Who Defines You? Unmasking the Lies and Claiming Your True Identity

In this episode of the Higher Pursuit Podcast, Cecily Lachapelle discusses her book 'Repurpose Your Pain' and delves into the theme of broken identity. She shares her personal journey of overcoming trauma and finding her identity in Christ. The conversation explores the importance of understanding who has the right to define us, the keys to healing our identities, and the impact of others on our self-perception. Cecily emphasizes the need for a close relationship with God to truly grasp our identity and encourages listeners to step out in faith as they navigate their own journeys of healing and self-discovery.

Takeaways
Repurposing pain can lead to personal growth.
Our identities can be broken through trauma and loss.
Only God has the right to define our identity.
Memorizing scripture is key to healing our minds.
We must bring our brokenness to the Lord for healing.
The opinions of others can significantly impact our identity.
Faith requires actions that may seem illogical.
Understanding our identity in Christ is essential for healing.
Social media can trigger feelings of inadequacy.
Healing is a process that requires time and effort.

Sound Bites
"Repurpose Your Broken Identity"
"Bring your brokenness to the Lord"
"Who defines who you are?"
"We all live in a flawed world"
"The Lord wants to heal you"

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Repurposing Pain
03:22 Understanding Broken Identity
11:17 Keys to Healing Identity
19:02 The Impact of Others on Identity
25:51 Stepping Out in Faith

Keywords: repurpose pain, broken identity, healing, faith, self-discovery, identity in Christ, personal growth, spiritual journey, overcoming trauma, prophetic clarity

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Chapters

• 3:22 Understanding Broken Identity
• 11:17 Keys to Healing Identity
• 19:02 The Impact of Others on Identity
• 25:51 Stepping out in faith

Transcript

Cecily Lachapelle (00:04.728)

Hi everyone and welcome to the Higher Pursuit Podcast. This podcast and Higher Pursuit Ministries exists to bring prophetic clarity to the Word of God so that you can apply it to your life, walk in freedom and be established in firm faith. So I hope that you're blessed by the content and today I'm actually going to be sharing

 from the book that I wrote. And it's called Repurpose Your Pain. And today I'm gonna be sharing about the first chapter which is called Repurpose Your Broken Identity. So for those of you who aren't familiar, let me just back up a little bit and give you some of the backstory of how I decided to write this book in the first place. So over the years, as I've shared at women's conferences and in churches on Sunday mornings,

All the time, I usually will bring in something from my own life because I generally find that people relate really well to the stuff that I've been through, the stuff that I've walked through. Obviously, when you see somebody standing in a podium, you think, well, they have their life altogether. It's easy to see the cleaned up version and think they've always been that way. So I always love, love to bust that myth all to pieces.

And it never fails when people come up to me and they go, my gosh, to look at you, I would never have known that you've been through all that. my goodness. It just made your message really hit home to me. So throughout the years, people have often come to me and said, you should write a book. You really should write a book about all the things that you've been through because then it won't be for nothing. I mean, really the things that you've been through and what God has done in your life and

And the way that you help other people because of that, it really should be a book. And I've been like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to write a book. was never something I wanted to do until it was, until all of a sudden God just dropped it in my heart. And I knew it was the right season to start writing. God just gave me the drop the title, repurpose your pain in my heart, because I, I realized that

Cecily Lachapelle (02:25.354)

repurposing is such a kind of a catchy theme right now, right? You we love the shows where somebody repurposes some piece of garbage basically and turns it into something beautiful. I mean, Pinterest, I really feel like that's how Pinterest got started was people doing all these amazing crafts and taking mason jars or old tin cans and making something gorgeous out of these things. So,

I realized that the trash of my life, God has always taken and he has made something beautiful for his glory out of it. So that's why I chose the title. And so each chapter in the book, there's 10 chapters, I take 10 pain points that are common to most people and that I knew God had repurposed in my life. And so the first one that I'm going to talk about today,

is repurpose your broken identity. When I was really young as a child, I remember being very confident in who I was. I felt like I was a special kid, that I was smart, that I was cute, that I was funny, that I was musical, because I had a dad that always told me these things. But then the real world started sending me other messages.

And I had a bullying experience in sixth grade. And then I had some other very negative things happen that I talk about in the book. And my identity got broken. And when it broke, it broke into a million pieces. And so then what do you do when your identity breaks? You do everything you can to reconstruct it. And I tried all the things.

