Misidentified | Real Springcreek Church | Dr. Jessica Fernandez

MISIDENTIFIED
Dr. Jessica Fernandez
Sunday, July 5, 2026

What if the labels you've accepted aren't the labels God has given you? When God met Moses at the burning bush, everyone had an opinion about who Moses was. Egypt, Israel, Pharaoh, and even Moses himself. Yet, God saw something completely different.

In this message, we'll discover that God evaluates us differently than the world does. While others focus on our past, God sees our purpose. While others see our limitations, God sees His possibilities. And while others see what we've been, God sees what we can become through Him. 

Everybody saw a shepherd. God saw a deliverer.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

1. What label have you received from others, your past, or your own thoughts that has been hard to shake? How has that label affected the way you see yourself?

2. Moses asked, “Who am I?” when God called him. Where do you currently feel unqualified, disqualified, or unsure of your place in God’s purpose?

3. What is the difference between something that happened to you and the identity you have formed from it? Can you identify a lie you may have believed because of a painful experience?

4. God answered Moses’ insecurity with, “I will be with you.” How does God’s presence change the way we understand our identity, calling, and limitations?

5. Whose voice has had the most authority in shaping how you see yourself: your past, other people, your own thoughts, or God? What would it look like this week to let God’s voice become louder?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning, Spring Creek Church. How are we doing this morning? Man, that sounded a little rough. I think y'all were hanging out too late last night and having fun for 4th of July, right? How are we doing this morning? God is good. Okay, that sounds a little better. Welcome to Spring Creek Church. My name is Pastor Jessica. This is your first time. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'd like to say welcome to everybody watching online. And by the way, we had a young adults party on Friday night. Y'all, they kept me up to 1.30 in the morning. So, oh my young adults, where you at? Woo! I saw a couple hands that they may not have been young adults, but we are very accepting if that's how you identify as, okay? So we had a fantastic time doing that together, building community. So if you're a young adult, make sure that you come out on Tuesday night so that you can join the rest of us as we build community together. So as we get started, let's pray. Father, we thank you for this day that you have given us, Lord. I pray for every single person in this place, every person watching from home, Father, that you would speak into the broken places of their heart, Father, that they would leave here differently, that the way that they walked in, Father, that their hearts and their minds would be transformed. Father, we thank you, and we pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen, amen, and amen. How many of you have followed the NBA finals this year? And for those of you that may have forgotten about this glorious day, let me just remind you. Security, make sure you follow me into the parking lot after church because I don't know what might happen, okay? But it was the New York Knicks versus the San Antonio Spurs, okay? One of the biggest stories wasn't just that the New York the New York Knicks uh won their first championship in decades. It was the story of their leader, Jalen Brunson. From two, see, look, we got two fans. They said, yay. So it was the it was it was about Jalen Brunson this year from 2018 to through 2022. Brunson spent the first four years of his career with the Dallas Mavericks. Sorry, Dallas. Um Brunson's boy Brunson was selected 33, 33rd overall in the 2018 NBA draft, y'all. He wasn't number one, he wasn't number two, he wasn't even in the top 10, okay? Number 33, and and Dallas picked him on the second round, okay? He was playing alongside one of the league's biggest superstars, Luka Duncic, who was a good player, right? He was a reliable player, he was a smart player, he was a tough player, but that's mostly how people saw Jalen. He was a good supporting player, someone who could help the team, someone who could encourage them, but not not a superstar, not someone that you build a whole team around. The Mavericks had opportunities to commit to him early in his career, but they just didn't. Then in 2022, Brunson became a free agent and signed with the New York Knicks. And almost immediately the critics came out, and I can hear Stephen A. Smith's voice in my head right now. The Knicks overpaid for him. He's too small. He's only 6'2, which I find offensive, by the way. Because I'm 5'2, okay? He's not a franchise player, he's not a superstar. He only looked good because he was playing next to Luca. In other words, they already decided who he was. They already decided the trajectory of his career, what he was going to accomplish, what he was not going to accomplish, the type of player he would be, and the type of player that he would not end up being. Then it made me wonder how many people never become who they were created to be