Episode 18: “Identity Crisis”

If you wrestle with insecurity on any level what you’re really experiencing is an identity crisis. The root of insecurity is not extreme humility as some people suppose. It’s actually pride — self-centered self-talk that leads to low self-esteem. If the enemy can make you feel badly about what you’ve done, where you’ve been, or what you lack, then he can come closer to convincing you of who you are…or more like who you are not. 

In this episode, we’re gonna get to know who we are by learning who our Creator is! 

Music: “Safe” by Naomi Raine 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you wrestle with insecurity on any level, then what you're really actually experiencing is an identity crisis. The root of insecurity is not extreme humility, as some people suppose. It's actually pride, self-centered self-talk that leads to low self-esteem. And if the enemy can make you feel badly about what you've done, where you've been, and what you lack, then he can come closer to convincing you of who you are, or more like who you are not. In this episode, we're gonna get to know who we are by learning who our creator is. Welcome to the Safe in Security Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I'll be fair when it's so too much. Don't shrink back, no you not touch. Don't you know my love is always new? You are safe here.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to the Safe Insecurity Podcast. I am your host, your girl, Melody Faith, and this is a safe space for you to be vulnerable and still feel valuable, my friend. And we have important things to talk about today. First of all, let me make sure that if this is your first time here, that you feel welcome. Like I said, this is a safe space for you to be vulnerable and still feel valuable because I believe that the true only way to overcome insecurity and to heal from the hurts and the trauma of your past is vulnerability. And sadly, we don't have enough safe spaces in today's society where people feel comfortable enough being vulnerable, right? You gotta be safe to let your guard down. You gotta feel like you trust the person or the people in the room in order to let your guard down. So I just want to let you know this comment section is safe. This podcast is safe wherever you're listening to, wherever you're watching from. I'm so excited that you're here. And I hope that you will share this with people who need safe spaces to be vulnerable and still feel valued and valuable because our real validation needs to come from our Heavenly Father. But it also helps when we have human beings who can share that and be the extension of his love to us. And so yeah, I also hope that you take this message and this method and start creating safe spaces for people around you if you're not doing that already. It may not be in the form of a podcast. It may just be your actual couch, like inviting people over, having, you know, coffee dates with friends or getting on the phone with somebody, working out with somebody, like somewhere where you can connect with another person on a personal level and make them feel safe because it's just important. Like we need that. We need community. We are built for each other. We're built for relationship. And relationship is the currency of the kingdom of God. And so I am a firm believer that we need each other and we need God. We were not designed to be independent. That is one of the first, like primary lies of insecurity is that you think you need to be independent some kind of way. You do not. So yeah, let's get into it. Like I said, we have important things to talk about today, and I can't wait to address this topic because when I tell you the Holy Spirit really will use anything to convey a message to you. Like he will, he will literally use the grass and the flowers and the trees swaying in the wind to show you something about God. Like it's really powerful. So today's whole talk is about identity. And I think I've realized, um, as the Holy Spirit is just showing me, just metaphorically, like a lot of different things have just been a lot of confirmation over this past month that I really needed to talk about this. Um, I've realized that the core reason why some people have such deep-seated and deep-rooted insecurities. Some people is me. I am some people. Um, because we are all recovering from insecurity in some kind of way, right? Whether you acknowledge it or not. We all are faced with it. We're faced with a hundred different insecurities every day. But the reason why some of them seem to be so deep and so hard to uproot is because at your core, at your foundation, you lack an understanding of who your creator is. And so I wanted to take a deep dive into that because I believe that there is a level of understanding that can help bring about freedom and deliverance. I believe that there's a level of, you know, wisdom, um, that if we tap into the Holy Spirit's wisdom, like he is the spirit of wisdom, he can give you wisdom concerning any and everything that you ask for. Um I just believe that that there's a way that we can find ourselves in God because we were in him before the foundation of the world. That's what the Bible says. Like he knew us before we were formed in our mother's womb. We were, I like to think of it as when a sperm and an egg join and conception happens, that miracle moment when an embryo is actually formed, a human embryo. Um, the breath of life is breathed into it. Like God literally breathes into that embryo and creates life the same way that he breathed into dust in the Garden of Eden and created Adam. Um, and so with that, that pneuma, that spirit of God, that breath that is causing life to