Identity - wk 5 - Identity Declared

Today we will finish the Identity series. This has been a fun series where we have studied “Identity” through the experiences of Jacob and his family. They all faced varying degrees of an identity crisis at some point in their lives just like we face an identity crisis in our lives today. This world demands us to put our best face forward, even if it is fake. Jacob struggled with his identity his whole life. He is known for being a deceiver. His brother Esau didn’t see the importance of his identity and traded it for some magical fruit, beans. Even through these struggles, God showed up to Jacob in the middle of nowhere and Jacob realized that even when he wasn’t aware of it, God was with him. Later, Jacob’s wives would pour all of their energy into things that were important to them, but eventually they realized that God planned to bless them in ways they never even imagined.

Today we are going to talk about the decision we get to make about our identity. When all of this life happens, who are we going to decide to be? How do your circumstances define who you are? I am calling today’s study “My Name Is (Blank)” because everything we encounter in this life tries to rename us, but in the end YOU are the final checkpoint to becoming something. Who will you become? If you are taking notes here is a way you could phrase it, and this is our key thought for today...

You may not be in control of your circumstances, but you are in control of what you name them.

If you are following along in your bibles, we are in Genesis 35 today. As we close the story on Jacob, life only seems to get more difficult for him. At least a couple of different times his sons put him in tough situations. He will soon have to bury his favored wife and his father. If you find yourself in a difficult situation, Jacob’s response to his situation could be exactly what God want’s you to hear today. If you have ever found yourself in a situation that could dictate your destiny, realizing that you have the naming rights of that situation could make it something brand new.

On a personal level, today’s study may be a difficult one to face. However, I think it’s important for us to take this simple lesson Jacob’s story teaches us and practice it in our complicated lives. Exercise it when we are staring down our impossible situations. But if the situation you face seems like it is out of your control and you are struggling with feelings such as severe depression and don’t know what to do, I would encourage you to find Christ centered professional help. Someone who can help you work through that situation between you, that person, and God.

I am definitely not a psychologist, but what we will be talking about today could fall into a category psychologists call “Emotional Regulation”. Emotional regulation is simply using healthy coping skills to manage and respond to an emotional experience. Many times, we tend to do what is called “Upregulating” or “Downregulating” emotions. With these reactions we will either let something get us worked up, or we will try to hold back our emotions (such as holding back tears to trick our minds into thinking we aren’t sad). This isn’t always a bad thing, but what psychologists will typically suggest is meeting emotions where they are and use healthy coping skills and psych tricks to regulate emotions.

When it comes to something like overeating, the psychologists at Noom recommend 9 positive psych tricks to help regulate emotions. I really don’t want to spend any time on this today, but I want to show you these in order to help us identify the way Jacob managed his bad situation yet didn’t allow it to define him. In terms of healthy psychology, he allows it to be a part of who he is, but not determine who he would become. Here are the 9 psych tricks Noom uses...

Label It

Act Opposite

Take Care

Acknowledge the Positives

Build Positive Experiences

Find Enjoyment

Distract Yourself

Reappraise What’s Happening

Communicate

1: Naming the emotion you are feeling can normalize what you feel and help with peace. 2: Taking the action that is opposite of your natural urge. 3: Proactively taking care of physical needs can help you think and act quickly. 4: Changing focus and learning to look on the bright side is important. 5: Think about what you can do to build a more positive experience while not ignoring the bad. 6: Doing something you enjoy on a regular basis is a great maintenance strategy. 7: When you are at the height of your emotions, a short distraction until you cool off can make a huge difference. 8: Thoughts are easier to change than feelings, but re-framing how you think can change how you feel. 9: If you aren’t talking about your feelings, you are probably suppressing them. Even just talking to yourself is helpful.

Unfortunately, in this final story about Jacob we only get to see the reactions of 3 people. Even so, in many ways their reactions resemble the psych tricks in this list. As we read through this story, my challenge to you is to think about a time when things seemed to be going right for you. Or at least they weren’t going wrong. Maybe that thing you always wanted or always wanted to do was finally within reach. Everything is going great when all of the sudden it is turned upside down. Something you had always hoped for suddenly became something that would never be fulfilled. Today we are going to explore

DECLARING IDENTITY AMID DESPAIR

When JOY becomes PAIN. When SUCCESS becomes LOSS. When COMFORT becomes GREAT DIFFICULTY.

Jacob and his family are heading home and they are expecting good things ahead. Rachel wanted children more than anything. So much so that she thought she would die if she never got pregnant. Now finally she had Joseph and she was pregnant with the second. When she began to give birth there was probably a sense of joy that God was blessing Rachel and Jacob. But suddenly she begins to have great difficulty. Verse 16...

Genesis 35:16 NIV

16 Then they moved on from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty.

Rachel prayed for this son for so long but she had no idea that it would cost her very life. When happiness becomes despair, it is very easy to focus on the bad. To let the circumstance consume our thoughts and emotions. Rachel’s midwife gives us our first thought about how to face these situations and not let them control our identity. She tells Rachel to acknowledge the positive, or...

