Your Identity: Lies Vs. Truth

March 23, 2024

There is a spiritual war going on over your identity. Satan cannot create anything. Only God creates. God is the Creator. Satan has never created anything. Satan can only pervert, distort, or destroy. So what he likes to do is take what God has created for good and pervert it, distort it or destroy it. Satan can’t hurt God. He isn’t as powerful as God, but what he likes to do is hurt God’s heart by hurting God’s children. Satan knows that if he can keep you from being you, who God made you to be, if he can hide your true identity, if he can distort your true identity, if he can destroy what God intended for you to be, he has succeeded in hurting God by hurting God’s children. 

How does Satan do this? How does Satan keep you from knowing your true identity? He uses a couple of different tools.

One of the tools he uses is the opinions of other people.

Your parents said things about you. Your peers have said things about you. Enemies and friends have said things about you. Some of them were true; some of them were not true. They were all trying to mold you into their image. People all your life have been trying to get you to be what they want you to be, not what God wants you to be. Satan uses the opinions of others to keep you from the true you – what you were meant to be by God.

Then Satan puts thoughts in your mind.  

You control all your thoughts, but people suggest thoughts to you all the time. Satan suggests thoughts. God also suggests thoughts. When God puts a thought in your mind, we call it inspiration – what a great idea! When God gives you a good idea, that’s an inspiration. When Satan puts a thought in your mind, we call that temptation.

Satan wants to steal your identity so he says things like this: “To be accepted by God, you have to earn it.” He says things like, “You don’t matter. You’re not important. You’re never going to amount to anything. In fact, you’re worthless.” He says that to you all the time. He says things like, “You know that sin you committed? You can never be forgiven for that. You should be ashamed of yourself.” All shame comes from Satan. It doesn’t come from God. Jesus said, “I didn’t come to condemn the world but to save it.”

The number one tool that Satan uses in our life to cause our true identity to be erased is to get us to repeat what he’s told us.  

He’ll plant an idea in our mind, a seed, then he doesn’t have to mention it ever again. We just repeat it over and over and over because we heard it and we believed it: “I’m worthless, I’m no good, I’m never going to amount to anything, I can’t do that, I can’t, I can’t. I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed.” Satan doesn’t have to mess with most of us, because he’s put an idea in our mind and we just keep repeating it to ourselves and now it’s part of our identity. 

If all these tools are being used against me to conceal who God really made me to be – how do I know the real me? How do I know the true me, who God made me to be?

When Satan’s lies about your identity begin to cloud your vision, go to the truth.

1 Peter 2:9-10 “…for you are [he’s talking about your identity] a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. [What do these mean? We’re going to look at them. They’re all very significant] As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. 10“Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.”

Here are four things God says about your TURE identity. 

1. I am completely accepted.

1 Peter 2:9 For you are a chosen people.

2. I am extremely valuable.

1 Corinthians 7:23, “God paid a high price for you, so don’t be enslaved by the world.” 

3. I am eternally loved.

Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”

4. I am totally forgiven.

Romans 8:1 (NIV) “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (NLT) “There is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”