because they start believing what everyone else has said about them. Being misidentified doesn't just affect your reputation, it affects your confidence, it affects your decisions, it affects the opportunities that you pursue and the opportunities that you don't pursue. And eventually, it affects your identity. If enough people call you a failure, you begin to believe that you're a failure. And then if enough people tell you that you're not smart enough, then you eventually stop trying. And if enough people tell you you'll never amount to anything, you stop expecting anything different. You see, the most dangerous labels are not the ones people put on us. They're the ones we eventually begin putting on ourselves. And I wonder how many people walked into this very church today carrying labels they never should have accepted. Maybe someone called you a disappointment. Maybe someone defined you by your divorce. Maybe someone defined you by your addiction. Maybe you're they defined you by your biggest mistake or or your biggest failure. Maybe someone has defined you by your weaknesses, by your past. Maybe you've been living under a label that was spoken over your life years and years and years ago. Maybe it was a label spoken over your life when you were a child and you're still holding on to that today. So the question I would like us to think about this morning as we are here together is what if the greatest obstacle to your future isn't your past, it's believing the wrong identity. See, if you have ever wrestled with that question, then you have more in common with one of the most popular uh people in the Bible. Before Moses ever questioned his identity, the world had already begun defining it for him. In Exodus 2, Moses was born a Hebrew boy, and Pharaoh had ordered that every Hebrew baby boy be killed. But Moses' mother hid him for three months before placing him in a basket in the Nile River. In God's providence, meaning God is working behind the scenes to accomplish his will even when we can't see him at work. Pharaoh's own daughter found him in the river. She adopted him and raised him in the plant palace as her own child. So his name actually means the one drawn out because he was drawn out of the waters of the Nile. In the Old Testament, names were important because they often carried identity and character and calling and family history or divine purpose. A name was not just what we called someone. So my name in Hebrew means wealthy. And so for so many years I thought, wow, I'm gonna be rich. Some of y'all like, well, then Pastor Jessica can pay for the roof, right? But over all these years of wisdom and not it showing up in my pockets, I've realized that I am wealthy. I'm wealthy in love. And I'm wealthy in joy, and I'm wealthy in friendships, and I'm wealthy because God fills my heart every single day, and there is no price tag on that. So a name wasn't just something, you know, something that we called someone. It would communicate something about who they were and and and what happened around their birth or what God intended to do through their life. And so from the outside, Moses looked like an Egyptian prince. He dressed like an Egyptian, he talked like an Egyptian, he he was educated like an Egyptian, he lived in the wealth and and the privilege of Egypt. But that wasn't his true identity. Though raised in the Pharaoh's palace, Moses was a Hebrew. Though he appeared to be an Egyptian, he was still a Hebrew, and the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians. He appeared to be royalty, but he should ultimately have been a slave. He belonged to God's covenant people. And one day as an adult, Moses witnessed an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. And believing that he could deliver his people in his own strength, Moses killed the Egyptian and he buried the body in the sand. And the next day, when he tried to settle a dispute between two Hebrews, one of them responded, Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me just the same way that you killed that Egyptian? And at that moment, Moses realized that his secret was out. The Egyptians now saw him as a murderer, and the Hebrews rejected him as their leader. So the man who was living in both worlds suddenly belonged to neither of those worlds. You see, fearing Pharaoh's wrath upon his life, Moses fled into the wilderness of Midian. And so when I looked up how many miles Midian is away from Egypt, it's about 200 to 300 miles. And it makes me wonder how many of us decide that we are gonna run away from an identity and we keep running and we keep running and we keep running as far as we can go, but ultimately the problem is still there, is that we don't know who we are. Then he built, there in Midian, he built a completely different life. He got married. He started a family, he worked as a shepherd for his father-in-law Jethro, and year after year, week after week, and day after day, he faithfully tended sheep in the wilderness. So 40 years had passed, and he was doing this every single day. The prince, the royalty, now has become a shepherd in the desert. The man who once imagined delivering a nation was now simply leading sheep across the desert. And if we glimpsed at his life, we