Bible Reading: Psalm 8:1-9
You made us only a little lower than God, and you crowned us with glory and honor. Psalm 8:5
WHAT MAKES YOU who you are? The way you look? Your performance at school? Your hobbies, sports, and after-school busyness? Your spiritual gifts?
You’re way more than any of that. Who you are is also more than your race, family pedigree, or skill at computer games. Those are important pieces of your identity. But they’re just the outer layers.
People say, “Clothes make the person,” but you no doubt know better than that. Clothes might enhance you or disguise you or promote you, but they don’t make you. There’s more to your identity than how you decorate your body or shockingly accessorize your ears, nose, or belly button.
And then there are all those diet and fitness infomercials promising to make you into a total man or woman: you’ll shed pounds, tone up flab, and watch your life change. But does a transformed body affect your true identity? Of course not. You might like your new looks. But your true identity has slim-to-none to do with whether you’re buff-or bulge in a few places.
So if these outer layers are just layers over your true identity, who are you underneath it all? That’s something you want to figure out, because your core identity-especially how you see yourself-plays a huge role in how you carry yourself in daily life, how happy you are, how you treat other people, and how you respond to God. It’s vital that you know who you are apart from what you look like and what you do.
Maybe you’ve never pondered the question “Who am I?” Maybe you’ve worked so hard on your outer layers that you’ve missed the big truth that you’re a person of great value and worth, made in the image of the Creator and crowned with glory and honor (see Psalm 8:5). One girl said this about her friend: “She’s one of the prettiest girls in the world, but she thinks she’s incredibly ugly. She feels grotesque. That’s why she can’t trust anyone who says they love her. It’s as if she’s saying to God, ‘God, if you love me, you must be a real jerk.’ “This girl’s thinking is flawed because she fails to realize that a loving God holds the key to her identity. Only he knows her real worth.
Truth is, when you’re a Christian your innermost identity is this: You’re a child of the King. And when you get close to the King, you begin to see yourself as the princess or prince you are.
REFLECT: God wants you not only to understand who you are but also to enjoy being that person. What gets in the way of seeing yourself first as God’s child?
PRAY: Ask God to teach you a biblical view of yourself.
