Changing Identities©

     Love changes everything.  It changes the way we see and act from the inside out.  Getting there can be the difficult part. The voices of the world don’t help. Everything around us grades our achievements.  It starts early. 

      I always hated report card day in school as not only was my ability to grasp what I was learning graded, so was my conduct.  There were always the little notes “Julie can’t sit still” or “Julie talks too much in class.” It doesn’t take much to feel like you just can’t get it right.  Report cards seemed to be an evaluation of me. I didn’t like seeing the alphabet on the card sent home, especially when it came to my conduct assessments.  

     I moved through life with one place after another demanding I achieve something.   It was easy for voices to become implanted, telling me whether I was up to par. Getting past all of that to allow myself to be loved has been daunting.  I have often wished I could be someone else.  

     II Corinthians 5:17 says “If any man be in Christ He is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come”.  I’ve given a good bit of consideration to that. I mean I am still me, so what is it that’s new anyways?

    Throughout the scriptures there are stories of seriously dysfunctional people whose lives are changed forever.  The gospels are full of them. One word from Jesus does it. “You are forgiven, go and sin no more.” He compels them to leave the life they’ve known and embrace the life they’ve been given.  

   What does it mean to be given a new identity in Christ?  The thought of it baffles me yet I’m convinced life hinges on grasping what it’s all about. 

    Butterflies have always amazed me.  To think that they were once a caterpillar is mind boggling.  A butterfly looks nothing like a caterpillar yet they share the same DNA.

    The old has gone.  All that stuff that evaluated and graded me, begging me to work harder to achieve more, to be accepted is gone.  Whether I can fully see it or not, it’s gone. All my wrong decisions, all that “badness” has been forgiven once and for all.  In fact there is no memory of it. There are no traces of the old life as far as God is concerned. To Him I am complete, pure and fresh as a baby out of the womb, embraced and loved beyond my wildest imaginations.

    To be loved for who I am, apart from anything I have to do or have done is the new beginning I am given.   It makes the words of Jesus in scripture make sense. He wasn’t expecting perfection He was telling us that we are no longer defined by what we do or don’t do.   We are now complete because He is the completion that lives in us.  

     It’s the caterpillar becoming the butterfly.

     I am still me but something is drastically changing as I begin to learn that knowing love is enough.  The pressure to achieve is being left behind. I no longer need to perform to be accepted. I already am.  Take me or leave me I am who I am.

    The Samaritan woman left her old life behind and ran to tell her friends.  They found life for themselves. The leper was healed and restored back into the community.   Where they had been living isn’t where they were anymore. They had met love. It changed everything.  They entered a new way of living.

     That’s my story, in so many ways.  A striver and performer in the religious community brought me to a place where I just couldn’t do it anymore.  I couldn’t pick up my Bible to do my ritual quiet time as I had been so strongly instructed to do. I couldn’t pray a prayer list or filter through the sin list to see if I’d covered them all.  I didn’t want to attend a Bible study to learn more stuff to do. I was so burned out on achievement that I just couldn’t so I didn’t. 

     If believing wasn’t enough then it would all fall apart, because it’s all I had.   It’s then I began to really find what love really looks like. It’s there I found God.

    All that stuff that I did for so long just kept me from what I had always wanted.  Religion is a sin focused life that shrouds with shame. There is always something I could do better.  It’s the old covenant way of living where everything is up to the person.

     God didn’t love me for what I did.  He loved me because it’s what He does.  After all, He created us to love us in ways that are above our wildest imaginations. 

     The Samaritan woman left the life she’d known behind when she met love.  So did I.

     I didn’t take on a new personality.  I accepted being loved and I began to spread my wings.  I no longer have to achieve anything. There are no standards or criteria to meet.  There is no grading system. No one is keeping record of my wrongs. I am complete, just as I am, because I am loved by a very big God.

     The new identity is what God offers in the new covenant that Jesus made.  It’s an end to the laws and regiments the old one demanded.  It’s an invitation to leave it all behind and enter the world of being enough.  

     Becoming a new creation is accepting the new life you’ve been given.  His for yours.

©copyrighted: 2019 Julie H Todd