would say Moses' story was completely over. You've been in this desert for 40 years. Whatever you thought you could have done, actually, your time is over, right? The world had decided, you know what, you're just a failure. He was a betrayer of his Egyptian family, and also he was a betrayer of his own people, the Hebrews. He was a murderer, he was a fugitive, and now he was just a shepherd who doesn't even own his own sheep. So day after day he tended his father-in-law Jethro's sheep, never imagining that this day would be any different. And possibly, just maybe, Moses had begun to believe those labels himself. And I can imagine that the 40 years in the desert, he was replaying what happened over and over and over again. And then one ordinary day. Can everybody say with me, one ordinary day? While tending sheep near Mount Horeb, everything changed. Because how many of you know it's in those ordinary moments where God works? The Bible says in Exodus chapter 3, verses 2 and 3, there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that that the bush was on fire. Uh Moses saw that that the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight, why the bush does not burn up. Which I I think that's actually just a hilarious scripture because nothing inside of me says, if a bush started burning up randomly and started speaking to me, should I go over there and have a conversation with it? Anybody else anybody's thinking that? Okay, just me then. Isn't it interesting that God didn't meet Moses in a palace? He didn't meet him in a synagogue, he didn't meet him at a church, he didn't meet him in a worship service, he met him out doing his work. God met him while he was simply doing his job. And sometimes we think that God only speaks during these extraordinary moments of life, but throughout scripture, God often reveals himself in the middle of ordinary faithfulness. It's the things that we do every single day, the things that seem completely mundane and unimportant. This is exactly where we see God. So the the burning bush is a visible revelation of God's glory called a theophany. This was a tangible way for God to reveal Himself to Moses. And this particular fire, not all fire in the Bible, but this particular fire represented the presence of God. And what I love so much about this in this moment is that is is is that God is speaking to him and revealing his presence to him. So this encounter and revelation demanded Moses' attention and reverence. You see, sometimes God has to send something so out of the ordinary because we're so distracted that we just can't see what God is doing. Then in Exodus chapter 3, verses 4 and 5, the Bible says, When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called him from within the bush and he says, Moses, Moses, and Moses said, Here I am. Then it says, Do not come any closer, God said, Take off your sandals. For the place where you are standing is holy ground. See, I love this because he says, Take off your sandals. This place is holy ground. So God is revealing himself, the presence of God is upon this bush. But today the Holy Spirit dwells within us, meaning that God dwells within each and every one of us. So that means everywhere I step is holy ground because God is with me. That means when I go to work, it's holy ground because God is with me. When I go to the supermarket, it's holy ground because God is with me. As I'm walking in my home, it's holy ground because God is with me. And so what does that mean? That wherever we go, we have to have reverence because God is with us and it is holy ground. See, in this moment, God tells him, Moses, Moses. So God calling his name twice is significant. When God calls someone's name twice, it is to signal a sense of urgency, of intimacy, and of gravity of this divine encounter. So I love this because my husband and I used to call each other babe. But what I noticed is that every time I said babe, like sometimes if if if he bought something back from the supermarket after I sent him a picture, it wasn't exactly what he was supposed to bring back, even though there was a picture, I would say babe, and it wouldn't stop me from being snippy. So we started calling each other my love. Because it's hard to be snippy after you've declared that this person is the love of your life, right? So I say my love, but you could tell I'm getting upset because I go, my love. My love. It's it's it's a moment. I need you to pay attention in this moment, right? I need you, I need you to see what's what hear what's gonna happen next. So it's God's way of saying, hey, I need you to listen up. This moment matters. So think about it. When God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, he said, Abraham, Abraham. When God assured Jacob before he journeyed to Egypt, he said, Jacob, Jacob. When God called the young boy into prophetic ministry, he said, Samuel, Samuel. When Jesus lovingly redirected Martha's priorities, he said, Martha, Martha. When Jesus prepared Peter for the coming trial, he said, Simon, Simon. When when Jesus confronted the man who persecuted the church and transformed him into the apostle Paul, he says, Saul, Saul. So every time God repeats a name, it's becoming a definite, a defining moment in