Who I am

Has anyone ever said to you something like this..., "I made you who you are"? Or, "You are just like so and so"? If so, have you thought about those statements in depth? How do they cause you to feel? Positive, negative?? As I've pondered these questions for many, many months, even years, I had to think about why am I who I am? Is it because someone made me that way, or because someone placed a label on me of their opinion of who I am? Or because God made me this way? Exactly who DID God make me? Who am I really? And who is it that I want to be?

When I think about who I am, I can create a mile long list of things about what makes me, me, and add to that statistics of genetically how I came to be. We are all made up of things we like and some things we don't like, it doesn't matter if they are learned, genetic or just plain old choices. Loving the good things about myself but wanting to change the not so good things, I've been evaluating what I can do to change those things and decided to take a closer look at myself. Sometimes it's difficult to determine which set of glasses I want to view the world of me through? Is my view of myself, others view of me, or the way God truly see's me?

Being born into the sin nature, I have an inborn pattern of behavior that leaves me continually falling short. We all do. I am constantly finding myself falling back into patterns that may have been learned, responding in ways that seem to come so naturally but most times are not of a positive nature, or making choices and realizing that sometimes I don't even know why I do what I do (Romans 7:15). I've decided I can choose to look at the negative, get down on myself and believe that is who I am, or I can dig deeper into God's word and choose to believe His truths about who my identity is in Christ. I can write His word on my heart and ultimately 'learn' to be who God wants me to be. This will take a life time of practice, especially for me.

The truth of the matter is, God says in John 3:16 that He loved me so much that gave His son for me.

That I was bought at a price. 1 Corinthians 6:17

That my freedom cost God everything. 1 Corinthians 6:20
How thankful I am to know that I am loved AND set free in Christ. Free from learned negatives. Free from ALL negatives!

God says, that it is for freedom that Christ has set me free. That I should stand firm, and not let myself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galations 5:1
No more going back to, "You are like so and so". I am free!!!!

God chose me in Christ to be holy and blameless in God’s presence before He even created the world. He chose ME ♥ He chose YOU ♥ Ephesians 1:4

He says that I am His accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that I should live my life. Ephesians 2:10
Wow, I am God's accomplishment! God does not want me to settle for an 'that's just the way I am' attitude. He wants better than that for me. How can I not want to choose to become a person who is honoring to Him? No, I am not perfect. Yes, I will fail over and over again, but I am not the sum total of all of my negatives. I am thankful that God's mercies are new each day and that I do not have to be devoured by my failures. Lamentations 3:22-23

If I am in Christ, I am a new creation: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17

This is who God says I am. I will believe and be confident in His truth =)