Praying for Your True Identity
In a world obsessed with self-improvement and personal branding, we often find ourselves on an endless quest for identity and fulfillment. We chase promotions, perfect relationships, ideal bodies, and better neighborhoods, thinking these external circumstances will finally make us happy, secure, and whole. But what if we've been looking in all the wrong places?
The truth is, our greatest need isn't better circumstances—it's a transformed identity. And this transformation can only come from acknowledging our complete dependence on God.
Consider this: We live in a culture that constantly tells us to "be true to yourself," "follow your heart," and "trust your instincts." The American dream itself is built on self-reliance and self-determination. Walk through any bookstore, and you'll find shelves upon shelves of self-help books, all promising that you have within yourself everything you need to create the life you want.
But here's the irony: This obsession with self-construction is making us miserable. Despite having more self-help resources than any generation in history, we're experiencing record levels of anxiety, depression, and identity confusion. Why? Because the self is a terrible foundation upon which to build a life.
Think about it. If your identity is self-constructed, you have to constantly maintain it. You become the CEO of your own personal brand, always managing your image, always performing, always afraid that people might discover you're not as together as you appear to be. It's exhausting.
And there's an even deeper problem: If you're the author of your own identity, then you're responsible when that identity fails. When you don't live up to your own standards, when your self-constructed narrative falls apart, you have nowhere to turn but inward—precisely where the problem began.
So what's the alternative? It starts with a posture of desperate dependence on God. This isn't about reacting to a crisis; it's about choosing to position ourselves in complete reliance on our Heavenly Father, recognizing that the most important things in life—the things that truly matter for eternity—can only come from Him.
This is where prayer becomes transformative. But not just any prayer—a bold, audacious prayer that asks God to fundamentally change who we are from the inside out. The Apostle Paul gives us a blueprint for this kind of prayer in his letter to the Ephesians:
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:16-19)
Let's break this down:
1. Strength in the Inner Being: Paul prays for God's power to work in our "inner being"—the real us, not the facade we present to the world. This is where true transformation begins.
2. Christ Dwelling in Our Hearts: This isn't about Jesus being an occasional visitor; it's about Him making Himself completely at home in every area of our lives.
3. Rooted and Established in Love: Paul uses two powerful metaphors here—a tree with deep roots that can withstand any storm, and a building with a foundation so strong that even an earthquake can't shake it. And what are we rooted in? Not our love for God, which can be fickle, but God's unchanging love for us in Christ.
4. Comprehending Christ's Love: Paul describes this love as having four dimensions—width, length, height, and depth. It's wide enough to include anyone, long enough to last forever, higher than our highest achievements, and deeper than our darkest shame.
5. Knowing the Unknowable: Paul prays that we would experientially know this love that surpasses knowledge. It's not about intellectual understanding, but about experiencing God's love the way you know fire is hot—because you've felt its warmth.
6. Filled with God's Fullness: The result of all this is that we become filled with the very character of God—His love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness overflow from our lives.
When we begin to grasp and experience these truths, it changes everything about our identity. We stop striving to earn love because we realize we already have it. We stop fearing rejection because we know we're already accepted. We stop trying to prove our worth because our worth has been established on the cross.
This transformed identity affects every area of our lives:
- It changes how we handle criticism and praise. Neither devastates nor intoxicates us because our worth isn't determined by others' opinions.
- It transforms our approach to work. We no longer work to prove ourselves but from a place of already being loved and accepted.
- It revolutionizes our relationships. Secure in Christ's love, we're free to love others without needing them to complete or validate us.
- It alters how we handle suffering. When life falls apart, we don't lose our identity because it wasn't based on circumstances to begin with.
The beautiful thing is, God is not only able but willing to answer this prayer. In fact, Paul says that God can do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20). Even our wildest dreams about what God might do in our lives are too small compared to what He's actually capable of and willing to do.
So, are you ready to discover who you really are? Are you willing to pray this dangerous prayer that could uproot your safe, miserable, comfortable little life? Because when you do, you'll find that your truest identity isn't found in what you do, what you achieve, what others think of you, or even what you think of yourself. Your truest identity is found in being God's beloved child, united to Christ, filled with His Spirit, rooted in His unchanging love.
This is an identity that can't be shaken by criticism, destroyed by failure, or taken away by circumstances. It's an identity that frees you to live with courage, love with abandon, and face whatever comes with unshakable peace.
