Identity.

Throughout my life I've struggled to discover who I really am. I think we've all gone through this process-and continue to go through it.

Many people say that you "figure out who you are" in college. Or thereabouts on the timeline of life. Okay, I'm here. Now what?

I'm not saying that those people are wrong. I do think that as we grow we discover more of who we are. But I think if we rely solely on our own ability to learn about ourselves, we will be relying on a very distorted view of who we are.

"How do I propose to remedy this?" is a question you may be asking at this moment. Well, this is a question I've been thinking about quite a bit lately as well. And I've come to the conclusion that by ourselves we will never really figure out who we are.

What I mean by this is that if I was to go through life relying on my own ability to figure out who I am, I would probably come up with a bunch of scrambled adjectives. Such as: enthusiastic, Christian, family-oriented, awkward, nerdy, blogger, hipster (still figuring that one out), etc. But what does this really do besides put myself in a bunch of boxes that society has established? Or stereotypes that are really just pre-conceived notions? To be honest, I'm sick of being able to define people in a simple list of words [read more about this here]. I think there's more to us than that. I think there's more to us than we can define by ourselves.

But the problem remains. If we can't define ourselves, are we left to a sense of despair? If this is the case, then we will soon return to boxing each other up in order to avoid admitting that we are simply broken people. However, I believe that there is an alternative. In order to really understand who we are I think we have to figure out where we come from. At least, that's what we do in a biography. I believe this all starts at the creation story. #throwback

Genesis tells us that we were created in the image of God. Now, if this is true, the most logical approach to discovering "who we are" would be to learn more about God. Some of the immediate attributes that come to mind when we examine who God is: loving, just, merciful. However, when I look around me, I certainly don't see the 7 billion people on this earth exactly mirroring all of these attributes. So what went wrong? Well, to brush you up on the beginning of time, the fall basically screwed us up as far as being the perfect image of God. Now we're jagged and bruised.

However, God didn't leave us like that. By sending Christ, we got a second chance at becoming more like Him and who we were meant to be. Thus, the best way to discover who we are would be to examine who our Maker is. We can learn more about who He is by seeing what He has done to repair our relationship to Him.

I would go far as to say that who we are is really dependent on where we are with our relationship to Christ. Are we His friend or enemy, follower or resister?

But back to the original question, the only way to figure out who we are is to seek God. And by doing so, God reveals who He is and thus who we are. For example, if we examine the Bible we discover that God is perfect and that we are imperfect. We see that He is constant and we are static. We learn that God is just and we are flawed in our decisions. That God is love and we are selfish.

As we discover who we are without Christ, we discover our need for Him. When we allow Him to come in and fulfill this need and surrender our lives, we learn more of who we are. By striving to fulfill our purpose in Him, we see the joy that we gain from worshipping Him in our lives. Thus, we learn that we were made to worship our God. By struggling and failing, yet persevering on, we learn that God is always there.

In my walk with Christ, I have consistently tried to figure out who I am. What my purpose is [last weeks post on purpose]. What I'm gradually learning is that God is the only one who can show me who I am. Because at the end of the day I was created in His image and for Him. My purpose is to glorify Him-through serving others, through worshipping Him in all I do, etc. My purpose is to make Him known. This makes sense, for if I am created in the image of God my purpose would naturally be to make this image more widely displayed to all the world.

If we can say that we are following Christ with our entire heart, than I think we have discovered a bit more of who we are. In fact, we have discovered (hopefully) the majority of who we are. For if we are followers of Christ, we should be 100% invested in Him. And if we pour all of our identity into Christ, then He is the one who will define who we are.