Who Do You Say You Are?

One of the quiet disappointments many of us carry is the gap between who we are right now and who we know we ought to be. You do not need a pastor or a prophet to point it out. You feel it most sharply in your spiritual life, where you sense you should be further along than you are. You feel it as a parent, as a husband, as a wife. And here is where it gets dangerous: the situation you find yourself in slowly begins to define you. You become, in your own eyes, "the woman with the issue of blood" or "blind Bartimaeus" or "the one who always struggles." Your present circumstance wraps itself so tightly around your sense of self that it begins to shape your destiny. So let this be our prayer: Lord, may my present shortcomings and failures never become the reality that fuses with my identity and shapes my future.

Your Reality Is Not Your Identity

There is a real difference between who you actually are and who you, or other people, say you are based on what can be observed of your present situation. To treat the two as the same thing is to confuse your circumstance with your identity. And no matter how good or how bad your present reality looks, hear this: you are more than your present reality.

Watch how Jesus handles this in Matthew 16. He asks, "Who do people say that I am?" and the answers come back: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Understand that, judged purely by his present situation, those were reasonable guesses. Jesus roamed the wilderness like John. He preached the very same message, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Like Elijah he raised the dead, multiplied food, and could call down fire. Like Jeremiah he wept over Jerusalem and confronted its rulers with fire in his bones. Every one of those comparisons was flattering and, on the surface, fair. And every one of them was wrong, because each confused his present situation with his true identity.

As great as Jeremiah was, Jesus was far more than Jeremiah, and more than Elijah, and more than John. But Jesus himself was never confused. He knew he was the Son of God. He knew he was the Messiah. Before he ever went to the cross, he stood up in Nazareth, opened Isaiah 61, and announced, in effect, today, this is who I am. He found himself in the Scriptures. People might call him Elijah or Jeremiah or just the carpenter's son, but he was not moved by their labels. And that is the key to closing the gap between who you are now and who you ought to be: you must stop confusing your present situation with your identity.

But whom say ye that I am?

Matthew 16:15

So the question comes to you. Who do you say that you are? Is it what you see of yourself today, your present reality, or is it who you really are? What do you say your marriage is, what it appears to be today, or what it really is? What do you say your finances are? Being without a job today does not make you unemployable; that is confusing reality with identity. Not having enough this month to cover the rent does not make you poor. All poor people lack money, but not everyone who lacks money is poor. Learn to tell the difference.

Let God Introduce You to You

If you want to close that gap, you have to let God introduce you to yourself. Here is news that may sting: on your own, you do not fully know who you really are. It takes God to tell you. In Matthew 16, only one disciple answered rightly, and Jesus said to him, "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." The best revelation a person can receive is a revelation of how heaven sees them. Because who heaven says you are is who you actually are, not what you think, not what people think, but what God thinks.

One of the biggest problems we face is simply mistaken identity. Picture it this way. When you came into this world, God handed you a passport, complete with everything you needed to succeed here. But an enemy slipped in and switched it. He handed you a forged passport that read "sinner" where God had written "saint," a document listing your inadequacies and insisting, this is who you are. And so you go through life believing you are defined by your failures, never realizing you are a son or daughter of the Most High God. The good news today is that your original passport has been found.

Look through the Bible and you will notice a pattern. Everyone God ever moved from failure to success, from defeat to victory, it always started the same way, with God introducing them to themselves.

• Abram became Abraham; the introduction was so profound his very name had to change.
• Joseph, hated by his brothers, was named by Pharaoh Zaphnath-Paaneah, the revealer of secrets who would save the world.
• Moses, a fugitive shepherd, prayed for God to send a deliverer, and God answered, 'You are the deliverer.'
• Simon, whose name meant a reed shaken by wind and waves, was told by Jesus, 'You are Peter, a rock,' and, 'when you are strengthened, strengthen your brethren.'
• Saul the persecutor met Jesus on the Damascus road, was shown his true self, and became Paul, the greatest apostle of the faith he once tried to destroy.

