Cafeteria Christianity: Approval — Monday
Acts 17:28
“‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” (NIV)
After graduating high school in 2005, I found myself in the same predicament every young person finds themselves in at that stage of life. I was asking myself some big questions: What’s next? Who am I? What am I supposed to do? I entered the strange, scary, exciting, and awkward years of existentialism. In the search for my identity, I tried on many different ones to see which would fit best—different identities for different seasons, and often different identities for different people.
I put my identity in my wounds and traumas, my neuroses and sins, as well as my failures and mistakes. I put my identity in my successes and achievements; my education, career, and titles; my income, belongings, and finances. I put my identity in my appearance and relationships; my politics and religion; my gender, age, and economic status; and even my Enneagram and Myers-Briggs results (or whatever the latest personality quiz told me I was).
I thought my identity was an attorney with major depressive disorder and an addiction problem who struggled with social anxiety and replayed his childhood traumas in his head every day. I landed my dream job after 10 years of education and 5 degrees while viewing the world through my INFJ/Enneagram 9-wing-1 personality type. The only problem was, like an ill-fitting suit, none of these identities fit me. Eventually, I realized I needed to shed these false identities and put on the only identity that truly fit—the one in which “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
In 1 Samuel 17:38-39, we read of an interesting moment before David’s famous encounter with Goliath: “Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. ‘I cannot go in these,’ he said to Saul, ‘because I am not used to them.’ So he took them off.”
David had to shed Saul’s suit of armor because it did not fit. David could not take on the identity of Saul. If our identity lies in anything other than God, then it just LIES. Trying to put on any identity other than the one God gave you—the true child-of-God self—is a lie. The truth of our identity is found in John 1:12 (NLT): “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Monday’s Reflection
Where does your identity lie? Remember that you are a child of God! Pray and meditate over Acts 17:28 today.