Identity Through Intimacy (LDW Talk)

This talk is about identity. 

 

But, it’s also about intimacy. 

 

In fact, it’s about how the first is totally dependent on the second. 

 

This talk is not about how Kyle has everything figured out and how he never has struggles with identity or comparison or any of that.

 

I promise you that I still find myself struggling with this constantly.

 

It is a process that I am having to grow in on a daily basis. 

 

This talk is simply about the journey that the Lord has been taking me on and about the lessons I have been learning along the way that I think may be helpful for all of us in this thing.

 

 

Over the past few months, this topic has become more and more important to me and so I want to begin my talk with how I got to this place.

 

About a month before launch, I was reading at my favorite coffee shop in my hometown. I was in a book called Scary Close by Donald Miller and had just gotten to a section of the book where he talks about false self. 

 

As I read his account of how Miller had discovered the own false self within himself, the Lord began working in my own heart. So, I went to him with it. 

 

I told him that I wanted him to point out if there is a false self within me that I may be living in. He pointed out at least 3. 

 

There was the “Baseball Kyle”

 

There was the “Pre-med Kyle”

 

There was the “Christian Kyle”

 

I had learned to be all these different versions of myself so that I could live up to who I thought people wanted me to be. 

 

When people needed me to be athletic and know all the sports terms and know the stats on every team and every player from every sport, I could do it.

 

When people needed me to be smart and have banks of useless knowledge about random things, I could do it. 

 

When people needed me to use Christianese or seem wise or have theological insight in to something, I could do it. 

 

Coming to this revelation shook me to the core. Not only did I  begin to see that I had been essentially living a lie for the majority of my life, but I also realized that I really had no idea who the real me was. 

 

You see, my identity was wrapped up in these versions of myself that I had decided to create so that people would like me or so that I could feel better than others or whatever. Honestly I realized I could create whatever identity I needed to for whatever circumstance I needed it for. 

 

So, coming onto into one of the biggest years of my life, I had no clue who I was. 

 

But, I wanted to find out. 

 

So, I decided to read a book on “being a man of God.” And then another one on “being the person you were created to be.” 

 

Or I’d listen to a podcast by some popular teacher on the subject of identity or “self-discovery”

 

But, I also was looking up all kinds of verses on “identity in Christ.” All the usual ones we hear like John 1:12, Genesis 1:27, Romans 8:17, 1 Cor 1:12, etc. 

 

And these made me begin to realize who I was. For like a week or two. Or for the duration of the book or the rest of the afternoon after the podcast.

 

And then it would be back to this place where I would try to insert these false identities about myself back into the narrative. And then I’d have to catch myself again and once again would be like “okay so who AM I?” 

 

And I’d go back to the books or back to those verses. And the cycle would go over and over. 

 

And I never got any closer to discovering who I was. My identity remained up in the air. 

 

But I have a feeling I’m not the only person who has ever been caught in this same cycle. 

 

So, my plan for this hour is to talk to you about how I have been able to move forward into my identity since then and hopefully the Lord will be able to use that to speak to you in the same way that he has been speaking to me over the past few months. 

 

You see we read all these books and we read all these verses and we listen to all these sermons and yet somehow we still end up at square one with the question: “Who am I?”

 

But the “Who am I?” Question doesn’t always show up in the form of “who am I?”…You are probably more acquainted with its more common forms such as “I’m worthless” or “I’ll never be as pretty as her” or “I’ll never be as athletic as him” or “no one can ever love me” 

 

At the root of all these questions is ultimately an identity crisis : for some reason, the books and the podcasts and those select verses don’t stick…they don’t actually answer our question, they don’t tell us who we are. 

 

But why? Don’t these authors have wisdom? Don’t these speakers bring truth? And we would never doubt the validity of the Scriptures.

 

SO WHAT IS THE ISSUE??????

 

Why is it that we hear these truths about our identity spoken over us and yet still find ourselves deep within that pit where the world, the enemy, and our own minds tell us that we are worthless, that we are undesirable, that we will never be enough, that we will never be loved as much as other people, that we are a burden. It spirals out of control and we once again find ourselves sitting in this dark hole, wondering how we got here, wondering how we will ever get back out. 

 

WE MUST BE MISSING SOMETHING!!!!

