Where do you find your Identity?

CRU (until 2011 known as Campus Crusade for Christ) is an interdenominational Christian parachurch organization, founded in 1951 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) by Bill and Vonette Bright. The following questions and answers from their article, “Your Identity in Christ: How God Sees You” by Brittany Yesudasan, can be found at their website: www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/core-christian-beliefs/identity-in-christ.html.

Where Do You Find Your Identity?

While our world encourages you to look within yourself for your identity, your natural tendency is to search for your identity in external things.

One of the first places that you can be tempted to look to is your career. Spending your time and energy pursuing your career can cause you to feel like it is a defining characteristic of who you are. After all, a job that you are dedicated to is likely to take up most of your time and attention.

Jobs and careers are closely connected to other places where you can search for your identity, such as financial success and status. But it doesn’t stop there. People also ask their relationship statuses, appearance, grades and reputation to provide a sense of identity.

Any or all of these may feel like solid foundations, but none of them are permanent. Any of them could change without warning. If you base your identity on things like success, wealth, power, physical appearance and so on, you are setting yourself up for great disappointment. A sudden job loss could leave you questioning your choices in life. One piece of gossip aimed your way could destroy your reputation, even if it is untrue. Your appearance will change as you get older.

God, however, is unchanging. He is reliable. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. If you find your identity in Him, you will never ultimately be let down because He has proven time and time again to be trustworthy.

It is important, as you define your identity, that God not be just an aspect of who you are, like “I am a Christian,” or ”I am religious,” or “I am spiritual”. Understanding your identity in God starts with understanding who He is, what He says about Himself, and what He says about you. Your identity can be defined by who God is making you to be in His image….

Seeing Yourself as God Sees You Matters

If you put your faith in Jesus, you have a new identity in Him. The more you get to know Jesus through His word and time in prayer, the more you will understand your identity in Him.

The more you get to know Jesus, the more you will be able to identify areas of your life that you are not living in this identity by the power of the Holy Spirit.

If you believed that you were all that God says you are in Christ, how would that change the way you lived, the way you interact with others, or the way that you relate to the Lord?

As you find your identity in Christ, you will grow to look more like Him and less like the world. You will grow in intimacy with Him and with other believers in Jesus.

This Sunday, July 13, we will begin a new teaching series, “Life’s Big Questions!” Our first question: “Who am I?” What is your identity and where do you find it? Please invite someone to join you in the building or online for the Live broadcast on either Facebook (Honolulu AG) or our YouTube channel (Honolulu Assembly of God). We Livestream every Sunday to both locations and would love to have you join us.

---

Coming Up: Men, the 2025 Hawaii AG District “Men’s Arise Summit” will take place July 25-27 at First Assembly (Red Hill). Cost is $20 now or $30 at the door. Speakers are Rick Allen, national AG Men’s Director, and Josh Wellborn, national AG Young Adults Director. Interested in attending? Please let me know. We had a great time last year with men from all across the island worshipping the Lord and being challenged to rise up in faith.

Aloha ke Akua!