happen in the womb of a woman, then you have this automatic connection to the one who breathed the life. Like it's like DNA. I mean, in literal terms, our breath actually contains our DNA. If you want to be real, because there's molecules of our saliva in our breath that it automatically will tell you details about, you know, the chromosomes and the genetic makeup of a person based off of that little bit of information. And so the breath of God is literally his DNA. He breathed life into Adam and he became a living soul. Um, in the same way he breathes life into this embryo, this fertilized egg in a woman's uterus, and it becomes a living soul. Um, and I believe that that the spirit of a person lives and exists in God, in heaven, you know, in eternity before it ever makes its way down here to earth, right? So uh that's that's my way of you know processing what it means for us to be in him before the foundation of the world. Like if he existed before everything existed, because he is the origin of everything, we were already in him and with him. You know how inexhaustible, like you could literally go down a black hole. We won't today, but him me up in the DMs. We can we could go, we could talk on that for a long time because I'm telling you, like, God is God is inexhaustible. He is unfathomably great. Like we sing songs and talk about how great he is, and you know, we we see miraculous things happen for people down here, and we think, like, wow, God is really great. But like, even that is just a minuscule, like, it's not even the tip of the iceberg as to how great and how vast and how powerful he is. Like, he is he's inexhaustible, uh, he's indescribable, unfathomable. Like, and everything that he does and is exudes that same trait. Like his love is unconditional and unfathomable and infinite. His grace abounds and extends for all eternity. And it's it's just everything about him is bigger than we could ever imagine. And so um, if we're thinking little of ourselves, it it kind of brought me to uh the thought process of like if something came out of something else, right? Like, if I don't know, if I make a smoothie with bananas and strawberries, right? The smoothie's gonna taste like bananas and strawberries. It's just now I personally, this is a total aside. Y'all didn't ask for this information, but I'm gonna tell you, I don't really like bananas. Okay, I really like plantain, don't really care for bananas. Um, obviously, you don't really eat plantain raw either. You cook it, you know. So I I think that has something to do with it. I haven't really had cooked bananas. I think I had like a banana flambé dessert or something, but I kind of picked the bananas out and just ate the flambé part because the caramelized sugar was good with the ice cream. You didn't ask for this information, but I believe that bananas overpower everything else in the smoothie. So I don't like bananas and I don't put bananas in my smoothie. But for the sake of this example, for some reason I said strawberries and bananas. So there you go. Fun fact about Mel you did not ask for, but loved and enjoyed. Um, but yeah, so strawberry banana smoothie, right? It should taste like strawberries and bananas because that is what went into it. That is what should be emitted from the blender when I pour it into a cup and enjoy it. Um, probably for my husband, because I would not enjoy a strawberry banana smoothie because I don't like bananas. Anyway, uh, maybe I should have said pineapple. A strawberry pineapple smoothie. The bottom line is you get what I'm saying. Like the thing that you make out of something else should still have characteristics of what it was made from. Just like an orange tree doesn't produce lemons. Like the oranges that come off of the orange tree should have the same citrus vitamin C element things as all the rest of the fruit from the orange tree, because it's an orange tree. The seed that created the orange tree was an orange seed. It wasn't a lemon seed, it wasn't an apple seed. It was, you know, so like if we came out of God and He is infinite and inexhaustible and amazing and powerful and great and good and loving and caring and kind and patient. And I mean, the list could go on forever, literally, because he's inexhaustible and infinite. How are we not those things? We came out of him, and yet we seem to think that we are so less than what God is. And now I don't I said this in the intro, and I want to clarify. We are not God. Okay. The moment that you start thinking of yourself as God, because you're not the same, right? Smoothie, fruit. There's still two different it's came out of that, but it is not the same thing. Your child is not you, right? So we are God's children, we are God's seed, we are God's breathe-in spirit on the earth, but we are not God. So we have elements that mirror God. And I say mirror on purpose because if you've been following the podcast, following anything about my ministry, my platform, you know I consistently say human beings are designed to reflect glory, not absorb it. So at the moment that you start thinking of yourself as a God, and emphasis on the little g right there, um, you are sorely mistaken and you're guilty of the same sin that got Lucifer kicked out of heaven permanently. We don't want to be there. We don't want pride and that level of insecurity, like God is holding out on us, and I should have more than I had. Like we don't want that to start to breed competition or comparison between us and God, right? That's not what I'm getting at. You are not God. I am not God. Humans are not God. I don't care. The best human you've ever met, the most talented, the most amazing, the most admirable. They're still not God. Not at all. Not even close. Um, but they do have the spirit of God on the inside of them. Now, some people water it down, some people cover it up, some people is so overshadowed by trauma in their own lives that they haven't activated it and they're not operating in the spirit, the fruit of the spirit of God, right? Um, some people just don't know him, they don't have a relationship with him. So that part is lying dormant. