Saint Luke – physician, author, fearless traveling companion of the apostle Paul – begins his gospel in the following way:
Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples. Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I also have decided to write a careful account for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can be certain of the truth of everything you were taught. Luke 1:1-4
From there, Luke launches into the incredible drama of Jesus’s birth, boyhood, and explosion into His earthly ministry.
The climax of Luke’s early account is the heaven-ripping, dove-descending, water-washing baptism of Jesus when the very voice of Father God booms down from above, “You are MY SON, whom I love; with You I am well pleased.” Luke 3:22
Whoa.
God has been speaking to me recently about my identity. And before you think to yourself, “Gee, that girl is bold, thinking that God would speak to the likes of her, the likes of us, being mere humans and not, therefore, GOD,” let me say that this was not always the case with me. The sad fact is, that for many years – most of my childhood, much of my rash young college years, and in disparate decades throughout my “older” adulthood, I couldn’t be bothered to listen to what God was saying to me.
What a shame! How many mistakes, heartaches, disappointments, and pain could have been averted, had I only unstuffed my stubborn ears and truly sought the voice the One who spoke the cosmos into existence with just His word.
But I’m listening now. And the way God speaks to me is intimate and exciting and personal; any doubt cruelly lingering in my mind as to if I truly hear Him or even what I hear is execrated from my consciousness by His insistent, still – small – holy voice. It comes at all hours of the day and night, in scripture, in the secular, in echoes from blogs and emails and websites, in prayer, in dreams, in worship, in tears, in the advice of friends, in spin class, in song, in the turning of a leaf, the fall of snow, a penny on the ground.
You’d have to work hard not to hear Him.
And apparently our identity has been on His heart lately.
It might be easy to examine how we identify ourselves by our actions and accomplishments. This is the United States of “I can do it myself”; I live in Yankee “pull up your bootstraps” New England, in the state of “live free or die” New Hampshire. And certainly what we do is an integral part of who we are. Looking back, I could call myself many things based on what I have done throughout the course of my life.
Student. College athlete. Appalachian Trail thru-hiker. Runner. Ironman. English teacher. Hockey player. Writer.
We also tend to identify ourselves in relation to the important “others” in our life.
Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. Friend.
Contratrarily, we could even tell ourselves who we are is what we could not do, or with whom we can no longer enjoy sweet companionship.
Non-olympian. Non-Boston qualifier. Unemployed. Empty nester. Ex-wife.
What God has been whispering to me lately, however, is that although what we do and our relationships with others is important to Him – He cares about it ALL – that who we are IN HIM is really the only measure He wants us to use in identifying ourselves.
Luke addresses his gospel to someone he calls “most honorable Theophilus” or, in other versions, “most excellent Theophilus.” Scholars disagree on who this Theophilus was. “Most excellent” denotes rank and honor, so he could have been a high-ranking official in the Roman government. Or he could have been a man of wealth and influence, perhaps even Luke’s benefactor, to whom he was reporting back all the mysteries and miracles, shipwrecks and beatings, he had witnessed and endured in creating an account of Jesus’s life. Or he could have been a Jewish high priest or a Roman lawyer.
But here’s the thing. Whoever Theophilus may or may not have been, in an “only-God” moment this morning when I was pondering my identity, I discovered that his name means friend of God, loved by God.
Whoa.
John was perhaps Jesus’s closest human friend. As He hung on the cross, beaten and bloody, Jesus “saw His mother there, and the disciple whom He loved (John) standing nearby, and said to His mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his house.” John 19:26-27
Talk about identity!
Later, after Jesus has returned to the Father, John writes, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” 1 John 3:1
As an English teacher, I am supposed to discourage the extraneous use of exclamation points, but who can blame John for his grammatical excess? God spoke to him about his identity, and he was – as I am – forever changed.
I am not defined by what I do or not do, or who chooses to be or not to be a part of my life!
I am a child of God, His precious daughter, an heir of the MOST HIGH KING, God’s trusted friend, the bride of Christ, a warrior in His army, a sheep that knows His voice and follows Him, a son and not a slave, His Beloved, a new creature, His ambassador, the dwelling place of His Spirit, not my own but His, a more-than-conqueror, can-do-all-things, race-running child of the light!!
And it is knowing who we are that gives us the ability, the strength, the endurance to walk this hard, beautiful, tragic, joyful thing called life with hope and love and courage.
“You are my daughter, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
No matter how many times I mess up, how many times I act in unforgiveness, how many times I allow myself to step out of love, how many times I allow discontent to rob me of my peace, how many times I doubt or fear or fret, I can be certain of one awesome, miraculous, unchangeable truth: I am His.
It changes everything.
walkwithme413 