Scripture: Exodus 3:11-15
Journal: Who are you? How do you try to
answer that question? Who or what do you
typically look to in order to obtain your identity? Who does God say you are?
Reflection: Who am I? All of life, it seems, is a continual journey to find
the answer to that question. It is the force that drives us and the
conundrum that plagues us. Ever since the Fall, when we became
disconnected from the only One who can really give us the answer to our deepest
questions of meaning and purpose, we have struggled to come to terms with our
true identity. Who are we? And what makes us worth loving? We
spend our whole lives trying to answer those questions. The problem is
that we seek an answer in places that can never fully provide one. We
look to the world to tell us who we are, rather than looking to our God.
And the truth is that our identity can never be achieved or manufactured or
constructed, it can only be bestowed. And it can only be bestowed by the
One who made us, by the One who dreamt us into being.
But instead of listening to
the Voice of Love, we listen to so many other voices. We listen to the
voices of our world and our culture who tell us that we are what we do,
we are how we look, or we are what we've got. We listen to
the voices of our anxiety and insecurity and fear. Or we listen to the
voices of our pride and our arrogance and our adequacy. All of which lead
us on a wild goose chase, for none of these voices can tell us what we most
deeply long to hear. None of these things can satisfy the deepest
longings of our souls. So we spend our days trying to become somebody,
rather than simply enjoying the fact that (in Christ) we already are somebody.
We spend our lives trying to make a name for ourselves, when God has already
given us a name, one that he has chosen especially for us. We work and we
sweat and we perform. We measure and we compare and we compete. We fret
and we toil and we strain. We read books and take tests and go to
workshops. We listen to speakers and webinars and podcasts. We are
so thirsty to know who we really are that we will believe anyone who seems to
have a compelling answer. We are bound and determined to find an
identity, even if we have to beg, borrow, or steal one. But the truth
remains that only God can tell us who we really are. No person, nor
number, nor acronym can do that. At best they can only describe what we
have become as a result of the pain and heartbreak of living in this broken
world. They can help us identify the fig leaves that have worked for us
thus far as we have attempted to hide our nakedness and our fear and our shame.
For example, contrary to
popular belief, you are not a number. Your enneagram number is not who
you are. It is what you have become. It is just another "coat
against the cold," to borrow a phrase from Frederick Buechner. It is
just another "dragon skin," (to borrow an image from C. S. Lewis)
that must be peeled away and discarded. In the words of the creator of
the enneagram himself (Oscar Ichazo), the nine personality types are merely
"ego fixations and aberrations." They are what we have become
as a result of living in a fallen world. Only God can tell us who we
really are. Only Aslan can cut through all of the layers of the fake and
the false to get down to what is real and true. Don't get me wrong, the
enneagram can be incredibly helpful in "taking off the old self and its
practices" (Col. 3:9), but only Jesus can give you a new (true) self to become.
Moses was an Israelite who
was born and raised in Egypt. We are not told a lot about his
family. We do not know if he ever knew his father, and we do not know
exactly how long he knew his mother. The one thing we do know is that the
daughter of Pharaoh was the one who named him and raised him. In fact,
she named him Moses because he was drawn out of the water. But in
Egyptian, the name Moses simply meant son of. As in, son of
no one, son of someone, son of anyone. You fill in the blank. So
Moses grew up not knowing who he really was. Thus, it was certainly no
mistake that when he came to the burning bush and God told him that he was
sending him to deliver the Israelites, Moses' first question was "Who am
I?" for he really didn't know.
And God answered that question in such an
amazing way. He answered it not by telling Moses who Moses was, he
answered it by telling Moses who God was--I am. He did that
because we can only know who we are if we first know who God is. Who I am
depends solely on the great I Am. Our being is derived from his,
not vice versa. Any attempt to know our own identity apart from God is
fruitless. I can only know who I am in relation to knowing who he
is. So the more I get to know God, there more likely I am to know my
truest and best self, the one made in his image.
Prayer
Closing
Prayer: O Lord, the great I Am, show me who you are, so
that it might help me know who you made me to be. For you made me, you dreamt me into being,
you made me in your image, and you are the only One who can tell me who I truly
am.
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