Yesterday's blog was about how to deal with an authority figure who puts you down. Today, I want to touch on the importance of acknowledging your identity--who you really are, and not just how others perceive you--and walking in it.

Identity is a fragile thing. It is impacted every day by our life experience. Encounter enough failure and you may begin to think poorly of yourself. The world is set up to shoot you and your dreams down, to make you mediocre. People actually want to see you fail so they can feel better about themselves by comparison.

Maybe you've felt poorly about yourself for a long time. That's how my teenage years were. I didn't know who I was and people didn't help me much. Most of the time I was depressed.

Going away to college was a wonderful liberation. Maybe that's why I was so crazy during those years - I was celebrating my new-found identity as someone who others accepted.

People are our point of reference as we figure out our identity - so the question becomes, "Whom do I trust to help me understand myself?" One reason so many people struggle with father-wounds is that men in general tend to define identity in terms of tasks and roles. Subconsciously, many of us think, "You are what you do."

The only reliable resource in constructing one's identity is someone who has an objective understanding of all facts. We followers of Jesus believe that God created us and understands us. He sees us not as the mess we are, but transformed thru our faith in Christ. Scripture tells us* we have "received a spirit of sonship," and "we are more than conquerors thru him who loved us."

Jesus can be trusted with our identity when men try to pigeon hole and diminish us. Some of us need to erase the old tapes in our heads by replacing them with the truth of what God says about us.

*Find this in Romans 8