this person's life. And this was Moses' defining moment. I need you to pay attention to the words that are coming out of my mouth next, Moses. That's why I'm calling your name twice. Because God was about to commission him for an extraordinary task, and he needed Moses to understand the significance of what is about to happen next. Then God told Moses to remove his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. And the ground wasn't holy because of the location, it was holy because of who was there. So Moses had stepped into the presence of a holy God, and that required reverence and humility and worship. You see, when when we step into the presence of God, we have to be humble. We have to walk in humility, saying, God, I am nothing without you. Everything that I am is because of you. So, in other words, Moses, I haven't forgotten my promises and I haven't forgotten my people. In verse 6, God had just introduced himself, and he says, He says, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so what he's saying is that the same God who called Abraham is now calling Moses. You see, generations had passed, but God's faithfulness had not changed. So we say, listen, years and years and years and years have passed. The promises that I had for Abraham all those years ago are the same promises that I'm gonna have for you now. That is significant. Promises don't lie. God keeps all his promises, and in the moment that we think that God has forgotten the promises upon our lives, he has not forgotten them at all. See, he is working it all together so that ultimately that his will would be accomplished in all of that. Then in verse 7, God told Moses that he had seen Israel's suffering, heard their cries, and knew their pain. See, this is significant as well because what is he telling him at this moment? He's like, all the hard things that Israel has gone through, I have not forgotten them. I've seen every single one of your tears. I've seen all of your suffering. I know exactly what you are going through. I know every single one of the things that that cause pain and anguish in your heart. And isn't that what God tells us as well? It doesn't matter how long has passed. It doesn't matter if you're in the middle of the desert. It doesn't matter that you even ran away and put yourself there. I see everything that happens. Sometimes we think that God's God's silence and he's not listening to us. But God's silence doesn't mean that God is absent in the middle of it. He had been aware of every tear and every injustice and every single prayer. See, we never have to wonder if God is hearing our prayers because he hears them all. And then in verse 8, God says, He is going to rescue Israel from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And there's the promise. This was the moment that God needed him to pay attention to. But now that time had come to act. All those years later, it was his perfect timing to rescue Israel. And then came the assignment in verse 10. He says, Go, go, I'm sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people, Israel, out of Egypt. And then immediately Moses responded the way that many of us would. He said, Who am I? But God never answered Moses' question directly. Instead, he redirected Moses' attention away from himself and back to God. And he says, I will be with you. And as I studied Moses' life, I noticed something that his story can be summarized into three simple statements. Labels are received, lies are believed, and identity is revealed. And that's not just Moses' story, that's our story as well. So at many moments, labels were received. For 40 years, Moses had been listening to all the voices. Egypt said, You're a Hebrew. Israel said, You're an Egyptian, you're not our leader. Pharaoh said, You're a murderer, you're a failure, you're a runaway. Midian said, You're just a shepherd. And every season of Moses' life came with another label. And if you look closely, none of those labels told the full story of who Moses actually was. Each one captured a moment of his life, a role that he had, a failure that he engaged in, a perception that was created about him. But none of them captured who Moses truly was. See, that's that's how labels work. They reduce a complex life into a simple word. One moment in time, one mistake, one error that you made, one weakness that you have. And now all of a sudden, this label is encompassing your whole complex life from birth all the way till now. They take one experience and they try to. Identify your entire identity based off of that thing. And over time, if we're not careful, we stop questioning the labels. We stop evaluating the labels. We stop asking questions like Is that actually true about me? Is what they say true? We just start accepting the labels. We carry them into every new season. God opens doors and we bring the old labels along with us. We take our carry-on. Come on, labels. Let's go. We're going into the new season. See, the problem with that is that those old labels don't serve us in the new season. Then we start introducing ourselves by the labels that the world has given us. We make decisions based off of these labels. We limit ourselves because of these labels. I can never do that. I could never