Identity Crisis

My wife and I have a friend who when she was younger hated the fact she was a girl. She took it so far as to change her name (not legally, just at school), wear a boy's haircut, and dress exclusively in camouflage. Now in the years since she has embraced the role of being a girl. She's married now to a great guy and they have two amazing children. And we look back at that time in her life and laugh, hard, at the way she acted. I'm not sure I can say she was having an identity crisis during that time. I think it had more to do with the fact that she liked football and hunting than anything else. But there are people today, and there have been people for many years, who struggle with knowing who they are. They find themselves for whatever reason, caught in the midst of an identity crisis. It's not so much that they want to be someone else either. Instead I believe that it comes down to one simple truth: the forget who they are. And it's easy to see why that happens to people. With all of the competing voices in our culture telling us who we are and what it is that defines us, it's no wonder that people are confused or forgetful about who they really are. And then there are the circumstances of everyday life that can cause us to forget.

Such was the case for a lady in the Bible named Naomi. She and her family left their home town, looking for safety from a famine that was fast approaching. While she was in this foreign town, her sons married, her husband died, her sons died, one daughter-in-law left her and went home, and the other wouldn't let her take a step without her. This lady lost so much in such a short period of time, and it affected her. When she decided to go back to her home town, the people of the town were calling her name, excited to see her. But almost instantly, as if she had been rehearsing it the entire way back home, she told them not to call her Naomi (pleasant) anymore. Instead, she told them to call her Mara (bitter), because God had dealt bitterly with her. The road home gave her time to think about who she was. And instead of remembering her name, she heard the voice of the enemy telling her it was over, that God didn't care about her anymore, that He had failed her and left her.

And many people we see every day are in this same situation, maybe even you. Maybe you have been affected by life, bought into the lie of the enemy that you are not loved, cherished, important. Maybe you believe that God has failed you, given up on you, or is mad at you. But just as in Naomi's life, God has a plan for you too. In the case of Naomi, there was a redeemer who vowed to marry her daughter-in-law Ruth and restore everything she had known before. Her name was worth something, her identity was restore, all because a redeemer came along. And in your life and mine, a Redeemer came along to restore us to a place of prominence, a place of affection. No matter the storms of life, the difficulties that we face, Jesus, our Redeemer is there ready and willing to tell us that we are loved, that we haven't fallen too far to be rescued, to remind us who we are. Wherever you are today, don't surrender to an identity crisis. Be confident in who you are. God loves you, knows your name, and wants to remind you that you belong to Him, and that's where your true identity comes from.

Have you ever felt this way? What did you do to remind yourself of who you are in Christ?