Your Stolen Identity

If people are really Godlike creatures, it does not take very long to begin to ask the question." What kind of 'God' would create creatures that are so violent, arrogant, and self indulged as what we see in the world?" Couple that with the gnawing fear of failure, insecurities, and general frailties that we all know deep with our "selves". Deep in the places where we perceive the "me" that we rarely reveal to anybody. This place can be a large overwhelming part of what we call our personality, but often it is (or at least it appears to be) a smaller more controlled corner of darkness pressed away somewhere deep in the basement of our memory and experience.

We usually only release the realities of our "selves" to a few close companions and even then usually only in packaged parts and pieces just as a precaution against total exposure.

Total exposure – that's what we fear.

We operate out of a "secret place" that always needs protecting, it is always needing, clawing after, grabbing, planning, strategizing, and executing operations in our lives to get what we think we need and keep it. Approval, acceptance, a measure of our worth, status, food, clothing, safety...

The Heart of the Matter

It is not about climbing and clawing into some exclusive "get me to Heaven when this is all over" club or about measuring out on the good side of a divine judgment "good and evil scale" . The heart of the matter is about Restoring that which was stolen from us - namely our Identity.
Our identity is that which defines us to ourselves and consequently to others.

It is the "me" inside ourselves that we rarely reveal, it is our heart. True Christianity is about bringing us back to the place where we are what God says we are and we do not doubt it or believe anything else in our heart, it is our true identity. Out of the heart flow the issues of life. When our hearts are changed, everything else changes as a result.
Restoration

True Christianity restores us to the place and condition where we operate our lives out of our true identity as God's own covenant people. The Bible has two testaments the Old and the New, but the word "testament" means "Covenant". A covenant is a unique agreement between two individuals or groups where by the two become one. This "one" is a "one" that did not exist before the two parties entered into the covenant. The two covenants that are presented in the Bible do not conflict as may appear to some, but they compliment and reinforce one another. They are sequential, one follows the other, and their sole purpose is to restore what was lost, to bring us all back into a close and intimate union with God himself.

In the Covenant we can hear his voice; we do as He says because we are sure that He only brings our good and our satisfaction. Our true identity is in Him, we are hidden in Him and we no longer have a need to hide things, or horde, covet, or steal to get what we need. In our true identity we operate in strength and confidence because His strength is made perfect in our weakness – this is the power of a covenant.

Even as I write these words, they sound like a goal that is still off in the distance, sometimes even just a wispy day dream. But the Bible tells me that His promises are good, He has authored and He is bound by covenant to finish my Faith, so I find that the only thing lacking is my belief in my true identity. Something else is in its place. And this is where the true work of the Kingdom of God takes place.

Everything else flows from that.
Luke 17:20-21

"The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you." NIV
John 10:7-10

Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. NIV