Do Not WorrySample

Identity

What happens in your life does not determine your spirit. How you perceive yourself and the abilities you have are important. When the nation of Israel lived in Egypt, they were a strong group of people who knew the true God, but they were slaves. They were not physically powerful, but they had the true God in their lives. The problem was that they had no identity. They did not know what they possessed. 

When you do not know what you have, even if you have natural skills and gifts, you will continue to act as if you did not have it. The Israelites suffered great affliction in the nation of Egypt. They could not break out of the situation; they saw it as too big and saw themselves as incapable. Anyone could have enslaved them because they were slaves in their minds. They had an attitude of defeat. Affliction had oppressed them and taken away their identity. This causes a person’s performance to decrease, which affects their ability to manifest the gifts they have been given.

In contrast, when your attitude is not determined by your problems, but by the identity that you have as a child of God, then what happens around you does not control you. 

David was smaller, weaker, and less experienced than Saul’s soldiers. They had military training and weapons. But David had a different identity than they did. He perceived himself differently. David had enormous confidence in God. He lived in the old covenant, which means God was not perceived; it was difficult because people were dead in their spirit. Nevertheless, David had a characteristic in his life, which was his faith. He had believed the stories of the past when a prophet had told him that he would be king of Israel. He believed it. That produced in David an identity of destiny, of knowing he had a future, and knowing his relationship to God. Although he had less experience than the other soldiers, he was the only Israelite who believed that they could win; therefore, only he could have defeated the giant. 

David saw himself as an overcomer. The reality is that his conception was based on truth. The others’ perception was based on a lie. Their problem was not physical, but mental and spiritual: they perceived themselves with an incorrect identity.