Who Are You?

Greetings All,

As you can see, the pace of life exceeds my ability to accomplish the little things of life like making Blog posts. Since I last posted I have been in charge of Field Day Limbo for elementary students, seen two middle school band concerts, presided over the Pillow People performance at the talent show, attended the middle school awards night, shared about being a pastor at career day, been to our District Conference, Seth's Baccalaureate and the chiropractor. When I put the list in writing I get a little overwhelmed and sometimes wonder how it all gets done. The truth of it all is that we have a wondrous and mysterious God who meets our every need and keeps the tapestry of our lives woven together. Often times that means empowering us to keep putting one foot in front of the other; other times it means bringing people in our lives to help us out; at still other times it is a supernatural thing that we just can't understand. The tapestries of our lives will get a little frazzled and worn on the edges, but the seams that God has sewn still hold and we look back from the other side of the Jordan praising God for getting us there yet still wondering just how He got us there.

God has gotten me to today and has confronted me with a pretty profound question, one that I think haunts many, if not most, of us. It is a question that the author Alice Knotts of today's devotional entry in The Upper Room Disciplines raised. The question is the title of this post, "Who are you?" Or to personalize it, "who am I?" It was a question of the wholeness of our identity. She commented how so many times people only view us as parts: what our occupation is, who our parents are, are we married or single, are we rich or poor? The answer to these questions all contribute to the whole of who we are, but there is a larger issue related to defining our identity, but we will come back to that in a moment. First let us expand the discussion a little further.

For us as Christians this question is highlighted by the words of Christ in Luke chapter 9, verse 23,
"And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross daily and follow me.'" (English Standard Version)

Here we are in the midst of trying to define who we are and Jesus comes along and tells us to deny ourselves. If we don't know who we are, how can we deny ourselves? For that matter, just what does it mean to deny ourselves? Does this mean that we are supposed to give up our secular lives and become pastors and devote every waking hour to the Church? Does it mean that we rigorously pursue holiness and define ourselves by all of the things we don't do, that is the things "we deny ourselves?" Dr. Mulholland has a possible conciliatory point.

"How often do we find persons and churches who define the Christian life by abstinence
from certain practices and behaviors. Detachment from these practices and behaviors
becomes the primary focus of their life rather than an ever deepening attachment to God
in love." The Deeper Journey, pg. 65.

Mulholland is writing in the context of trying to identify our true self versus our false self and our false religious self. He is writing to get at the deeper root of the question, "who am I?" For many of us we define ourselves by the physical and situational circumstances of our lives. I am a father, a son, a pastor, a friend, a former business executive, a guitar player, a recovered alcoholic and the list goes on. Yes, this is part of us, but it is easy for us to get bogged down in all of these as we try to be better at each one and miss the most important aspect of our identities. For others we define ourselves by what we are not, or by what we do not do: I don't drink, smoke or gamble; I am not a bad person; I don't hang out in bars; I have never been to prison, etc. These are also a part of us, but they too can distract as we get focused on making sure we don't do certain things or do do others to aid our reputations of not doing certain things. We don't got to bars, we do go to church; we don't read trashy romance, we do read the Bible; we don't say cuss words, we do quote King James scripture. It is no wonder we really struggle with the question. We are so busy doing and not doing that we forget to simply "BE!"

"Being" is the very root of the question, "who am I?" To use a slang version of the question, "who do you be?" While all of the above statements about ourselves are a minuscule portion of the answer, the root and bulk of the truth is that first and foremost "we are children of God." We are beings created by God Almighty, the creator of the universe, the redeemer of humanity, the source of all love. We are people who were created to be in relationship with the creator of the universe. That is hard to believe, but it is true. Who are we? We are people that God wants to spend time with; we are people that Jesus would really like and that He would like to hang out with; we are people with a purpose to receive God's love which we are then expected to share with others; we are people that God delights in!

Who are we? We are people who will always be loved and because we are loved by God, we can love others and they can love us. To deny ourselves is really more of turning ourselves to the pursuit of God's love rather than a list of Do's and don'ts. It is making the trajectory of our lives pointed towards the cross of Christ, living our lives in a way that makes it easy for others to believe in Jesus. Can I let you in on a secret? Not drinking a beer or saying a cuss word or being in church every Sunday generally does help someone else believe in Christ; but loving someone who the world deems unlovable, loving someone who hates us, loving someone who feels like nobody loves them points to the glory of God and His love in our lives and that kind of exposure to love can move anyone and help them to believe in Jesus and even more so to believe that God loves them. Part of everyone's internal makeup is a desire to be loved; but the root of our identity is the truth that we are loved!

God is love. We are created in God's image. Who are we? We are love!

In Christ's love,
Faron