 

We hear Genesis 1:27; we hear that God created man in his very image; and yet we still have issues with our own identity.

 

We read David in Psalm 139 speak of how he praises God for being fearfully and wonderfully made; and yet we still compare ourselves to others.

 

We see Paul tell us in Ephesians 2:10 about how we were created for a purpose; and yet we still think we have no worth. 

 

My question is: why is this? Why do we revert back to the “who am I?” Over and over despite all these declarations and promises in the Word? What must this be saying about us? 

 

Or rather, what is this saying about how we view God?

 

You see—logically—if we say that we really do believe that we are made in the image of God and that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by him and that he created us for a purpose then we are accepting the idea that who we are is totally dependent on God; on his character, on his power, on his own identity. Therefore, what we choose to believe about who we are says very little about our view of ourselves but in fact says an incredible amount about our view of God.

 

So that’s what I’m here to say: identity has nothing to do with us; it has everything to do with God. 

 

You see, we will never be able to truly behold the meaning of the unfathomable fact that we were ‘created in the image of God’ if we don’t have a firm knowledge of this God that created us. 

 

We will never truly live in freedom if we don’t first know this Jesus that has set us free. 

 

And ultimately what difference will it ever make to us whether we are a temple of the Holy Spirit if we have no idea who this Holy Spirit even is?

 

You see, the best way to really find out who you are is to find out who God is. 

 

I think this is what we are missing in all of this. In our search to know ourselves we so often make the grave mistake of skipping over the most essential piece of it all: we try to know ourselves while bypassing knowing God. 

 

Coming to a full realization of our new identity in Christ is without a doubt one of the most essential parts of our lives as believers—indeed, knowing who Jesus frees us to be should fundamentally change the way we view ourselves as well as others. 

 

However, this can never be accomplished if we don’t first know this Jesus that has set us free. Without an unquenchable desire to have a more intimate knowledge of God, you will never understand the fullness of who you are as an adopted son or daughter. 

 

WE SEE THIS THROUGHOUT SCRIPTURE

 

Look at Abraham: God comes to him and promises him that he is going to father a nation. Promises him that in her old age, his wife is going to conceive and give birth and that this will be the beginning of a lineage that founds an entire nation of people. 

 

But what happens? Abraham gets excited for a little while but then begins to doubt. 

 

The promise that God gave him didn’t actually set in; it didn’t change the way Abraham saw himself. 

 

But, later on Abraham changes right? 

 

We clearly see him living as a different man; he is full of confidence and wisdom and faith. 

 

What happened then?

 

HE BEGAN TO SEEKING TO KNOW GOD. 

 

After Abraham had the whole Hagar fiasco, something changed. 

 

He decided that it was probably a good idea for him to know God. 

 

And so he does, he enters into an intimate communion with him and in Genesis 17:22, we see Abraham leave this conversation with God as a changed man, a man confident in his own identity. 

 

Here we see that our ability to trust a promise has nothing to do with the promise itself and everything to do with the person making that promise. If we don’t know that person, that promise won’t mean a thing to us.

 

Jacob: Jacob was a liar and a swindler. He essentially stole his brother’s birthright and took advantage of his father-in-law

 

And he was infamous for cowardly running away from these problems he had created. 

 

And this was despite that God had told him that he had chosen him and would protect him. 

 

But then, Jacob becomes a changed man. He literally is changed so much that God rewrites his name. 

 

In Genesis 32:28 God changes his name from Jacob to Israel. 

 

So, What made him actually change the way he viewed himself? What made him come to finally understand his identity in the Lord?

 

He wrestled with God. He got in there and really came to know the Lord on an intimate level and then—and only then—did he begin living in the fullness of who God had already said he was.

 

Moses: Moses was a murderer. And then he doubted God when he was first told that he would set God’s people free from the Pharaoh of Egypt. 

 

But then, something changed. 

 

He suddenly moved forward in confidence and was able to be a vessel through which the Lord performed incredible miracles. 

 

So, what happened? What made Moses realize that he actually was the person that God had said he was? What led him to see himself the way that God saw him?

 

He came to behold a deeper knowledge of God.

 

In Exodus 3, he has this conversation with God in which he came to know and see God as “I am who I am.”  

