Knowing Your Identity

When I finished the article for Part 3 of the series Defeating Fear, I had a sense that something was missing. Somehow, I hadn’t hit the target. Then, yesterday as I was cleaning out old files, I ran across a report from the man in charge of prayer for the Fort Wayne, Indiana Reach For More event. I produced this event with the pastors and leaders of the city in 2005.

To give you some background, Pastor Ben Bowers led intercession in the back room behind the coliseum arena as the event was presented to an audience of 5000 people in the arena. There were 500 in the room that night with Ben, praying and doing spiritual battle for the salvation of young people and adults. After the event, Ben wrote the following report for the leaders and lay workers who had worked the event.

These are my notes on what I felt the Lord showed me as I prayed.

The first impression was that the youth to whom you ministered this week and yesterday had no identity. It was as though they looked into a mirror and had never seen a reflection. Because they are made in the image and likeness of God and had never been told anything about God either in their home or at their school they have been robbed of any sense of identity. There is just this vast expanse of nothing when they looked in at themselves.

The second impression came as I prayed during the meeting last night. I saw them as vey old men, withered. Their hearts had never been young, vital or healthy.

If you have just recently become acquainted with our ministry, you probably are not aware that the first 20 or so years was spent reaching young people through character-based school assemblies and large outreach events in which the gospel was preached. In a five year period between 2000 and 2005, we reached a total audience of over 40,000 people, primarily young people.

Our primary focus in the last few years has been to educate Christians as to the huge disconnect between the church and the present generation of young people. We need to reach them, and the modern-day church is hardly scratching the surface.

As Ben pointed out, at the base of the issue is that young people have no identity. They don’t know who they are . . . which brings us to the subject of this article: knowing who you are dispels fear.

We are made in the image and likeness of God. Blaise Pascal, the great philosopher of the 17th century, spoke about a God-shaped vacuum that we are all born with. Because we are made in the image of God, only God can fill the longing deep inside. Before I discovered Jesus and gave my life to Him when I was a senior in high school, there were three questions that haunted me day and night: who am I, what am I here for, and where am I going?

These questions are basic to human life. At some time or other, every human being deals with them. Receiving Christ as savior answers all three. In one fell swoop, it solves the identity problem. I was created by God in His image and likeness. I am here to have a wonderful relationship with Him and to tell others about the wonderful relationship they can have with Him.

In John 10:10, Jesus says,

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly (ESV).”  

The thief is Satan, the devil. He has to a great extent pushed God right out of our schools and education system. He did it because we let him. If young people have no opportunity to know God, then they will have no identity. The same goes for all of us.

Your identity comes from being a child of God, having received His forgiveness for sins, and abundant life through Christ. Then, and only then do you know who you really are. You also then have His promises.

Psalm 91 is a tremendous antidote for fear.

He who dwells in he shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.”

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his pinions and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

You will not fear . . .

(ESV)

. . . And from that point I will let you look up the chapter and read it for yourself. If you are fearful, read Psalm 91. Read it every day or several times a day.

To summarize, the antidote for fear is to know your identity, to know who you are. In Christ, you have the promises of His book, the Bible. They are yours, take them, read them, and take comfort in them.

And that is how you defeat fear.

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine