Stop Trying—Receive Your Real IdentitySample

Day 1—Loss of Self

Have you ever experienced the kind of loss in life that triggers a deeper sense of loss—or the feeling of “lostness?” Difficult circumstances and hard seasons can leave us feeling as though we are free-falling, and cause us to ask deep, soul questions—Who am I? Who am I now? Who am I really? Who am I supposed to be?

We all face these questions sooner or later, usually when our self-constructed life-script suddenly shifts or fails us. This deep loss is a loss of self, or a loss of identity. If you are facing this, you are not alone. Jesus not only understands this loss of self, but He taught about it. He predicted that it would happen, first to Him, and then to us as well. 

In today’s scripture reading, He predicted His loss, and taught His followers about their eventual loss. He taught that He would suffer and die (loss) but would rise again. They couldn’t bear this thought, and Peter even rebuked Him for saying it. But it was inevitable—Jesus had to lose His life for us. This is why He came.

Yet, consider that His loss preceded resurrection. In the depth of what seemed like the greatest defeat in human history, God was working the greatest victory of all time. 

Such is deep loss in our lives, when we walk through it with Jesus. With Him, losing always leads to finding. But losing is painful. Jesus taught us that to find our true life (psuche—our inner sense of self) we must first be willing to lose the weaker things that have come to define us. 

In the story God is writing in your life, identity loss only precedes the discovery of a truer and more durable identity in Him. Take hope. Your painful loss is certainly not final. Jesus knows who you really are, and soon enough, you will too!