do that thing. I could never. You know how many times we ask people to do that? They go, I could never. And I'm like, what? Yes, you can. Yes, yes, you can. See, the problem is isn't that labels exist. The problem is when they become our identity. Because once be once a label becomes your identity, it begins to shape your future. You start living up to that label or living down to that label. And either way, you're no longer living from from uh from who God says you are. You're living from what someone else has said about you. Now the question we need to ask ourselves is what labels have I received? Not just the obvious ones where people call you a name or you know, or or someone has said something and you're one of your family members has said something about you over and over. Those are just obvious ones, right? But the subtle ones. The ones that are never really said out loud, they're just kind of implied, right? The ones, the ones you feel like like you can sense people's judgmental eyes on you, the the little comments and and and the little sneers and the little and the little whispers, right? What are those labels? Who gave them to us? Maybe it was a parent that kept saying the same thing about, oh, you're not smart enough, or you know what, you're just a horrible cook, or you're just, you know, whatever it might be. Who gave it to you? Was it a spouse? Was it a teacher? Was it a coach? What was it the circumstances in your life? Was it a painful moment? Was it the enemy that kept telling you something over and over and over again? And maybe, and maybe even ask, which ones have I been repeating to myself over and over again? See? Because sometimes the loudest voices aren't external, it's internal. It's the things that we tell ourselves when when we're alone. It's the things we tell ourselves when the radio's not playing, or the TV's not on, or right before you go to bed when it's super quiet, and you start replaying these labels over and over to yourself. Because isn't it always in those quiet moments when the labels start coming in and the insecurities start coming in? Henry Nowen says self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the beloved. See, this is what labels do. They train us to reject what God has called beloved. Not every voice deserves authority over your identity. Not every voice deserves authority over your identity. The only one that died on the cross for my sins is Jesus Christ. And he is the only one that has authority over my life. You see, the second thing is lies are believed. Then there are lies that we believe. Just because it was spoken doesn't mean that it's true. Just because it was repeated doesn't mean that it's that it's right. Just because it hurt doesn't mean that it defines who you are. The voice you believe determines the identity that you live. So Moses asked the question. He says, He says, Who am I? That question didn't start at the burning bush. It had been forming through all the years that he was wandering around in the wilderness. Every label he received eventually turned into something deeper than that. It turned into a belief. Because beliefs shape our behavior. And somewhere along the way, Moses stopped just hearing what others said about him and he started agreeing with it. Because isn't that what the enemy wants? He wants us to agree with false labels, with false narratives about who we are. He started agreeing with, you know what? Maybe they're right. Maybe I am a failure. You know what? Maybe I have messed up too badly. There is no coming back for this. Maybe some of us are saying, you know, I had my chance and I lost it. Maybe, maybe some of us say he's saying, you know what, I'm just not qualified to do that. Maybe some of us are saying, you know what, I'm just not enough. Notice something important. God never said any of those things. Those weren't divine declarations, they were internal conclusions. Moses wasn't just carrying labels, he was living under lies. And lies are powerful because guess what, y'all? They feel true. They feel like truth. They sound like your own voice. Because when when it keeps playing over and over, whose voice do you hear? You hear your own voice replaying it back to yourself. They replay your past, they point to real mistakes. But just because something happened doesn't mean the conclusion you're drawing from it is correct. The enemy doesn't need to create new evidence. He just needs you to interpret your past in a way that benefits him. And once you believe the lie, you start living like it's true. Oh, they said I was a failure. I guess I must be a failure. Everything I put my hand on is a failure. Right? We start telling ourselves lies like that. We shrink back. We hesitate. We don't want to move forward. It takes away our boldness, our courage. We disqualify ourselves before God ever does. We say things like, Well, I'm not gonna apply for that job because, you know, I'm not qualified enough to do that. Well, I can never do what they do because they have all these skills and abilities that I don't have, and God, you know, and God just never called me to do that. We disqualify ourselves before we ever give God the opportunity to show up in our lives and do what only He can do in our