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Jun 09, 2024 06:00am

Good-Bye Identity Crisis

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Our high school graduation ceremony is tonight. I am excited to attend and watch my nephew walk across the stage and receive his ticket to freedom! For most students, it’s a special event and the fresh start they’ve been eagerly awaiting. But for others, it’s a scary reminder of their lack.

Lack of purpose.
Lack of direction.
Lack of security.

Some will soar in the years ahead and others will deeply struggle. I remember being 18, perhaps you do as well? We expect at some point, each grad will start wondering who they “really” are and their journey of self-discovery will intensify as they approach big, life altering decisions ahead.

Wouldn’t it be great if they could skip a few of the hard steps? If only there was someone who could help them understand exactly who they are and what they were created to do on this earth? Well, friends, there is someone! And the truth is, despite our best efforts, many of us who are now grown adults still struggle with those questions and wonder if we’ve made the right decisions for our life.

May I propose something? If you are struggling to understand who you are, it is likely because you don’t know who God is. At least not personally, not in the way He wants you to know him. The absolute truth is when we know who God is, we come to know who we are and that understanding changes the game. No longer do we play hide and “seek whatever the world is promoting”, but we begin to seek and find.

One of the most effective passages in all of the Bible that speaks to this idea is Psalm 139. I’ve broken it down into 5 sections, 5 truths about God to help me know Him better and help me see myself in light of who He is.

God knows me fully.

Verses 1-4, “O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.”

How crazy that even as we seek Him, he has already found us. He knows exactly who we are, how we are, where we are, what we think and even what we’re going to say before we get it out of our mouth. God is omniscient. He knows.

God is with me.

Verses 5-12, “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”

God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. He sees everything. You’ve never been so far from Him, that He wasn’t there or couldn’t see you. No matter how far, His presence exists. It takes faith to experience the reality of His presence, but undeniably, the presence of God met with our belief changes everything.

God designed me.

Verses 13-18, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.”

Life giving and life changing truth! Maybe you’ve heard it said, “there are unplanned parents, but never unplanned babies.”? God, who is omnipotent, who holds all power, intricately creates — for Himself — each and every human being. He designed you. He wired in your personality and your eye color. He thought about the days, the generation, you would be born into and planned, formed, fashioned as some translations say, days for you. So specifically, He wrote about you and “your days” in His book. Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a plan for you! He does! Again, it takes faith to please Him and faith to discern His good and perfect will for your life. It takes a relationship with this all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful God to experience all He has just for you. He designed you. Only He gets to say who you are.

God is enough.

Verses 19-22, “Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.”

WARNING: not everyone gets it. Some will never stop the game of cosmic hide and seek. Hiding from the reality of God and seeking life for themselves versus finding life in Christ, in whom God says they are found and in whom God made them to be. We live in this tension everyday. Learn to love God first. Prioritize who He is and who you are in Him. Recognize with clarity the enemies of Jesus. Don’t compromise with the wicked or those who speak against God. Rather, trust God is enough. You don’t need anyone else to tell you who you are. His truth is good and He is enough.