I tried substances, I tried relationship with boys, I tried being the girl that was so cool, I tried having the right outfits, I tried hanging out with the right people, or then I tried hanging out with the wrong people. mean, none of it worked. None of it was creating an identity that I could stand on. And it wasn't until I met Jesus Christ that I realized He had had an identity for me all along.

Cecily Lachapelle (04:50.131)

And so in the chapter, I really discuss and go into bringing us to the question of who has the right to identify us? I mean, after all, do our parents even have the right to identify us? Because oftentimes they might be identifying us through their own broken identities if they're not healed, if they're not walking in the complete identity that God has for them.

I know that was the case with my parents. They didn't know any better. They were doing the best they could. But because they did not have that intimate relationship with Jesus, when my identity broke, they couldn't help me. They didn't know where to point me. So praise God, I found the Lord. But so then you think, okay, well, that was good. You found the Lord at 18. So you were all set after that, right? Not so much. Because even though I found my identity in Christ,

That didn't mean that I had the full grasp of it completely all the way. It was a process of growing in my understanding of who the Lord says I am and becoming close to Him so that I could trust Him. You have to have an intimate, close relationship with someone to trust their words, right? Well, that's how it is with the Lord. And that doesn't happen overnight.

That's how we build our history with God and we begin to trust Him. We read His word, we pray, we spend time in His presence, and gradually we begin to trust the things that He says to us and about us. So in the book, I talk about how I found three keys to repurposing my broken identity. And the first key

Let me scroll down.

Cecily Lachapelle (06:53.985)

And the first key is to bring our grief, our losses, and our brokenness to the Lord. That's tricky, and that's hard, because a lot of times we have bought the lie that we have to be all fixed. We have to be all healed, and then we want to come to the Lord. But that's not the point of our relationship with the Lord. First of all,

He sees it all anyway. We're like glass to him. He sees right through our facades, our masks. He sees through our false masks, the things that we put on to try to impress everybody else. Other people might not see it, but he absolutely does. He even sees the things that we have hidden from our own selves. So we need to bring that brokenness to the Lord if we're going to expect that he's going to heal.

our broken identity and give us a whole identity, His identity for us. Then second of all, we need to search our Bible to discover who Jesus is, how that has anything to do with us and who He says we are. Because God is the only one who has the right to define you. He's the only one because He's the one who made you.

If an inventor invents a product that has never been on the market before, there are no copies. This is the original, the absolute original of this product. And he is the only one who knows what he designed it for. Then he's the only one who gets to name it. And he is the only one who can say what its purpose is. Now, other people may come along and they may make a copy of that thing. They may make tweaks.

to that thing, or they might even try to use that thing for something that wasn't designed to do. You would never try to drive a toaster as a car, right? We have the knowledge and the sense of knowing. Certain things have a certain purpose, and you're going to buy a toaster to toast your bread, and you're gonna buy a car to get you to the store to get the bread.

Cecily Lachapelle (09:18.027)

And you're not going to expect one of those things to do the function of the other thing. And so if we understand that certain things have certain identities, have certain names and have certain purposes, I a toaster is called a toaster because it toasts. Ta-da. So God has a purpose for us and that's our identity. And he has a purpose for us as his child, first and foremost.

And so if our number one purpose is to be connected to his heart, then every other purpose and false identity or identity that we could chase after means nothing until we recognize our primary identity, which is to be called his beloved, his sought after one, his child, healed, redeemed, restored.

These are all names that God calls his people throughout scripture. And when we read the word, we find out how good God is and how wonderful his intention is for us. And we find out who he is calling us to be. There's so many scriptures that talk about who we are in Christ and who we are because of the covenant that we have with the Father.

And so it's so important for us to dig into those scriptures, to find those scriptures. In the book, I give a whole host of them. In the book, I show you how to find those scriptures for yourself and how to journal about all of this. I have activations at the end of the chapter that are going to show you how to take the things that I share in the chapter and really repurpose your pain of a broken identity.

And so that's a very important part of the book. All right, and the third key is to memorize specific scriptures about who you are in Christ, who you are, what your identity is now as a child of God. Because that is the medicine that turns around our unhealthy thinking. We pick up in our lives a host

Cecily Lachapelle (11:47.357)

of misinformation, of lies, of erroneous thoughts about ourself. And it really takes work and it takes concerted effort to turn that ship around and to replace those thoughts with God's thoughts, to replace those lies with truth. And memorizing scripture is number one in replacing those thoughts. Why?

because for the time that you are working on memorizing that scripture, your mind is focused in that direction. So it takes mental effort just to memorize. And then when we rehearse that scripture over and over, look, it's not like a lucky rabbit's foot. I'm not saying that just spewing out the word and saying it over and over and over.