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, that means it's not in there. Because that same God that breathed life into the pile of dust in the Garden of Eden, he breathed life into the embryo that became them. They grew up and they made choices and they were in environments and they were influenced by things around them and in society, and it caused them to shape an identity that is different than what God originally had in mind, but that does not mean that his spirit is not still alive on the inside of him. So my point that I am getting at is if you actually accept the truth that God made you in his image and likeness, then you have tapped into a well of limitless potential to be great, to be good, to be patient, to be kind, to be successful, to be powerful, to be all of what God intended for you to be on this earth. Like you tap into your true identity as an heir, as a son, as a daughter of the king of kings who owns literally everything. Um the Bible talks about how, you know, there's there's so many scriptures I could reference, but he owns a cattle on a thousand hills. Like it's basically saying, like, he is wealthier than the wealthiest because he created the earth. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Everything that exists exists to give him glory, it exists for his pleasure. It is his. It's not ours. We're sent down here to manage it. You know, we get to be the little L Lords over this and steward it. But this stuff ain't ours. The earth is the Lord's, just like we are the Lord's. And so the more that we really tap into who God is and how authoritative the the I don't know the attributes that he possesses and the characteristics of him, his nature and the names that he is called throughout biblical history, the more we tap into who he is, the more we should stop seeing all of our flaws as being these insurmountable objects, you know, these hindrances to us accomplishing purpose in the earth and to us going and doing what God of the universe said we could do. And I personally believe that uh the well, I'll just say like this: my working definition of insecurity, based on all of the years of research that I have done so far, is the thought process, the mental acuity that causes you to disqualify yourself from something God already qualified you for. And it's because your foundation is in the wrong place. Security is built on foundation, right? If you have something that is a strong, sure, sturdy foundation, it's secure. You can build on it, you can put things on it, you can hold things in it, it's secure. The moment that you find out that that foundation is faulty, you don't really want to put no weight on it because it could crash and burn at any moment. It could crash out at any moment, it could collapse at any moment, it could implode at any moment. You're getting where I'm going with this. So if we put our security in things of the world that are not God, um they're liable to rust and rot and be destroyed and implode and crash out and defeat, be defeated, and cause us harm and trauma. And you know, like there's only so far you can trust the things of the world, right? It might feel trustworthy for a moment, but it's not eternal, it's not all powerful. Only God is. He is the only sure foundation, he's the only one that you can build literally anything in his will, and it will stand and it will outlast you because you are finite. So I really want to uh to dig into um another element of this because there's there's uh uh an all-out war against humanity, and there has been from the beginning of time, don't get me wrong, but right now, specifically, there is an all-out war for our mental health. There is a furious war going on in the spirit realm for our mental health. And I want you to hear me. You are a soul, right? You have a spirit, a soul, and a body. In your soul is your mind, will, and emotions. That's how we define it as humans. That's the language that we've come up with to describe and define the soul of a person. That's the core of your being, the foundation of who you are, right? If that soul is not surrendered and submitted to the spirit of God, it will lead you into things of the flesh, of your natural body, things that gratify your flesh, things that, you know, cause you temporary pleasure, but really have an eternal curse attached to them. Um, and not all things that gratify your flesh are just evil, you know what I'm saying? Like I like an occasional donut or pint of ice cream, right? Those things aren't evil, but gluttony is greed, is not taking care of my temple as the Holy Spirit is, you know, the temple of the Holy Spirit is sin. So if I indulge in this in a moment when I know I should not, that is sin. That is my flesh leading me astray. At the moment that I cannot have my soul, my mind, my will, and my emotions be submitted to the mind of God, the will of God, and the love of God, then it causes me to be swayed in a direction that I don't need to go. Um, and that throws off the core of my very being. So my identity is compromised. I start to think of myself as something that I am not. So let me make this real practical. Um, I am extremely sensitive to anyone who has been a victim of abuse at any point in your life, abuse of any kind, whether it's physical, verbal, mental, spiritual, emotional, it