RECOGNIZE THE GOOD

Genesis 35:17 NIV

17 And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have another son.”

There are times in life when something is being born at the same time that something else is dying. There is something new that God is breathing life into while allowing others to pass. Nobody gets a pass on this one. Nobody experiences only good all the time. In those moments it is important to recognize the good that is being born out of the bad situation. In my own life, some of my greatest strengths were born out of my greatest sorrow. When you are facing a tough situation, it is possible that God wants you to see the positive and look to HIM for true strength, which He wants to cultivate in you.

During this difficult time Jacob chooses, not only to recognize the good, but to take it a step further and let his actions be the opposite of how he would probably react naturally. He chooses to...

DECLARE THE BLESSING

Before Rachel dies she names her son after her pain. She names him Ben-Oni, which means “my son of my sorrow”. But Jacob refuses to see their son as a burden. He chooses to see him as a blessing...

Genesis 35:18 NIV

18 As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni. But his father named him Benjamin.

Rachel named him after her pain, but Jacob said, actually this boy is a blessing. His name is Benjamin. Benjamin means “son of my right hand.” The right hand is the hand of blessing. The father would use his right hand to bless the first born son. Jacob is declaring, “I choose to call him a blessing.” I have a friend that is very good at this. Too good, actually. It’s frustrating. The other day we were going to a customer’s house and on the way I warned him that sometimes this person can be very angry and mean. His response was, “Actually we’re best friends. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

These first two thoughts go hand in hand. Recognize the good, then declare the blessing. Don’t let your circumstances declare who you are. You make the decision. When I was a kid I would blame my brother for making me angry or other kids at school for making me sad and my mom would always tell me the same thing. No matter what you face or how other people treat you, you are the only person in control of your happiness. That always stuck with me. I’m not always very good at living by that principle, but I have always found it to be true. No matter what I have faced in life, I am the only one in control of how I react.

I may not be able to control anything around me, but I can control my response. How do I do that? By seeing the good rather than focusing on everything that isn’t going my way, and then declaring it a blessing.

Life isn’t always that neat though, is it. It isn’t always easy to see the silver lining. Sometimes we already have a label. Some of us have already labeled ourselves. Rachel has already labeled us a burden. That is okay. You shouldn’t beat yourself up over labels you already have. Remember, that was our first psych trick. It can be healthy to know your starting point. Strength can arise from the sorrow. Sometimes you have to start with “Ben-Oni” to get to “Benjamin”, but you can get to “Benjamin” because...

YOU HAVE NAMING RIGHTS

If you are hurting it’s okay to name the sorrow, but the bad situation doesn’t have to define you. You can change the label. You can continue to live in regret and pain by “calling it like it is”, and it will always be what it is. But if you call it what God calls it, it will become something brand new. The situation may not change, but if you give it a new name it won’t define you. Your perspective will change. You can call anything you are looking at right now a blessing. You can call it what it is, or you can call it a blessing. You choose. In chapter 1, Adam didn’t get to create the animals, but he did get to name them.

Genesis 2:19 NIV

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

In the same way, we don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we get to choose what we call it. You have naming rights. Whatever you call it, that becomes it’s name. If life has labeled you in a way that is outside of God’s word, take the label off. You choose to either live by the name that God has given you or the label that someone else has given you. And the only one who can give you your true, authentic and pure name is God.

Think of it in terms of faith. It takes no faith to call something what you think it is, but God fulfills promises through faith. It takes faith to call something by the name that God gives it. Abraham was named the father of all who believe because of his faith in God’s promises...

Romans 4:16–17 NLT

16 So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe. 17 That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.” This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing.

When you feel like you have nothing, and you are in despair like Rachel, God want’s to create new things in your life. You have naming rights. Call it what God calls it and it can become a brand new blessing. Our final thought about declaring identity amid despair comes from the last thing Jacob does after Rachel dies.

YOU CAN MOVE ON

Sometimes it feels like we will never be able to move on, but I promise that with God’s help you can. Jacob spent 20 years of his life working for his wife, Rachel. He worked 7 years just to be able to marry her and scripture says that he loved her so much that it just seemed like a few days. After marrying the wrong person, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he could spend his life with Rachel, so he promised 7 more years. Then he worked 6 more years building wealth for his family so they could move. During this time they probably struggled with the full spectrum of emotions as they tried to have children but Rachel was continually unable to conceive. Finally having one son and now the second will be the end of her life. I can only imagine how heart broken Jacob must have been. But Jacob buries Rachel, sets up a pillar, and then moves on...

Genesis 35:19–21 NIV

19 So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). 20 Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s tomb. 21 Israel moved on again and pitched his tent beyond Migdal Eder.

Jacob moved on with some losses and with a broken heart. He moved on without the one he had given the best years of his life to and for. But he still moved on again. The message to us is to not label our lives on what we’ve lost. Don’t let what you’ve lost keep you from moving to where God want’s you to be. You may have to limp to get there, but you can still move on.

For the rest of our time this morning I want to show you an amazing testimony. It is a testimony about a guy who let labels define him and drag him deeper and deeper into despair until he realized that these labels didn’t have to define him. He recognized the good, the bad situation became a blessing in his life, he renamed the labels, and he moved on to amazing things. Moved on to sharing God’s promises with other people who need to hear them. Let’s watch that video and then we will close in prayer.