 

Knowing God gave him security in his identity; he began to live as who God had created him to be. 

 

Job: Job was supposed to be this guy who could take anything the enemy threw at him; but, After all the suffering that Job went through, he was left a broken man; no family, no home, no life. I imagine that in this moment Job is seriously wondering who he even is; Job has lost his identity. 

 

But then, Job has a conversation with God in which God reveals a piece of his glory to Job. Through this conversation, Job comes to know God: he says in chapter 42 v 5 “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;”

 

This “seeing” of God results in Job radically changing the way he sees himself and his own life and is able to thrive even more moving forward from that day. 

 

 

Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Job…these people only were able to become who they were created to be in light of their intimacy with God. It was not until they had truly seen God and had begun to know God that their view of themselves and of the people around them actually was transformed.  

 

The things that the Word says about who we are will never truly change the way we see ourselves until we know the One who gave that Word.

 

But perhaps the most captivating example of this is with the disciple Simon Peter.

 

Peter thought his identity was wrapped up in fishing, but as he comes to know Jesus on a more intimate and deeper level, he comes to the realization that his identity has nothing to do with his ability to catch fish.

 

In Matthew 16, this is displayed most clearly. 

 

3 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock[a] I will build my church, and the gates of hell[b] shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed[c] in heaven.”

 

Here we see that Peter learns who he is only when he comes to know who Jesus is. 

 

Once Peter has come to a realization of who God is, God reveals to Peter who Peter is.

 

We of course know that he goes on to deny Jesus later on but we even see with that that once he has denied Jesus he almost immediately realizes his sin and steps once again back into this identity that he is now confident in thanks to his knowledge of Jesus as his God. 

 

So you see, you must come to know God if you want to come to find your own identity. 

 

Tim Keller says “We cannot truly know God better without coming at the same time to know ourselves better”

 

Jesus himself states the importance of knowing God when he says: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the one true God and the one you have sent, Jesus Christ.”

 

He also goes on to say in Matthew 7 that—at the end of our life—nothing else nothing else will matter apart from our knowledge of Him as God. 

 

See, knowing God is more important to our own lives than anything else; it is the foundation for a relationship that will captivate the heart to no end; and will thus help us live more fully as the people we were created to be. 

 

And so, having fully established the importance of knowing God, that leads us to a new question…

 

HOW DO YOU COME TO KNOW GOD?

 

You come to know God the same way you come to know anyone else: you spend time with them. 

 

Just knowing about someone isn’t enough for us to say that we know them: yet, we often act like this is so when it comes to God. 

 

We think we can just read a lot of theology books or listen to a lot of sermons about who God is without actually coming into our own knowledge of him as our Father through an intimate relationship with him. 

 

See, Having someone tell you that they love you only will actually carry weight for you if you’ve spent time with that person getting to experience that love first hand. 

 

So it is with God.  

 

It is one thing to know of the love of God and the cross of Christ and the sending of the Spirit and to say “yeah, I know he did all that.” It is an entirely different thing to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.

 

To truly come to know God on an intimate level when you spend time with him, day in and day out. 

 

You seek to know more and more about him not so that you may simply have head knowledge but so you can use that knowledge about him to further your knowledge of him. 

 

You must seek intimacy with him constantly. 

 

Now, we must not forget that we are speaking of the God of the universe here: it would be quite foolish of us to think that we could ever come to a full knowledge of who God is in our time here on earth; that won’t happen until we come face to face with him in heaven. 1 Cor 13:12 says that now we see in a mirror dimly lit but that in heaven we will see face to face and then we will fully know just as we now are fully known by him. 

 

So, This is a process that will never be fully completed here on earth. 

 

But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to know him as deeply as is possible while we are here. 

 

And just as we will never be done getting to know God, we will never be done growing and learning more about our own identity; 

 

As we will never stop discovering more of who God is, we will never stop discovering who we are in Christ.

 

Now, if knowing God is important and in order to know him you must be intimate with him, then that brings up yet another question:

 

HOW DO YOU GAIN INTIMACY? 

 

The answer: through prayer. 

 

Through prayer, our somewhat abstract knowledge of God becomes existentially real to us. 

