Where Is Your Identity?
-Pastor Don
Last week, I was hit with the sudden reality of how your job has the strong potential to define who you are. Like never before, I realized that unemployment can lead to a major identity crisis.
I had often heard about people give excuses of not wanting to visit church because they were afraid the first question they would be asked was going to be, “So, what do you do?” Until recently, this fear was always foreign to me.
The bad news is that the news is reporting a rampant unemployment rate in our state and country.
The good news is that Jesus teaches his disciples in Luke 10:20 how to protect against this potential identity crisis.
In Luke 10, Jesus sends out a mass deployment of 72 disciples for healing and gospel proclamation. Although many hearers rejected the life saving message of Jesus Christ (10:3), there was still much victory in people being healed spiritually and physically (10:17).
As the 72 return together for their Celebration Service, Jesus puts their joy in proper perspective.
Here their rejoicing,
17 The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”
Hear Jesus correct their center of rejoicing,
20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Jesus warns against rejoicing too much in what God has done through them, for an even greater blessing is their eternal salvation.
Jesus is not demeaning the joy usefulness for His sake (or our job assignments). Instead, He is asserting that our supreme identity is found solely in our relationship with Him, not our relationship with the world and its demands.
So, beware. If your job is your primary source of identity, then you will one day loose all joy once it is taken from you.
On the other hand, if Jesus is your primary source of identity, then, “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39-39)
That is real identity.
C.S. Lewis makes a grand statement on our acceptance by God,
“The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” (HT: Of First Importance)