lives. See? So we need to ask ourselves the question: what lie have I started believing because of my past? What what is the lie? And and some of us are believing a bunch of lies about ourselves. We need to identify the lives because they paralyze us for moving in God's redemptive purpose. See, I specifically use the word paralyze because this is where we refuse to move forward. That five years from now we look back and we're exactly in the same place that we were because the lies are like concrete on our feet. We don't move because of the lies. We can't progress because of the lies. And then we feel discouraged and we say, Well, I haven't accomplished anything in five years because you're believing the lies that the enemy has told you about yourself, that the world has created about you. We don't want to stay stuck. That's why we need to call out these lies. We need to expose these lies. We need to name the lies. What is it that I'm truly believing about myself? We need to bring them into the light and identify what the Bible truly says who we are. See, lies lose their power when they're exposed. Dr. Martin Luther King said, Jr. said, darkness cannot drive, darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. See, this is the this is why lies have to be brought into the light of God's truth. This is why we need to know the word of God, because lies are all around us. The enemy is constantly feeding us lies. And in order for us to counter those lies, we have to have God's word in our hearts, in our minds, as we are walking out into the world. Then the third thing is identity is revealed by God. But exposing the lie is only half the work. That's only half the battle. Once the lie is exposed, we need God to reveal the truth. So when Moses is standing there in front of the Lord at this burning bush, he's having this incredible encounter, and then Moses says, Who am I? He's not questioning God's power. He's not quite, he knows who God is. I mean, obviously he's speaking through a burning bush. How is this even happening, right? He's questioning his own identity, about his place and God's purposes, and about the very nature of what it means to be called by God. So for 40 years he had been living under the labels of his past. At this point, Moses is 80. So no offense to anybody that's 80 years old. He's probably thinking, my time, my time is over. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna let the young young people do that. We're gonna let them do it. And this proves that it doesn't matter how old you are, there is always work to be done in the kingdom of God. There is no retirement, there is no expiration date, your prime has not passed. To the very last breath, we're gonna be doing it, adding on to the kingdom and creating disciples for God. You see, and in this moment, he sees, I'm 80 years old, I'm an I'm I'm an old man. He said, He said, I'm I'm a failure. Can't you see? I've I've been hiding out for 40 years in this desert. He saw someone who had missed his opportunity. And I love it so much because when he says, Who am I, God? It brings me back to the song, Who Am I? And it says, Who am I? That the Lord of all the earth would care to know my name, would care to call my name twice, would care to feel my hurt. Who am I? That the that the bright and morning star would choose to light the way for my ever-wandering heart. Not because of who I am, but because of what you've done. Not because of what I've done. But come on, y'all, you know this one. But because of who you are. So God never answers Moses' question directly. See, even this tiny detail is so important. Because a lot of times, even in my own prayer life, I ask God so many questions. God, why is this happening? Or God, why? 30 seconds later, I catch myself and I go, okay, God, I know you're not gonna just come down and be like, well, Jessica, let me give you the synopsis of why I'm doing what I'm doing. And I go, okay, God. Your answer will be a slow revelation of our journey together. You will reveal it in your time as you need to reveal it in your time. And God does this with Moses right at that moment. God is speaking to him through the bush, but God doesn't stop there and go, Well, this is who you are. He responds with, I will be with you. It's almost as if God is saying, Moses, you're asking entirely the wrong question. The question isn't who you who you are, the question is, who am I? A.W. Tozer once once wrote, What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. And that is exactly what happens at the burning bush. Moses thinks the issue is who he is. I'm inadequate, I'm not enough, I can't do this. But God reveals the real focus is who God is. So for 40 years, Moses had been shaped by other voices, but now God speaks, and one moment with God is louder than a lifetime of labels. You see, this is why when the enemy starts telling us all these lies about who we are, and the enemy is speaking in twins. Well, you can't do that, and you can't do X, and you can't do Y, and you can't do Z, and you're not equipped for that, and God never called you to that, and you're not good enough, and you're not smart enough. This is why we have to present ourselves to the feet of Jesus, because it's in those moments