doesn't matter. Sexual abuse, like all of these abuses, and even the self-inflicted ones, like addiction. A lot of people don't want to talk about that. Um talk about watching things read between the lines that you have no business watching, but you're addicted to watching them. You're addicted, like addiction, just as a quick aside, addiction means um something that is a stronger voice in your life than the voice of God. That's that's the the generalized definition of it. The even the root word in that D C D-I-C-T, dict is like dictate, diction. It's talking about voicing and speaking. So, what is speaking louder into your ears than the voice of God? And the reason why I equate it to, you know, or compare it to the voice of God is because if something is speaking in your ears and telling you you need peace, so you need to smoke this, you need peace, so you need to drink this, you need to, you know, lay down the worries of your day, so you need to indulge in this. You don't have this to apply this gratification to your life and to bring you this type of pleasure, so you need this instead. It's telling you things that you need, quote unquote, that you don't actually need. Let's just be real. Nobody needs tequila. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs weed. Like you don't need it. But for some reason, the voice in your head is telling you you need this in order to be something else. Um, and I don't look down on anybody who, you know, I've struggled with my own forms of addiction, I've struggled with abuse. Okay, but the bottom line is abuse, abuse. The core of that, the actual root of that behavior or um whether it's behavior that you became susceptible to because another traumatized person traumatized you, hurt people, hurt people, right? If you have been a victim of abuse, whether it's self-inflicted or by another human being, you have been abnormally used. That means that whatever God's original intent was for your body, your mind, your spirit, your soul has been abnormally used and therefore is reaping the consequences of that abnormal use. There's consequences for every action. If I eat enough ice cream, it will undo everything that I'm trying so desperately to do in the gym.

unknown 20:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

If I don't drink enough water, there's consequences that will happen in my body, my bloodstream, my muscle tissue, like my body will literally start to deteriorate itself because it needs water, right? These are legitimate needs. And if you satisfy a legitimate need in an illegitimate way, it is abuse. It's abuse. If your need for connection with another human being and your need to feel accepted and fulfilled and even sexually pleased, is being met in an illegitimate way outside of the covenant of marriage, the way that God defined it in his word, you are going to reap the consequences of that illegitimate use. So, what does this have to do with identity? I'm so glad you asked. When we are unclear about who we are and whose we are, we accept abuse as if it is normal, as if it is just a part of our day, as if it is our lot in life, as if it is what we deserve. Now, let me just clarify something else that we've talked about a couple times in previous episodes, but you don't have to deserve love. There is nothing you can do to deserve and to earn the love and the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness of God. There's also nothing that you have to do to earn or deserve it. This is just because of who God is, he gives it off. Because of who he is, his chemical makeup, if you will, like he is love. He can't be anything else but love. He is incapable of hate, right? Now, there are things and behaviors that God hates, right? There is mentalities and philosophies that God hates, he is opposed to. But that's only because they go against love. He doesn't hate people because he created them in his image and likeness, and his love for us is unconditional. So if anything threatens or tries to attempt to compete or compromise the love of God, he supersedes it. His love will find you at the deepest depths of depression, anxiety, addiction, abuse, like his love will search you out. It is relentless. And it's because he knows who you are. He knows that you were designed to be connected to him. He knows that you are designed to be loved by him. You are not designed to be abused. You are not designed to be less than who he created. You're also not designed to look at yourself and think you are less than who he created. So, you know, Ephesians 6 teaches us how to guard ourselves. There's other scriptures as well. Romans 12, 2, uh be transformed by the renewing of your mind. But in Ephesians 6, it talks about the armor of God and that our weapons are not, you know, carnal. They're not physical, they're not fleshly. We're not just fighting the devil in like real human form with boxing gloves and a ring, right? But we are mentally, emotionally, and with our will, we are constantly in a battle. Our spirit versus our flesh is constantly in a battle. And our soul is the one who gets to decide who wins, right? So the soul, the core of your being gets to decide is the spirit man gonna win? The breath of God that exists on the inside of you, his DNA, his chemical makeup, his identity, his stamp, your sonship, your daughtership, if you will, like you are an heir to his throne. Is that side gonna win? Or is it gonna be the flesh? Is it gonna be the world? Is it gonna be culture? Is it gonna be comparison? Is it gonna be insecurity? Which one is going to win? And if you put on the helmet of salvation that's listed in that armor, amongst all the other things, the breastplate of