You sit on the sidelines of your life and you look at your coming and going. And you wonder: who on earth is this person?
There comes a time in everyone’s life when we evaluate everything. It’s a healthy and important part of life, because it checks our progress towards our goals and the type of life we wanted to create for ourselves.
For some of us, this evaluation becomes an identity crisis; that dreadful feeling of being misplaced or that awful situation where you look at someone who’s confidence fits like a glove.
Psychology will help us understand it more clearly. So let’s look at it for a while before we shift our focus on faith:
To my surprise, research shows that an identity crisis could be a healthy part of development, as it involves serious questioning and the journey to finding helpful answers to get back on track.
Sadly, an identity crisis can be very distressing. Psychology even suggests that it can lead to severe depression and be paralyzing. This would then be the unhealthy type of crisis that needs professional help.
A loss of purpose, trauma, a major shift in life experience, parenthood, migration or cultural shifts, illness, loss, burnout and many other things may attribute to an identity crisis.
Psychology suggests that psychologically, old beliefs, roles or self-stories stop feeling true. The brain is trying to integrate new experiences or there’s tension between who you were, who you are and who you might become.
We cannot ever minimize the distress of an identity crisis. But like every bottom, the next direction is up. I would like to think that God sometimes allows for us to hit rock bottom, so we can see that He is our only option.
An identity crisis is no different. We need to give the One who created us the right to tell us who we are.
But it isn’t as easy as reading a bunch of Scripture. What good would it do to know the Scripture and not own it? I would also suggest: what good would it do to own the Scripture if we do not know the One who gave it in the first place?
Knowing the Savior, really knowing Him and walking with Him takes an act of courage. It also takes an act of faith. We are so used to the brokenness of mankind that it is difficult to comprehend someone who is perfect in all His ways. But the breakthrough comes when you realize that He is the One who can really transform your entire life into something that makes a difference in this world.
His Word is His promise to mankind. His promises have been proven throughout history. Breakthrough comes when we have faith in the fact that He has a plan and a purpose for our lives. We are loved by Him. We are no accident. He created us for a reason.
Society will try and tell us who we are. We tend to be ready to belief them at a moment’s notice. We try on their labels and we wear them like they really belong to us. Only to find out that it doesn’t fit.
We could spare ourselves the frustration by starting our identity journey with the truth. And the truth comes from God’s Word:
Psalm 139:14 – I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.
1 John 3:1 – Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
1 Peter 2:9 – But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
2 Corinthians 5:17 – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
Isaiah 43:1 – But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine.
Who gets to define who you are? Is it society? Is it someone else? A peace washes over my soul whenever I find myself in a distressing questionnaire of who I am. God. God gets to define who I am. I let Him direct my life. He is my direction.
Will you let Him define you?