unlovely places because they felt Jesus call them to go there- to find the ugliness of poverty-spiritual and physical- and stand right in the middle of it. To show and tell people who Jesus is- to live for that and not be so concerned about the other details.
If you are in transition right now there are two questions to consider:
1. What is my purpose?
2. What is my identity?
Number one is what drives our worries and it's what we focus on. My purpose is to pay these debts, to save money, to be a good (insert career here), to be happy, to find love, to make good grades, to become a __________, to make it through ____________, to fix this, to buy that, to help _______. Most of the time we're not consciously thinking about our purpose. We're probably worrying about it. Or considering how to be happy or how to make some unlikeable part of life better.
Number two is what drives our decisions. If we know exactly who we are, decisions are much easier. I won't do this. I will do that. It also comes into play when you're in transition because if you don't know what your identity is, you'll just change it to fit the place where you are. It's more comfortable that way.
If you're on the reflection train with me right now, think about the last time you felt really confident about your purpose. And then identity, because it may have been two separate times.
I distinctly remember when I went to Nepal for the first time. I was 19. I signed up for a trip to South Asia, which I thought would be India. It was through a Bible study I'd been involved in in college- the organization sent students everywhere and telling people about Jesus sounded like a good idea to me.
My first flight was canceled and I ended up traveling alone to India, not sure who would be at the airport in Delhi. We had some "cultural training" there and then I boarded another plane to Nepal. I stayed in three villages in the Himalayas for about a month and a half, teaching English for a few hours a day and following a translator around to various houses to drink tea the rest of the time. I brought two shirts, two pairs of pants, and two pairs of shoes. I knew exactly what my purpose was. I went over there knowing that purpose. I knew the purpose weeks before I went. My purpose was to share the love of Jesus with people who didn't know about Him. As it is with any place you only stay for two months, I didn't know the language and could barely communicate with anyone. I did learn to pray though. It was all I could do. Pray, and smile, and watch and learn.
Every day around four it would start raining and rain all night. I was tired and hungry a lot of the time- the hunger was psychological because the food was so unfamiliar and I just wouldn't eat it and I missed what I was used to so much, and I don't know why I was so tired all the time. Jet lag, processing an entirely new place, less oxygen, whatever. I was unhappy, but I knew what my purpose was. A month after arriving, laying in my bed, God broke my heart for Nepal. I fell head over heels in love with it. It was entirely internal and I had nothing to do with it. At the end of everything I felt Him telling me to come back. And I did, the next year. That next summer, I remember telling Him I couldn't come back alone. I still don't know what He thinks about that.
I won't bother you with identity but this morning I was reading Acts 10, when God tells Peter to eat what he would never in a million years consider eating. It went against everything that he thought was right, everything that was comfortable for him, everything he was used to. But Peter knew his identity and his purpose, and so he went to someone's house who wasn't Jewish to talk to them about Jesus (which he didn't think would ever happen), and then when his recipient fell at his feet, Peter told him to get up, because he was just a man. He knew what his identity was and he wouldn't compromise it to be polite.
I am still trying to get a grip on this but my purpose and identity haven't changed since I put my trust in Christ. Every time I go to a new place it is tested.
My purpose is not to make myself look older so people will respect me and impress the people at my new school with my awesome work ethic, my purpose is not to save kids who can't speak English from a life of poverty, my purpose is not to change my language so I don't sound so much like a college hippie from the beach, or to buy enough clothes so that I feel comfortable as a professional, my purpose is not to pay off my school loans or to hurry up and make friends or to be happy every waking second to prove to myself that moving here was a great decision and I will be successful and I did do the right thing. My purpose is to wake up every single morning and ask the Holy Spirit where He wants me to go and what He wants me to do that day. My purpose is to offer my body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12), to share the Gospel. To share the Gospel with my words and with my unconditional acceptance and love of others.
"And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:15-21)
As for identity, mine does not lie in who my friends are or what I've done that's interesting or productive or how funny or likeable I am or what sort of impression I make on people or whether my nose ring is in or not or, to sum it up, what I do. I think that might be a very ingrained American mindset. Your identity is what you do. No it's not. My identity is the freedom I have in Christ- the freedom to be joyful no matter how I'm feeling or what's happening, the freedom to hope in the future regardless of what's going on now, the freedom to listen to God and follow Him and not feel any less or any more because of what other people think or say.
"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; no many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things- and the things that are not- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God- that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)
I think about everyone I know in transition right now, and me too, and the growing pains that come with it, and how often we'll do strange things to avoid those growing pains, but they're good. They're good and they're temporary and they're just feelings. So your identity and purpose is the same right now as it was when you were doing something you're still waiting to get back to.
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." ~ Romans 12: 12
"My identity is the freedom I have in Christ- the freedom to be joyful no matter how I'm feeling or what's happening, the freedom to hope in the future regardless of what's going on now, the freedom to listen to God and follow Him and not feel any less or any more because of what other people think or say."
ReplyDelete---OHMYGOODNESS-- how much did i need to hear this right now?!? loved the whole post. great reminder. love you!