It all finally stopped. All the spinning in my head of all the things I had to do, all the people I had to please, all the things I had to get right and prove finally just stopped. First my knees, then my forehead hit the carpet, and everything inside of me went quiet.

I had planned on spilling my guts to God. I had planned on ranting to Him about how stressful my life was and hoping for a little consolation, because clearly this stress was being caused by everyone in my life but me.

But, when I arrived at the chapel, I was speechless. I had no energy to tell God about my woes and somehow I felt silly even trying. I realized (for about the thousandth time) that what I do is not the same as who I am. I put so much unnecessary pressure on myself, because I won’t accept this very thing: only God defines who I am. But, in that moment, with complete peace and certainty, my heart could say, “This is what I was made for. This is the one thing I need to do.”

The One Thing

I believe that I was made to worship God. And so were you.

As beautiful and peaceful as it is when I realize that my identity is not in my sin or in what other people think of me but in Christ, I’ve still struggled to accept it. In the past, the answer didn’t fulfill me or give me peace; it left me disappointed. One of the biggest reasons for this is that I didn’t understand how everyone’s identity could be in Christ. Doesn’t that mean we’re all the same? No, it doesn’t.

Everyone single person is created from the overflow of God’s love, and every single person reveals something about God’s love that only he or she can reveal. Each of us is a unique expression of God.

It took a long time and several explanations for me to understand that, but, once I did, so many things started to fall into place. I could finally accept that my identity truly is in Christ without feeling lost, or like I was just the same as everyone else. I could sit in prayer and just adore my God, without an agenda, knowing that, as long as I can still do this one thing I am made to do, my identity is secure. There’s nothing left to figure out. There’s nothing left to prove. There are no more expectations.

It’s Jesus I seek when I seek to know who I am. It’s only when I stop looking inside myself at the expectations I want to live up to, at the labels other people have given me, at the ways I want other people to see me that I can understand that I was made for something far greater. I was made for God. I cannot know God but not know myself. I cannot know myself but not know God.

When I realize that, I have the peace of knowing that my heart says something about God that you cannot say, that no one else can say, and, in time, God will reveal what that is.

Re-realizing Who We Are

Believing that God alone can reveal myself to me is simple, yet complicated. My identity is in Christ and nowhere else. Good. Done. Check it off… except that I keep finding pieces of my identity in places I didn’t intend to put it and I think the same is true for a lot of us.

Finding our identity in Christ is largely about letting God show us all the other places we have put our identity throughout our lives and allowing Him to draw us back to Him. That means that sometimes I need to fail. Sometimes I need to give all my energy to doing His work and still fail, so that God can teach me that I am not good because I do good things. I am not His because I do His work. I am His, because He made it so.

There are so many things I’ve let define me from my sins to my accomplishments, from my enemies to my friends. There are constantly more things trying to break in and steal my sense of self. Jesus has saved me from the bad things, but I rarely let Him save me from the good things. I rarely understand that it doesn’t matter if my identity is in something good, like doing God’s work or helping others; if it’s not in Christ, it’s not in the right place.

I’m constantly having to re-realize who I am, but every time I do I get just a little bit closer. I know God a little better. I see myself a little more clearly. I can trust that letting go of everything else and seeking only to know God will bring me to know myself. I can trust that when I gaze upon Him, He is gazing back at me, seeing beyond the here and now, seeing beyond my doubts and mistakes, seeing who I am made to be.

“For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ your life appears in glory, you too will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:3-4)