righteousness protects your heart, that helmet of salvation protects your mind. Salvation is the thing that causes us to accept the identity. That's why, even in our Christian vernacular, we call it being born again. Like that's what the word says. It's like born again. You know how crazy it is to think like it would be born again, right? How can I go back into my mother's womb and be born? Well, you'd be surprised. Somebody in the Bible actually asked that question, and God gave a really great answer. He was saying you're going to be born of the spirit. It's not a natural birth, right? So you're just allowing your soul to truly believe and accept and receive the truth that Christ breathed into you and created you in the first place. So now you are letting go and shedding all of the ideologies that are associated with a worldly identity, and you are putting on a new nature. You're becoming a new person, transformed in your mind first by salvation to know who you are in Christ. It's just such a beautiful thing. Like he like just using the example of armor to say, like, yeah, this piece I'm gonna call salvation, the part that protects your head. Because insecurity most of the time is all in your head. Like you, you get in your head about disqualifying yourself for something before you even go for the job interview, you're like, oh, they're probably not gonna hire me anyway. That is insecurity. Before you step into the boardroom to give the presentation, you're thinking, like, oh my God, I'm so nervous. I don't know if they're gonna lie. I don't know. What am I even doing here? The imposter syndrome, that's insecurity, right? If you're thinking you're a terrible parent because, oh my gosh, I haven't had time to cook my kids a three-course meal all week. And have your kids been eating? Are they still alive and playing and calling you every five minutes? They're fine. And they were God's kids before they were yours. Mom, you're doing a great job. Dad, you're doing a phenomenal job. Let me just okay, I don't have any kids in the natural on my own yet. Yet. I will in Jesus' name. I'm believing for that miracle to happen. But I'm telling you right now, until God breathes on an embryo in my womb and I have my own children, I will be, I will be on the outside looking in and applauding everybody who has ever taken on the role of parent. Because it is not for the faint of heart. And there are some people who do great jobs at it, and there's some people who don't do great jobs at it. But there's also a lot, like a vast majority of people who need to give themselves some grace because you're doing the best you can with what you have. Our parents did the best they could with what they had. It's just the truth. Some of them were addicted, some of them were abused or were abusers, some of them didn't know any better, some of them were traumatized people who traumatized people. Some of them were hurt and they hurt others, right? They hurt their kids. But they still did the best they could with what they had. If they didn't have the mental capacity, if they didn't have the soul connection to the spirit of God to make their spirit man stronger than their flesh man and their flesh man one, that's what they had in them. And so until something is worked out of you, with like this is literally like let your salvation be worked out with fear and trembling. Like that's is really that. You got to kill your flesh because your flesh is lying to you. It's trying to tell you that you need things that you don't need. It's trying to tell you to be something that you're not. It's trying to tell you to put on a persona and an image that you were never even designed to carry. You just weren't. So I want to go to this story that's a very familiar story. Um, and it's honestly, it's really wild, this example. Um, because I've I've had the, I feel like I've had the same conversation recently so many times. And uh it's brought me back to this story a lot, just thinking about David and Goliath. So we pretty much, you know, even people who don't study the word of God and aren't Christians probably know the story of David and Goliath, right? So I'll just cut to the chase. David is a little skinny shepherd boy. Goliath is a huge giant. Um, and the end of the story, he goes out there with a slingshot and a few smooth stones, and he hurls a stone at this giant who is waving a big spear that's probably 10 times his weight in his face, right? He hits this giant with the stone, and the giant comes crashing down to the ground and dies. And then he David takes Goliath's sword and he cuts off his head to like, you know, prove it. Like, hey, he's really dead and holds up his head as a trophy. You know, it was kind of a sign of battle back then. It's real gruesome and gory, I know, but go with me. Um, Goliath was really, really intimidating because he was a giant, because he was really, really big. And in our perception, anything that's really, really big is really, really intimidating because we start to feel small. It's not just because the thing is big, it's because we start to feel small. I want you to catch that. You start to see your identity based on what you're looking at around you. So, yeah, the giant is big. Yeah, yeah, okay. But why do you feel small? Were you small before you stepped onto the battlefield in front of the giant? Uh, who have you been comparing yourself to? What giant have you been comparing yourself to? Because I want to tell you something. This giant Goliath was not all he looked to be. Um I'm gonna read this thing that I actually found out. It says many scholars and medical professionals believe that the giant Goliath suffered from physical disabilities, specifically