It's going to be like some new age mantra that's magically going to turn your brain around. No, but the word of God contains anointing and it contains power. And when we speak the word, especially when other words are coming into our brain and we want to drive them out, you can't just drive them out and leave a vacuum. You have to replace it with truth. So we push out the lie and quickly.

establish that truth in its place. And memorizing scripture, I found, is the number one way to do that. Because you can't tote your Bible and your journal around with you all day long. But if it's in your mind, if it's in your heart, you can pull up that truth anytime you're being assaulted, anytime you feel like your identity is under attack and you're starting to lose your footing. Memorizing scripture helps you regain your footing.

because you can start to speak the word out loud. You can begin to remind yourself of the truth. And sometimes somebody else might need that word. God, as he's healing you, you're gonna find that he's going to specifically bring people across your path now that need what is happening in your life. As you start walking in the identity that God has for you, you're gonna find that people come out of the woodwork

Cecily Lachapelle (14:12.161)

that never talked to you about this before. But now God knows you've got tools and you'll be his ambassador of truth. So people will start coming to you. And when you have the word hidden in your heart, if you're sitting at Starbucks, you can start dropping scripture and changing the atmosphere around that person right there, right then, you can start bringing life and planting seeds of hope and truth.

in someone else's heart. So it's not just about you and it's not just for you. So it's very important that we understand that only God has the right and the ability to establish our identity, to tell us who our identity is. There's a really great quote that I put in the book while I was writing. I was reading a book by a gentleman named John Burke. And you might wonder how this applies.

to what I'm about to say, but it's interesting because it's called Imagine Heaven, Near Death Experiences. So what he's done is he's taken the testimonies of hundreds of people who have had near death experiences and they've seen heaven, they've seen the Lord, and they come back to tell of their experiences. And one of the things that a host of people said,

was that when they were in the presence of the Lord, they had no insecurity. They felt complete peace and acceptance and a love like they had never ever known and an acceptance like they had never ever known. And so this is what he writes as his commentary after having interviewed these people. He says, who defines who you are?

This is such a critical question, but so few of us have really stopped to answer it. Who has the right to define who you are? What you're worth? What your purpose is? Whether you succeed or fail, how you define your identity is ultra important. What you believe about yourself is what shapes all your decisions and actions. So true, right? He goes on to say,

Cecily Lachapelle (16:37.277)

Most of us end up believing things about our identity that are not grounded in God's reality. Who God created us to be, what God created us to do. We believe lies about our identity that the evils of this world inflict on us. Isn't that true? We constantly worry about the opinions and the approval of others. We experience intense anxiety when we're not succeeding

or are not recognized for our accomplishments. We find ourselves lowering our standards to new levels, then justifying it in order to prove our worth or get someone to love us. We feel the need to control our spouse or kids because our identity has somehow gotten wrapped in what we think others, in what others think or do. Wow.

All of that is so true, is it not? And that is the fruit of a broken identity. Our identities can get broken through traumas, losses, divorce, rejection, neglect, damaged parents or spouses or loved ones by the brokenness of people that either have authority over us

or whose opinion of us we really, really value. In fact, the closer someone is to us, the more that we have sort of, for lack of a better word, nakedly revealed ourselves to someone, maybe our soul or our weaknesses or our fears or our insecurities or what have you, the closer we allow somebody in to our inner heart, the more influence they have

and more ability they have to break our heart and to break our identity. And so that's how our identities can be broken. And we all live in a flawed world. We all live in a fallen world. And even once we know Jesus Christ, we are still growing. We're still growing into the knowledge of who we are. So,

Cecily Lachapelle (19:02.943)

We can even, within the church, we can still wound other people and find woundedness there. So the, and the results of allowing other people or society to define us are like John Burke said, anxiety, depression, striving, comparison. man, that was a big one for me. I, there was a period of time I could not look at social media.

I was struggling with some major failures in my life and I was really struggling to get locked into the fact that my identity in Christ did not change just because it looked like I royally failed in some areas that were critically important to me. And so while I was

in that process of allowing the Lord to reaffirm my identity and really turning my minds, my mindset from what had failed and that that did not define me to the fact that only God could define me and he did not define me based on my successes, my failures, my sins, my flaws.

