Shifting My Identity


By: Alisha 
    One of the first cars I drove after getting my driver’s license had a manual transmission. I was horrible at driving stick. I’d try to reverse slowly and carefully, but would end up jerking back and forth until I gave up and gunned it, once leading to the loss of a tail light and rear view mirror... I would stall multiple times in the middle of intersections at green lights so that the light would have turned red again before I could get moving. It was miserable, I hated driving and my friends didn’t want to ride with me. Finally, my mom gave me a piece of advice that made all the difference in the world. She told me to let the clutch out most of the way before putting the gas on. It all clicked right then. From then on out, I had little trouble getting my car moving in the way it was meant to move.
    I feel like there is a lot of correlation between me learning to drive stick and my life as a Christian. I always believed in God and had placed my trust in Jesus as a child. I knew this meant that my sins were forgiven because of Jesus dying on the cross and paying my debt for my sins, but what I was missing was a sense that he really, really liked me. I knew he had to love me because he had forgiven me, but something wasn’t clicking, I had this sinking feeling that I was a disappointment to God.
    Because of this feeling of failure, I tried turning to other things to help me feel better about myself. Drinking seemed to help for a while, because I could let go of my insecurity and got lots of attention, albeit often the wrong kind of attention. Unfortunately, this ended up causing more and more disappointment in my life. Soon I hated who I had become and so did some of my closest friends. I was at rock bottom.
    So I talked to a friend, and she got me in touch with a Cru staff person. Through a long conversation where I poured out all my disappointments, she explained to me that I wasn’t a disappointment to God.  Not only did Jesus dying mean my sins were forgiven, but it also meant that God views me the same way he views his son–with great delight!  Zephaniah 3:17 says,
“The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.”
    This is such a beautiful picture of how God sees me. Not only do I know that I am going to heaven when I die, but I also know that God exults over me with loud singing!
    This change in perspective made all the difference. No longer was my identity tied to my failures, but because I put my faith in Jesus, my identity was based on the perfect life that Jesus had lived. I slowly started making different decisions. I was liking myself more and more, so I began treating myself with more respect. Now, I am experiencing more freedom than ever. I feel like I have never lived life more fully than I do now as I continue to grow in my faith and reliance on God.  Nothing I do will ever change the way God feels about me.

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