Anchor Lines

Where do I derive my identity from? From my nationality? From my religion? From my family? From what I do or study or am interested in? From my friends? From where I live? Yes and more. All of these identifiers interact with each other and work together to create who I am. But when I am challenged to give my identity back to God – then who am I? When I abandon myself to him and his will for me, when I give up my own will and bring myself into alignment with God’s, what is my identity? I cannot hold onto all my identifiers when I give my identity to one of them. The others must take second place. I am freed from the tug-of-war with the others and am released to identify with only one. But the coolest thing is this: he gives me back a new identity in him and once I put that as the only identity that matters, I know my place within the others.

I think the last four hours of writing and deleting nonsense can be boiled down to this:

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that You will make all things right, if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next.” -Reinhold Niebuhr

Four hours, and I didn’t even write it myself. This is what I have reduced all of my thoughts this week to. All the clutter, all the ideas, all the philosophies that I am exposed to, the push-and-pull of living in a different world, just to let it go and say, “I trust you, I surrender to you, I let go of all the other things that I derive my identity from and I cling only to you.” Not “do things the way that make sense to me – fulfill your promises as I have understood them” but, “your will be done.” Just that – your will be done.  In this whirl-wind of ideas and philosophies and confusion, you are my anchor-line. You are what I come back to. You are Truth. You are the Way. You are Life.

Romans 8:37-39. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is where my identity rests.