where God will reassure us who He is and who He is when we are submitted to Him. See, our power doesn't come from who we are, our power comes from the one who dwells within us. See, God doesn't just give Moses a task. He doesn't just say, Hey, I need you to do this thing. He's revealing his identity to Moses right there at that very moment. And even Moses' name had been pointing to this all along. Remember Moses' name means drawn out? Well, he was physically drawn out of the waters of the Nile as a baby. But now God is calling the one drawn out of water to draw his people out of slavery. See, his name was not just a description of what happened to him, it was a preview of what God would do through him. So Moses was drawn out so that Israel could be drawn out. And God had written his purpose into Moses' story before Moses ever understood it. See, that's a beautiful statement right there. Because we're never gonna understand what God is doing. We're just not going to. We don't know how all the pieces fit, but God knows how all the pieces are going to fit together. That means that that that that Moses is named because a testimony of God's redemptive purpose, of God's plan to mend broken things. So therefore, God doesn't call you by what you've done, he calls you by who he created you to be. See, so when the world starts calling us by our sins and calling us by our weaknesses, by calling us uh uh by our uh an identity that doesn't reflect the character of God, that is not the Lord. That is because the Lord doesn't do that. The only one that accuses you is the enemy. The enemy accuses you, the enemy calls you by your weakness, the enemy calls you by your mistakes, the enemy calls you by your sin. God does not do that. And if any a lot of you know me on a personal level here, and you know sometimes people will say things and will kind of laugh and joke, and and when I don't want to receive something, I go, get behind me, Satan. That when the world gives you a label that God never intended for your life, get behind me, Satan. I will not receive that because I know who I am in Christ. You see, God is the one who draws people out. He draws people out of danger, he draws people out of bondage, he draws people out of death, he draws people into life, he draws people into freedom and he draws people into purpose. See, he is the one who reveals Moses' identity right at that very moment. People saw a shepherd and God saw a deliverer. People saw a failure and God saw a leader. People saw a man who ran and God saw a man who would stand before Pharaoh. And here's what's powerful: God doesn't redefine Moses by ignoring his past, he redefines Moses by revealing his presence in Moses' life. See how many of us have thought that? Oh, I wish I could go back and change that. I wish I could go back and that and and and that never would have happened. God doesn't go back and change our past, he shows us who we are because he's dwelling within us. So he tells Moses, I will be with you. I will be with you. And that statement alone changes everything because your identity isn't rooted in your history, it's rooted in his presence. And transformation doesn't happen when we think better about ourselves. Transformation happens when we believe what God says about who we are. See, I can wake up every morning, I can say, you know what? I feel like I'm 25. I feel like I'm so skinty today. I feel like I have zero acne and my face is completely clear. I feel like I'm not menopausal, praise God. But all those things are true. All those things are true. Transformation happens when we believe what God says about us. But even all those things, God is still gonna use me. And even through all those things, God is still going to let his purpose uh shine through my life. The famous theologian John Cena, a WWE superstar, he had a famous line. Okay, that's not a real theologian, so don't be like Pastor Keith, have you heard of that theologian, John Cena? Pastor just said he wasn't a theologian, but I love wrestling and I and I love John Cena. And so I I especially loved it when he would say, when he would say, Y'all know it, you can't see me. I loved it when he said that. See, my kids would come to me, you got money, I'd be like, You can't see me. Mom, I need you, you can't see me. See, I know he meant it one way. But when I think about his message, I think, you know what? He's more right than what I realized. Because the truth is, you can't fully see me. And I can't fully see you. Not through the lens of misidentification, not through the labels, not through the lies that we believe, not through the worst moment of somebody's life. We can't fully see who someone is when we are only looking at where they have been. Only God sees the full, complete story of who we are. Only God knows how every moment, how every season, how every failure, how every delay, how every wilderness, how every painful experience is being used to shape us into who he created us to be. That is why Romans 8.28 says, and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love and are called according to his purpose for them. See, everything does not mean that everything was good. It does not mean God caused every wound, every betrayal, every loss, or every