The clearest example may be Gideon in Judges 6. When the angel greets him as a mighty man of valor, Gideon does what most of us do: he answers by reciting his present situation. In effect, "No, Lord, I cannot be who you say I am. Look at my circumstances. I do not have this, I have failed at that." And how does God respond? He simply ignores it and repeats the commission. What do you do with a forged passport? You throw it away. The worst thing you know about yourself, and the worst thing others know about you, is utterly irrelevant in heaven. Once God has introduced you to you, nothing in your present reality can change how He sees you.

So consider that some of us are praying, "Lord, send revival," and heaven is answering, "You are the revival you have been praying for." Some are praying, "Bless me financially," and God replies, "You are the financial blessing others are praying for." You are asking for bread, and He says you are a bakery. You are asking for a job, and He says you are the one who gives people jobs. So open your mouth and pray it: Lord, today, introduce me to myself.

Practice Your Identity Until It Becomes Your Destiny

Revelation is not the finish line. Once God shows you who you are, you have to own it and practice it until it becomes your destiny. That is exactly what Jesus did. Scripture says that from that moment he lived and walked and talked like someone who was going to lay down his life for the world. He acted out of his identity long before the circumstances caught up.

When God reveals you to you, through Scripture or through a faithful, prophetic word, what do you do with it? You let that word challenge your current reality, rather than letting your circumstances shout down the word. Paul told Timothy to wage a good warfare by the prophecies spoken over him. You do not live from your present reality trying to earn your identity. You live from your identity in order to change your reality. That, in fact, is what it means to walk by faith: to live and act as though it is so, even when it does not yet appear to be so, precisely because it is so. Every time you say of yourself what God has not said, simply because it matches your current situation, you agree with a lie and cut yourself off from the very resources you need to change.

John the Baptist did this. The angel announced who he would be; his father prophesied it over him at his birth; and when the priests interrogated him, he owned it plainly. Then he practiced it, and practiced it, and practiced it, until it became his destiny. John did not do what he did in order to become a voice. He did it because he already was a voice.

Living It Out

This works its way into ordinary decisions. Suppose God shows you that you are a giver He has placed in the world to help fund the gospel. When an opportunity comes and the money is not there, you do not lecture God about your loans and your mortgage. You pray, "Lord, You said I am a giver for Your work. Here is a chance to give and I do not have it in hand. I refuse to let my circumstance define me. Father, put it in my hand to give." Or suppose God shows you that He wants to bring healing and comfort through you. You do not disqualify yourself with your own aches and pains. When someone needs prayer, you step out and pray in faith, holding the outcome with open hands and trusting God with the results rather than presuming upon Him. First you refuse to confuse your situation with your identity; then you let God introduce you to yourself; and finally you own that identity and practice it.

It reaches into how we see one another, too. Some of us need God to introduce our spouse to us, or our children, or a leader in the church. Because we live so close to people, with all their weaknesses on display to us daily, we confuse their present reality with their identity. You may be living with someone heaven calls a mighty person of valor, and never know it, the way Joseph's own brothers stood before him and did not recognize who he had become. Think of David. To Saul he had only been the boy who played music in the court. But the day David felled Goliath, Saul realized he did not truly know the person living in his house, and instead of coming under the anointing on David's life, he let pride and fear rise up. Jonathan chose the opposite road. He did not confuse David's present exile with David's identity. The moment he saw who David truly was, his soul was knit to him, and he spent his days honoring it.

So the question stands, and it is for you. Who do you say that you are? Are you a sinner straining to become a saint, or a saint learning to keep sin from staining who you already are? When someone speaks a word about you, your family, or this church, learn to ask from whose perspective they are speaking, from what they have merely observed, or from what God has revealed. It is time to lay down your present reality, to own and practice your true, God-given identity, and to walk into the destiny He has for you. Pray it today: Lord, teach me to renounce my reality and to practice my identity, until it becomes my destiny.