All the things like my self-righteousness my identity is nothing to do with my actions or behaviors crazy enough and it's kind of hard to believe that when you come out of a religious system like I had So anyway back to social media. I went through a period of time where I realized that social media was a trigger for me It just was and I wasn't winning when I was getting triggered

looking at other people's perfect lives, perfect kids, perfect marriages, perfect vacations, perfect wardrobes, all the things. I was getting triggered by that. So I thought, you know what, while I am in this fragile place, while I'm working on me, why don't I just not trigger myself every hour as I scroll through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? That just didn't make sense. I'm going to let myself get a little stronger before

Cecily Lachapelle (21:28.525)

I subject myself to that and I'm going to know that I'm doing better when I can look at other people's Facebook posts or Instagram posts or whatever and say, good for you. Good for you. God's doing awesome things in my life too. It looks different, but it's what God has called me to do. And I am who he created me to be and I'm accepted by him. And his opinion of me is the only one that matters. I'm not in a race. I'm not in a

comparison. I don't have to compete or compare myself to anyone else. So that's that is one of a major way that I found that that's one of the harshest ways that I think broken identity expresses itself. I also think that broken identity expresses itself in negative behaviors.

We do a lot of things, like I said in the beginning that I had done, we grasp at straws that society or the world or social media tells us will give us an identity. And a lot of those are not healthy. And so all that does is it breaks our identity even further because it just compounds shame upon our brokenness.

So that's why one of the reasons it's so important that we go to the Lord and we ask him to define us, that we journal about it, that we bring our sin, our failures, our losses, our traumas, and our brokenness to the Lord so that we can find healing and find times of refreshing in the presence of the Lord.

So I guess I want to ask you right now, has someone's brokenness broken your identity? Has someone's woundedness wounded you? Maybe it was your parents. Maybe it was someone you loved or trusted. Maybe it was even a spiritual authority or a friend. Whoever that was,

Cecily Lachapelle (23:53.355)

whatever happened, the Lord wants to heal you. He died on the cross and rose from the dead to assure you of his love, to assure you of the fact that you have an eternal identity in Christ and that he paid for everything that someone broke

or that you broke, it's all covered under the blood. And if you receive that, he has a brand new identity for you. And if you have received that, then you already are walking in that brand new identity. It might just be your season now to dig in and find out who you are in Christ and to begin to step out and faith in that. The other day, I was reading a wonderful book on the blood covenant.

And in it, the author was saying how Peter had to step out in faith when he stepped out of the boat, when Jesus called him, when Jesus said, come, and there was the storm and the wind and the waves and all of that. We know the story, but he said one thing that I thought was so interesting. He said, when we are going to step out in faith, it's going to require actions that number one, make no sense to us.

And number two, that we haven't done before. Because if we had done those things before and the step of faith was the same thing, then it wouldn't be faith. It would be experience, right? It would just be doing something again that we had done before and we're familiar with. So faith is always going to require an action that seems outlandish, out of the box.

brand new, it's going to require courage, it's going to require trust in the Lord that he's going to uphold us when we do this. So he made this point. He said, there's two ways that Peter could have gotten out of that boat. The first one is the way that if you're out on the water, how do you get out of the boat? You slide out of the boat knowing that the water isn't going to hold you and that you're going to be preparing to swim. But if the boat was on the beach,

Cecily Lachapelle (26:19.937)

and you're gonna step out onto the sand, you step out totally differently when you know you're gonna step out onto a surface that will hold you. I'd never thought of that before. Peter chose to step out of the boat as if he was going to step out on a hard enough surface that was gonna hold his weight and allow him to walk. Unbelievable. And that is how we have to act when we're allowing the Lord.

to repurpose our broken identity into his identity. We're going to have to say some things and do some things we've never said or done before. We're going to have to act in faith and not act according to the old ways because we aren't that person anymore. We have now been clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We are now in Christ. So I talk about all these things in the book and I hope that this has piqued your interest.

to read the chapter because believe it or not, I know I said a lot, there's more in the chapter that I didn't divulge here so that you'll have some new and interesting things to read when you crack the book open. Well, I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast and I really, really look forward to seeing you in the next one. And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast in whatever format you're listening to it now, whether it is...

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