The journey to true identity begins not with self-construction, but with surrender to the identity God offers you in Christ. Are you ready to take that first step?
The truth is, our greatest need isn't better circumstances—it's a transformed identity. And this transformation can only come from acknowledging our complete dependence on God.
Consider this: We live in a culture that constantly tells us to "be true to yourself," "follow your heart," and "trust your instincts." The American dream itself is built on self-reliance and self-determination. Walk through any bookstore, and you'll find shelves upon shelves of self-help books, all promising that you have within yourself everything you need to create the life you want.
But here's the irony: This obsession with self-construction is making us miserable. Despite having more self-help resources than any generation in history, we're experiencing record levels of anxiety, depression, and identity confusion. Why? Because the self is a terrible foundation upon which to build a life.
Think about it. If your identity is self-constructed, you have to constantly maintain it. You become the CEO of your own personal brand, always managing your image, always performing, always afraid that people might discover you're not as together as you appear to be. It's exhausting.
And there's an even deeper problem: If you're the author of your own identity, then you're responsible when that identity fails. When you don't live up to your own standards, when your self-constructed narrative falls apart, you have nowhere to turn but inward—precisely where the problem began.
So what's the alternative? It starts with a posture of desperate dependence on God. This isn't about reacting to a crisis; it's about choosing to position ourselves in complete reliance on our Heavenly Father, recognizing that the most important things in life—the things that truly matter for eternity—can only come from Him.
This is where prayer becomes transformative. But not just any prayer—a bold, audacious prayer that asks God to fundamentally change who we are from the inside out. The Apostle Paul gives us a blueprint for this kind of prayer in his letter to the Ephesians:
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:16-19)
Let's break this down:
1. Strength in the Inner Being: Paul prays for God's power to work in our "inner being"—the real us, not the facade we present to the world. This is where true transformation begins.
2. Christ Dwelling in Our Hearts: This isn't about Jesus being an occasional visitor; it's about Him making Himself completely at home in every area of our lives.
3. Rooted and Established in Love: Paul uses two powerful metaphors here—a tree with deep roots that can withstand any storm, and a building with a foundation so strong that even an earthquake can't shake it. And what are we rooted in? Not our love for God, which can be fickle, but God's unchanging love for us in Christ.
4. Comprehending Christ's Love: Paul describes this love as having four dimensions—width, length, height, and depth. It's wide enough to include anyone, long enough to last forever, higher than our highest achievements, and deeper than our darkest shame.
5. Knowing the Unknowable: Paul prays that we would experientially know this love that surpasses knowledge. It's not about intellectual understanding, but about experiencing God's love the way you know fire is hot—because you've felt its warmth.
6. Filled with God's Fullness: The result of all this is that we become filled with the very character of God—His love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness overflow from our lives.
When we begin to grasp and experience these truths, it changes everything about our identity. We stop striving to earn love because we realize we already have it. We stop fearing rejection because we know we're already accepted. We stop trying to prove our worth because our worth has been established on the cross.
This transformed identity affects every area of our lives:
- It changes how we handle criticism and praise. Neither devastates nor intoxicates us because our worth isn't determined by others' opinions.
- It transforms our approach to work. We no longer work to prove ourselves but from a place of already being loved and accepted.
- It revolutionizes our relationships. Secure in Christ's love, we're free to love others without needing them to complete or validate us.
- It alters how we handle suffering. When life falls apart, we don't lose our identity because it wasn't based on circumstances to begin with.
The beautiful thing is, God is not only able but willing to answer this prayer. In fact, Paul says that God can do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20). Even our wildest dreams about what God might do in our lives are too small compared to what He's actually capable of and willing to do.
So, are you ready to discover who you really are? Are you willing to pray this dangerous prayer that could uproot your safe, miserable, comfortable little life? Because when you do, you'll find that your truest identity isn't found in what you do, what you achieve, what others think of you, or even what you think of yourself. Your truest identity is found in being God's beloved child, united to Christ, filled with His Spirit, rooted in His unchanging love.
This is an identity that can't be shaken by criticism, destroyed by failure, or taken away by circumstances. It's an identity that frees you to live with courage, love with abandon, and face whatever comes with unshakable peace.
The journey to true identity begins not with self-construction, but with surrender to the identity God offers you in Christ. Are you ready to take that first step?
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