acromegaly, a pituitary tumor that causes excessive growth, leading to giantism, quote unquote, severe vision loss like tunnel vision, and slow movement. So not only was this man big with all these physical limitations, he was slow. He was big and slow. And then the Philistine army tried to burden him down with this big, heavy, um, I don't know, this big heavy armor, I guess to just to try to make him look even more intimidating. Um and they gave him this big gaudy shield and a giant spear, and it's all the spear is top heavy. Like if you've ever, I don't know if you've ever held a spear or seen one in a museum or something like that, but they're iron and then usually wood. So like the iron is obviously heavier. So if you have a giant spear on the top of a wood stem, it's top heavy. It's awkward to hold on to. Like, no, I mean he's big, so he's probably strong, but still, like he's awkward, he's off balance. Literally, I had the thought, it's like this stone that David threw with his slingshot probably hit him in the temple or something. Because also, people who have those overly enlarged other body parts, like your heart doesn't just grow, you know, despite what the story of the Grinch tells you, your heart can't grow 10 times in size, right? So, like, if if the heart is still the same and is pumping blood to all these different extremities and it has to pump it farther and harder, and like like there's so many different things and so many different glands and and visceral fat around your organs, and like there's different things that are happening internally that you can't see from the outside. So it looks really intimidating, but on the inside, it is slowly dying. These giants, especially back in the day, had a shorter lifespan because of that. So he could have literally hit his temple, cut off his blood flow, and stopped his heart. I like so anyway, what you're looking at as being minuscule, insignificant, trifling, small, whatever other comparative term you can think of to describe yourself or what it is that's in your hand to do for God. If you're looking at it as small, then you're not seeing it through God's eyes. If you're looking at something else in the world as big, then you're not seeing it through God's eyes because God knows what's going on internally with that big thing. He knows that that whole system is about to come crashing down the moment that you are obedient to release what is in your hand. I feel the spirit in the presence and the power of God right now while I'm talking to you. Wow. Jesus. Like there's there's something that is so powerful about not being confident in yourself, but actually placing your confidence in the Most High who created you. Goliath was confident in himself and he was hyped up by a lot of the people around him. But David, David put his confidence in Almighty God. And that was the dividing line. That was the thing that caused him to take on the identity of a warrior, of not just a warrior, but a winning warrior, right? And think about it this way, too. If if he had accepted King Saul's armor that they tried to put on him, he would have been just as weighed down and awkward and off balance and everything as Goliath was. They said, No, I can't wear this. This is this is your armor. This is not me. He knew his identity. He's like, I'm not about to try to be something I'm not. I am a shepherd boy. I killed a lion and a bear with this same slingshot. I'm gonna defeat that giant with this same slingshot. He knew what he had in his hand was given to him by God. He knew that his life story, in spite of all, I mean, if you look at the life story of David, literally he went through some of the craziest stuff, but he knew that it was somehow orchestrated and every little piece was woven into the tapestry of his life by the Spirit of God. Even his own mistakes didn't stop him from being a man after God's own heart. So I want to tell you like, if you feel shame because of something that you have done, you are not what you have done. You are not where you have been. You know what you've done right, and you know what you've done wrong. Because you cannot be what you do. You are a human being, not a human doing. And your human being needs to be surrendered to the Almighty God of the universe who created you in his likeness and image. And he has great plans for you to prosper you and not to harm you and to give you a hope and a future. He wants you to slay giants, he wants you to get out here and represent him and reflect his glory in the earth. And you can't do that if you keep looking in the mirror and feeling sorry for yourself and feeling shame. My uh former pastor, Bishop Gary McIntosh, always says, uh, he even has a book all about it. He said, guilt is feeling bad about something that you've done, but shame, shame is feeling bad about who you are. Shame tries to mess with your identity. My friend, do not let shame creep in and steal your God-given identity because it will literally right under your nose snuff out your inheritance from God. You will be living beneath your means on this earth if you live in shame, if you live in a clouded, shrouded mental perception of yourself. You need to see yourself through the eyes of God. So I'm gonna tell you who God is just in case. Just in case you don't know. Um, and then we're gonna wrap up this episode because I know it could go on forever, but I really want it to be targeted and intentional. Um, there's a scripture that says uh it's Romans 9 20. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that created, should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, why have you made me like this? Does the the clay say to the potter, like, what are you doing?