failure. That's not what that means. We live in a broken world where sin has affected everything, and sinful people make sinful choices every day, all day long. But the promise of Romans 8.28 is that God would bring good out of bad. That God can take what was painful, that God can take what is unfair, that God can take what is broken and what the enemy meant for evil, and that he would somehow work it all together for our good and for his purpose. So, what does that mean? That means the good things that happen, the bad, the painful, the confusing, the wilderness, the waiting, the failure, the rejection. God can use all of it. Because your past may explain who you are, but it does not define you. God does. And the God who calls you is the God who equips you, the God who anoints you, the God who appoints you, and the God who goes with you. And what God and what God says is not just about who we are, it's about who He is in you and how He works through you. When we are walking with God, guess what? We are not alone, we are not forgotten, we are not disqualified because God is with us. And if God is with us, guess what? That is enough. See, the voice you believe determines the identity that you live. So the questions that we need to be asking ourselves is whose voice has the authority to define you? Is it our past? Is it other people? Is it our own thoughts? Or is it God? Remember Jalen Brunson? The player many people said wasn't wasn't big enough. The player critics insisted wasn't a franchise leader, he wasn't a superstar, the player they believed had had only been successful because he was playing along Luca. Well, over the next few years, Brunson proved every one of those voices wrong. He didn't just just become the face of the New York Knicks, he transformed the culture of an entire franchise. He led the Knicks to their to their first NBA championship in 53 years, ending one of the longest title droughts in professional sports. And in the deciding game, with the season on the line, Brunson delivered a legendary 45 point performance, taking over in the fourth quarter and leading another comeback victory. And then the final buzzer sounded. And there was no debate. And I think to myself, when Jesus decides that it's my very last breath, when the final buzzer sounds in my life, I would hope that I would have worked against the labels and stood in the identity that God gave to me. The same player that people once called a supporting piece was handed the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Trophy as the unquestioned leader of a championship team. And my prayer for my life would be that I would that I would be an MVP player. That God would look back on me and say, you walked in your identity and you did what I called you to do in my strength. See what changed for Jalen? It was not his talent, it wasn't his work ethic, it wasn't his calling. What changed was that Jalen lived what others failed to see. As I thought about it, I couldn't help but think about Moses and the day that he saw the burning bush. Can I tell you what changed that day? The bush didn't change. The wilderness didn't change. Pharaoh was still in Egypt. Israel was still in slavery. Moses was still 80 years old. His past hadn't changed. His mistakes hadn't disappeared. His resume hadn't improved. Nothing around Moses had changed. What changed was whose voice he believed. So for 40 years, Moses had been listening to everybody, everybody else around him tell him who he was. And one conversation with God began confronting every false identity that Moses had carried. And I wonder how many of us have spent years listening to voices that God never intended to define us. Maybe someone told you you never amount to anything. Maybe it was a divorce, maybe it was an addiction. Maybe you've been asking the same question Moses asked. Who am I, God? Who am I? And maybe today God is lovingly saying, you're asking the wrong question. The question isn't, who am I? The question is, who is God? Because if God is who he says he is, then you are who he says you are. If he is a redeemer, you are redeemed. If he is a father, then you are his child. If he's a shepherd, then you are never abandoned. And if he is faithful, your past does not get the final word in your life. The voice you believe determines the identity that you live. So today, whose voice will you believe? The voice of your past, the voice of your pain, the voice of your critics, or the voice of the God who calls you by your name. Let's pray. God, I thank you for this day that you have given us, Father. I give you all the glory because you are good and you are faithful. And I thank you, Lord, because I know at this moment that you are calling each and every one of us by our names, and you are calling it twice. I pray that we would be able to hear you. I pray, Father, that we would be able to stand on who you called us to be, that we would be able to expose the lies that the enemy has told about us, Father, and that we would walk in the identity that you have given us, Father. We thank you, Lord, and we pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen, amen, and amen. If you need prayer, we have our chaplains here waiting to pray with you. See you next week.