Accept Your Identity as a Child of God

I feel like you learn a lot about yourself and your faith in God when you go on an adventure such as this. How you deal with difficulties, fears, anxieties and loneliness in the absence of your community and family is revealed. How you view yourself and your trust in God is suddenly out in the open and you must face it. Do you choose to grow in your faith and turn to God with all that you have or do you retreat? I came on this adventure knowing that I would come to times when all I had was God and I knew that despite how hard that may be, it would be an important time of growth and fellowship with our Provider, Protector, Father, Daddy and Maker. A reoccurring theme through all of this that I have been reading about and praying about is how I view myself in God’s eyes. Do I understand my value to God and do I find freedom in the love God has for me?

For the past year I have been reading through an amazing book by Henri J. M. Nouwen called “The Inner Voice of Love – A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom.” It is a compilation of his journal during an extremely difficult time in his life. The journal entries where written by him for him, what he calls “spiritual imperatives.” I typically connect with each entry that I read but the journal entry I read this morning seemed to speak to me more than others. I feel like all of us at sometime in our life struggle with our true identity in God and to read something such as this is a great reminder of who we are and who we were created to be. I hope you find it as encouraging as I did (emphasis is mine).

“Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity or strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world.

You need spiritual guidance; you need people who can keep you anchored in your true identity. The temptation to disconnect from that deep place in you where God dwells and to let yourself be drowned in the praise or blame of the world always remains.

Since that deep place in you where your identity as a child of God is rooted has been unknown to you for a long time, those who were able to touch you there had a sudden and often overwhelming power over you. They became part of your identity. You could no longer live without them. But they could not fulfill that divine role, so they left you, and you felt abandoned. But it is precisely that experience of abandonment that called you back to your true identity as a child of God.

Only God can fully dwell in that deepest place in you and give you a sense of safety. But the danger remains that you will let other people run away with your sacred center, thus throwing you into anguish.

It might take a great deal of time and discipline to fully reconnect your deep, hidden self and your pubic self, which is known, loved, and accepted but also criticized by the world. Gradually, though, you will begin feeling more connected and become more fully who you truly are – a child of God. There lies your real freedom.”

As I read this entry my first reaction was to think about my life and how I view myself. But after awhile I began to think about others and the people I love and the kids I work with here in Uganda. I thought to myself, “they need to know this, every person needs to know that they belong to God and are His child.” How different would our world be if more of us truly believed we were children of God? As I type I feel like shouting it from the mountain tops, “Do you know how loved you are? Do you know how cherished and valued you are to God? You are His precious child.” Then it comes back to me, do I truly believe this and can I genuinely share this with others if I don’t?

Something to continue to pray and meditate upon in months ahead.