Identity - Week 10 Summary

The topic of our final week of class was Identity. I had to chuckle when looking at the topic, since it seemed to me that ever week so far had been referencing Identity. So naturally I thought, “What can I expect to hear when the topic is officially Identity?”

Our speaker began with the story of creation. She use the visual of a glove. Without an hand in it, the glove can’t do too much, it just exists. As told in Genesis, God breathed life into man, just like a hand filling a glove. If you compare a glove with and without a hand in it, which can do more? The one with the hand in it of course. You still only see the glove, but you know that something different is going on inside. We are in Christ, and so he is in us. 

How does this new information change me? How does it change my relationship towards God, others, and myself? 

God doesn’t feel as distant anymore. On Thursday, we did an exercise where we renounced a lie we had be living about God. Distant was my lie. We wrote down the lie on a mirror and we were going to renounce the lie, speak truth, and then smash the mirror. I will admit my skepticism about this, I did not think that simply smashing a mirror would do anything. I was wrong. I seemed strange to me at first, how emotional it made me to speak out against this lie that I had been living. The lie seemed so real before I brought that hammer down on that mirror. God is not distant! He is not far away! He walks beside me and is always with me! “ The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” [Deuteronomy 31:8].

We are human beings, not human doings. Since Christ is in me, I don’t have to let myself be so wrapped up in what it is I do. We watched a video at the beginning of the week titled Love Encounter by Graham Cooke (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6wlClByBG8). What stood out to me the most was when Cooke said that it was my job to be loved outrageously. 

It is my job to be loved outrageously!

That is it. If I need to be wrapped up is doing something, than it should be this. This is something that I am daily reminding myself of, because it is so important to my identity now. I don’t need to try and impress God with my resume, I just need to let myself be loved. 

Our speaker challenged us to look at how we pray as a way to tell us what we believe about God and ourselves. I have found myself, more often than not, asking God to be closer to me, to reveal himself to me. This speaks to my lie that God is distant. I am in the process of making the mental switch in my prayers to help me believe in the truth that God is right beside me. Instead of praying for him to draw near to me, I am thanking him for being with me through everything and at all times. This reminds me of something our speaker from Week 6 said, “Why do pray for God to bless our food unto our bodies, he gave us food for that very purpose!”. I am definitely paying closer attention to my prayers and am actively looking for lies and then speaking truth out against them. 

Knowing that Christ is in me, give me confidence as I prepare to head to Russia for outreach. I am eagerly looking forward to expressing what it means to have Christ in me to those I meet in St. Petersburg.