George Bernard Shaw

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

Dr. Timothy Keller

“Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially ‘deify.’ We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious.”

How would you describe your identity?

Why is our identity so important? 

In what places or ways do people tend to look for their identity? 

In what ways can those places be helpful? Not helpful? 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love

“One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man’s earthly pilgrimage.”

John 1:12

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

John 15:16

 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.“

Galatians 2:20

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

What does the Gospel say about your identity?

If that is true, how might that affect the way you see yourself? The way you see others? 

What’s the difference between finding your identity in Christ compared to finding it anywhere else?

How might a community of people living like that impact our world? Our nation? The Church?