[Real Life] Abide To AchieveSample

My Identity in Christ

Let me once again make abiding the bull’s-eye, and put two rings around it to illustrate the concept. The first ring around our bull’s-eye is the difference between abiding and achieving. Ring two has to do with the difference between our roles and our identities. Your identity is that you are a son or daughter of God by being a believer in Christ. Then you have your roles: you can be a spouse, a father or a mother, a grandparent, an employer or an employee. If your whole identity is wrapped around your vocation, when you retire you will not know what to do with yourself, because your role has become your identity. 

Everyone calls me Pastor Gregg, and I love it! But there will be a day when I will not be a pastor. My identity is that I am a child of God through my faith in Christ; my role is that I am the pastor of a church. Do you see the difference? If I get to where I think my identity is being the pastor of the church, I am going to miss out on my true identity in Christ. My identity in Jesus keeps the role of the pastor in the right place. Our identity of a child of God makes us a different kind of person as we walk out our role or vocation. We mix up our roles and our identity because we seek to achieve rather than to abide. We lift up our role because we don’t understand our identity. Then, when our vocation comes to an end, like when kids leave the home and make good in life, or someone else comes along and takes the baton in our vocation, we are left without a sense of identity. 

 In an interview with Good Housekeeping magazine, Oprah Winfrey once said something like this: “I discovered that I didn't feel worth anything, certainly not worthy of love unless I was accomplishing something. Suddenly I realized I never felt I could be loved for just being but only for achieving.”

 In an interview with Vanity Fair, Madonna said, “My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that is always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I have become somebody, I still have to prove that I am somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.”

 When we do not understand our identity, we will not understand our role. As children of God, Jesus calls us to abide in Him and then we will bear fruit. 

Aim for the bull’s-eye, then you will achieve.