Notes:
Only the one who gave you life has the authority to identify you.
Only 1 has the right and authority to tell you who you are. Circumstances are not powerful enough to define you.
You are who God says you are!!!
God has given you a name.
Any person or system that seeks to diminish the value of who I am is actually anti-God.
Your weakness is a platform for the strength of God to be displayed through your life.
You will live up to or down to whatever you believe to be true about who you are.
If we act like who God is calling us is who we really are, then we will see blessings explode in our lives.
We can be on the real estate of God’s blessings but not be able to enjoy it if we don’t know our identity.
While religions try to reach up to find god, our God keeps coming down to reach out to us.
“The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.”
In the place where we are trying not to be found, God finds us.
Our belief (or unbelief) doesn’t shift the truth.
Discussion:
What does your inner monologue tend to sound like? How could you improve it and make it line up with scripture more?
Identify one negative though that goes through your head a lot. What do you think God would say to that thought?
How do we go about giving God our weaknesses? What does that look like practically?
Have you ever tried to change your name/identity? Why? and how did it go/what was the outcome?
Really think this month about how you speak to yourself. What’s going on in your internal dialogue? Are you constantly thinking negatively about yourself? Are you proclaiming scripture in your life?
Read:
What can we learn from how God changed Abram’s name? What would it have meant to Abraham and what does it mean for you?
Judges 6: 11-12 (go further read 6: 11-40)
What do you think Gideon learned from this interaction?
What can we learn from how God chooses to identify Himself for Moses?
Matthew 21: 33-41 (In this parable, identity: Who is the landowner? Who are the evil tenants? Who are the messengers sent by the landowner? Who is the landowner's Son? - the Bible is a love story, God's love for us. Over and over again, the overarching message in the Bible is God's love, forgiveness and mercy for us. Agree/Disagree?)