Celebrating My True Identity

Introduction

1. Today is the first Sunday in March. The title of our message is: I’ll Always Celebrate My True Identity. Today is March 3rd, a day we celebrate the US National Anthem: “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Some people have an incorrect assumption concerning the National Anthem Day, believing that the National Anthem Day is September 14, simply because Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on September 14, 1814.

I. But the truth is that “on March 3, 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional resolution officially making ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ the national anthem of the United States of America.” So, happy National Anthem Day to all Americans!

2. As we continue in this celebration, the question that automatically comes forth is, what does the National Anthem represent? What does it mean?

I. To cut a long story short, the United States’ National Anthem and the Flag are symbols representing a people. National Anthem and the Flag are symbols of our identity. They remind us who we are, and they tell the rest of the world who we are. They’re symbols showing what we stand for and what we fight against. They’re symbols reminding us of our stories and history. At a time that we can naturally forget who we are, these symbols remind us of our true identity. The fact is that when we forget who we are, then, we beginning to lose the essential parts of our life that connect with and to reality.

II. Knowing and remembering who we are is very essential to our well-being. For us to connect with our true self, to connect with our God and others: family, friends, colleagues, government, our pets, and to strangers – our identity plays a major part. When we are unable to remind ourselves of our true identity, then we become like a fish out of water, like a caged bird, and like a toothless/dead lion.

III. You’ll agree with me that our lives as humans are often filled with a mixture of joy and sadness. Sometimes our lives are very interesting/exciting – and at other times our lives are full of pains and disconnections. It is at these periods of our loneliness and weaknesses that many of us find extremely challenging to focus on our true identity, especially when the heat and pressure of the fire of our sufferings are intense and unbearable. It is often at this breaking point that we cannot but ask that famous question: why me? But when everything works the way want, we don’t ask: why me?

IV. For me, whether life throws plenty cash at me and having many great success, or (when life gives me) pain and perplexing confusion, the most important question that I need to ask myself is not why me, but who am I?

V. I become depressed, lonely, and my sense of purpose in life becomes diminished mainly when I begin asking myself: “why me?”

Instead of asking: “why me” when I’m in the “Valley of Shadow of Death,” or when I’m feeling disconnected from the people I love to be with or from God – that is, when I’m feeling abandoned or having a terrified feeling of God is angry with me; instead of asking myself “why me,” I’ll rather turn to asking myself “who am I (in face of these adversities)?” That is, who we are is important to our lives at all times.

Transitional Statement

Within the next few minutes, let us see just two reasons why we should constantly celebrate our true identity.

1. Shame, guilt, meaninglessness, and disconnection will dominate our lives when we fail to celebrate our true identity.

2. We become powerful, meaningful, connected, and resourceful to ourselves and others when we always celebrate our true identity.

Before we do look at these two reasons why we should constantly celebrate our true identity, let me say a few things about two words: celebrate (verb) and identity (noun).

1. Identity is the fact of being who you are. Your identity are the characteristics showing yourself – the who you are, to your family, friends, and community. Our identity is how other people see us. Our names, selfhood, personality, character, originality, uniqueness, body, history, relations, commitments, actions, boundaries, ongoing process of change, and our future are all concepts about the reality of who we are.

2. To celebrate is to acknowledge the significant/value of something or someone (be it an event, or a person, or a happy day). So, today’s message is inviting you and me to celebrate our true identity – that is, to honor/praise/mark our true self? Put it differently, how do we keep our true healthy selves in minds especially in the here and now?

Now let’s look at the two reasons why we should always celebrate our true identity.

Main Body

A. The first reason why we should celebrate our true identity is because shame, guilt, meaninglessness, disconnection, and hopelessness will dominate our lives when we don’t celebrate our true identity.

1. It is natural for you and me to create a new reality for ourselves – of who we are, based on our current clinical, relational, and performance situation. That is, it is natural for me to believe that I'm a failure mainly because of my story and the events in my life, I now often times develop negative emotions of sadness, sorrow, fear, anger, jealousy, disgust, pain, confusion, shame, and emptiness - it is natural for me to believe that I'm a failure. It is natural for you to think that you're a failure just because your relationships with the people you desire to be with have gone wrong/sour/faulty/inappropriate/judgmental, it is natural for you to assume you're a failure. It is natural for us to believe that we a failure because we're unable or no longer can do the things we enjoy doing - the things that we've studied hard and practiced enough but now, we cannot do them anymore. So, it is natural to lose our identity because of life's tough situations that we're in, at this time.

2. When the feeling of failure looms/pervades over our lives, then we begin to form negative realities of ourselves and others around us. This feeling of failure often times make us believe that we're useless to true ourselves (and our life’s purpose and meaning), useless to God, other people, and rest of creation. That is the feeling of disconnection. Disconnection produces in us a sense of ineffective, fruitless, hopeless, broken, disfunction, incompetent, and immature. The sense of failure is a feeling of detachment. As a result, we begin to dislike ourselves. We become judgmental. For me, I feel a sense of betrayal from myself and others when I don't remind myself of my true identity.

3. What then is our true identity? (Now we move to the second reason why we should celebrate our true identity. We’re created by God in His Image to Reflect Him) Let me read to you. “26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

4. Here in Genesis, God does not call us a failure. For God, our Creator, we're the crown of His handiwork.

4.1. We’re the pinnacle of God’s creative act. We’re created on the sixth day – a day before God rested from the creation of heaven and earth. God created all the essence of life, all we needed for our existence and survival – before creating us.

4.2. Of all creatures, we’re the ones having much weight on God’s mind. says, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” That is, there was a “divine deliberation” that precedes our creation. We're always on God's mind. asks an important question that tells us that God values us. The Bible says, “what is man [humankind] that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”

4.3. “Unlike the animals, who are said to have come from the land, [you and I are] referred to only as a direct creation of [the awesome] God.”[1]

5. We’re the only creature created in the image of God. What does the image of God mean? That is, God created you and me in His image to reflect Him throughout creation. You and I are designed to reflect God who is truthful even when all the people around tell lies as if they’re drinking water. We’re created to reflect God’s love anywhere we find ourselves even where/when we feel the energy of hatred. We’re designed to reflect the God who is creative with our words and actions. That is, our words and actions should build up and tear down God’s creation. That is why God created you in His image. That is, your look and my appearance are God’s – we got them from God. Our creation is borne in and from our Creator's mind. That is why you are unique - and I'm unique. That is why you're special - and same here. That is why you're beautiful, and I am because God made us all beautifully.

Conclusion

As we leave from here (this chapel), let us continue to remind ourselves that we’re created by the awesome God in His image to reflect Him daily and throughout our entire lives.

Even when I’m feeling sadness, disconnection, guilt, shame, and meaninglessness, I’ll make it my duty to remind myself that I’m created by the awesome God to reflect His love, kindness, beautiful, and creativity daily and throughout my entire life. Will you also make this your duty?

[1] K. A. Mathews, , vol. 1A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 160.