unknown 35:17

Right?

SPEAKER_01 35:18

That's what it's basically saying. Like, does the piece of art hanging on the wall say to the artist who painted it, oh my god, why have you done this? Why did you use this color? Why would you use this shape? Why would you use this palette? Why would No? The art is a reflection of the creator. So we are his masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus, to do the works he called us to do long time ago. We were with him before the foundation of the world. We are his heirs, we are sons and daughters of the Most High, the Heavenly Father, the Creator of the universe who looked down from heaven, saw this earth, and said, breathe life into an embryo that was you because he said this world needs a you. That's powerful. So don't mistake your identity. Don't allow the enemy to lie to you and make you insecure to the point where you start doubting who you are and whose you are. Don't do it. I challenge you to do this exercise because God really stretched me in doing this some years ago and it helped me so, so, so, so much to overcome the insecurities that I was faced with every day. Um, write down 100 things you know about God. It's gonna feel like a lot at first if you're not used to doing that, but it's gonna increase your vocabulary and expand your understanding of who made you in his image. And it's also gonna start to spark things in you to realize who you are. So I'm gonna give you a few things that just help you to, you know, to understand the character of God and who he is. Um, and this is, you know, just helping you out with your list a little bit. So cheat sheet for you. Okay, the character of God, he consistently covers, he carries, he cultivates, he communes with us, he corrects us, he cares for us, he converts the sinner, he creates constantly, he cleanses us from all unrighteousness, he keeps his covenants, he confirms what he said, he commands us to do his will. He wastes nothing, no gift, no talent, no experience, no story, and nobody. Let's sit in that for a moment. He wastes nothing. He is Adonai, the Lord, our master. He's Emmanuel, God with us. He's El Elion, the most highly exalted God. He's El Gabor, the mighty warrior God. He's El Olam, the everlasting God. He's El Roy, the God who sees. That's one of my absolute favorites. He's Jehovah Jirah, the Lord our provider, Jehovah Makudishim. I don't know if I'm saying that. I think I said it right, the Lord who sanctifies. Jehovah Nisi, the Lord our banner, who causes us to win. Jehovah Rapha, the Lord our healer, Jehovah Rohi, the Lord our shepherd, Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts, Jehovah Shalom, the Lord our peace, El Shaddai, Almighty God. He's all powerful. He's Jehovah Shama, the Lord who is present, Jehovah Sikinu, the Lord our righteousness. He is Lord over all. He sees all, he knows all, and he is all powerful. He has seen the future that you are aspiring to go to, and he knows the path to get you there. He has seen the version of you that has fully embraced your identity, ridding your mind of insecurities, and gone full-fledged, full force into purpose, the way that he designed for you to. Like he has seen that version of you. He wants the best for you. He wants you to choose him, he wants you to choose life. He wants you to choose to put on that helmet of salvation and protect your mind, your will, and your emotions. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you. Thank you that you are not a king who just sits high and looks low and is far away from us. We thank you that you are with us, that you are in us, and that we are in you. I thank you, Lord God, that the people who listen and watch this, Lord God, that they would start to understand even more their kingdom identity, who you have created in your image to do good works for your glory, Lord God, in this earth. And I thank you that their impact goes up to another level as they hide themselves in you. Lord, I thank you that their confidence grows as they, as they put their confidence in the Almighty God who created them. And I thank you that as a result of all of this, you will get all of the praise, honor, and glory that you so rightly deserve. You're the only one deserving of worship, the only one deserving of all honor and glory because you are the only Almighty, omniscient, omnipotent God. You are also omnipresent. You're able to be with us wherever we go, and we thank you that you will never leave us and never forsake us. You're holding our hand through whatever it is that we are going through. And we know that we will come out and still be loved by you. We thank you that we are your sons and your daughters, and that you do not abandon your children. You're a good father. Amen.

unknown 40:11

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

I'll see you next time. Know who you are.