Our identity

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through His Spirit who lives in you. Romans 8:11 HCSB http://bible.com/72/rom.8.11.HCSB

And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the forces of Hades will not overpower it. Matthew 16:18 HCSB http://bible.com/72/mat.16.18.HCSB

Our identity, it is always interesting to ask someone who they are. Most of the time they would tell you what they do or who they are married to or who their kids are. But very rarely do we have a very clear image of who they are as a person. And I would argue that most of us don't actually know. We live our life but our life end up defining who we are. 

And I think this is the lie that a lot of us fall into. We think we know who we are and that we create and define our life but in reality it is the circumstances and life that defines who we are. And when life doesn't go the way we think it should, we often question who it is we are. When we loss that job or that someone that was close and precious to us, we loss who we are. We have spent so much of our life being define by what we do, who we know, what we have done that when anyone of those things are taken away we loss us.

As I think on these passages, I notice something interesting. We as Christians belong to God. We have been given the Spirit to dwell within us. In a sense, we are now defined by the Spirit because we are driven by the Spirit from within. When the Spirit is within us, the Spirit will be the driving force of our life and all of its decisions. The circumstances, surrounding and relationships of life doesn't drive our life and who we are anymore, rather the Spirit does now. The Spirit renew us. We are now a new creation. We have been renewed from the inside out. And this is who we are. We are redeemed. We are loved. We belong to Christ. That in a sense is our identity.

And when we find our identity in Christ, we are enabled and empowered to do the work of God. And this work will be able to withstand the assaults of Satan and his minions. Often times, like we have already said, we find our identity in ourselves and in what we do. We often end up doing what we know or what we want or reacting to what is happening but this often times have little to nothing of what God has in mind for us to do. And when trouble comes, our work crumbles. It crumbles because it was never founded upon Christ and the Spirit's power. It was founded upon our own strength, will, identity and desires. And it all crumbles. And with this crumbling, so does our identity.

When our identity is found in Christ, He will give us the Spirit to do the work of God and it will last. This is the test of our life and work and whether we are Spirit-filled.