 

Keller says: “God is the only person from whom you can hide nothing. Before him you will unavoidably come to see yourself in a new, unique light. Prayer, therefore, leads to a self-knowledge that is impossible to achieve any other way.”

 

Prayer is the only way into a more full knowledge of God and thus a more genuine self-knowledge. 

 

We see this idea displayed in the way that Paul prays for the people he is writing to throughout his epistles. 

 

For example:

 

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians in 1:16-17 is that the Spirit would give them all the power to come to a knowledge of God. 

 

Paul does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself. 

 

Now as we move forward, I want to be sure that you know where I stand here on prayer. 

 

I firmly believe that Prayer isn’t as much about HOW you pray as it is about WHO you pray to. 

 

John Calvin wrote a set of “rules” on prayer but his most important rule was what he called the rule of grace. 

 

With this rule, He urges us not to conclude that following any set of rules could make our prayers more worthy to be heard.

 

Nothing we formulate or do can qualify us for access to God. 

 

Only grace can do that—based not on our performance in prayer but on the saving work of Christ.

 

So, now understanding that there is no “perfect prayer” I do still think there are a few things that might be beneficial to keep in mind when considering our prayer life. 

 

1. PRAYER IS CONVERSATION

 

Prayer is a personal, communicative response to the knowledge of God. It is us reaching back to God as he calls out to us. 

 

Paul says in Romans that we all have a knowledge of God just from the miracle of creation all around us. 

 

So, when we are praying, it will always in some way be a response to how God has already spoken to us through any number of ways. 

 

C.S. Lewis specifically writes of it this way in his book That Hideous Strength:

 

In it, one of his characters is describing her conversion experience.

 

She explains that she had thought of “religion” as being like a cloud of incense “steaming up from especially gifted souls towards a receptive heaven,” which would then respond in various rewards and blessings. 

 

But, suddenly a very different picture came into her head of “God…of strong, skillful hands thrust down to make and mend.” And then she came “into the presence of a Person.”

 

Now, I of course am aware that this is just a work of fiction but it paints a picture of this idea that prayer is simply us grabbing hold of the hands of God as he reaches down to us.

 

All prayer is responding to God. We see his beauty displayed in the world around us. We see his great love and righteousness revealed in his Word. We feel the presence of his Holy Spirit deep within us. 

 

These are all a few of the many different ways in which we may hear God’s voice on any given day; so, when we are praying it is simply us speaking back to the God that speaks to us in a diversity of ways. 

 

Prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full on encounter with—and deeper knowledge—of him. 

 

 

2. PRAYER IS VARIED

 

The nature of prayer is determined by the character of God who is at once our friend, father, lover, shepherd, and king. 

 

The God that the Bible shows us is majestic and yet tender, holy and forgiving, loving and beyond understanding. 

 

If God is so diverse and his character is so multi-faceted, then our prayers to him cannot simply be limited to one type of prayer. 

 

Psalms —the longest book of the Bible—is an entire book devoted to prayer.

 

In it we see exclamations of wonder,  we see deep complaints, we see reasoned arguments, we see declarations and verdicts, appeals and requests, calls and cries, and we even see self-condemnation. 

 

Psalms shows us that prayer is radically varied and represents many different emotional states: 

 

AND THIS IS OKAY! 

 

This, ultimately, is prayer. 

 

It is praising God for who he is, thanking God for what he’s done, confessing to God for where we’ve fallen short, pleading to God to rescue us from others, from the enemy, and from ourselves. 

 

This is how Jesus modeled it in Matthew 6 when he gave the disciples his example in The Lord’s Prayer. 

 

It begins with praising and admiring the greatness of God (Our Father, who art in heaven),

 

exclaiming his holiness (hallowed be they name), 

 

a plea for his kingdom to come and his will to be done, 

 

a request for our basic needs to be met, a confession for our sins and asking for them to be forgiven.

 

Revealing a desire to not stumble into sin

 

And a plea of protection against attacks from the enemy.

 

Jesus modeled all this diversity in his model so this tells us that like His prayer, our prayers should be varied. 

 

It doesn’t necessarily have to have all the variations within one single prayer, but we should strive to include all of these forms of prayer in our prayer life on a daily basis.

 

One of these variations should be corporate prayer, also. 

 

We should daily seek to be praying with other believers. 

 

We can learn so much from the way that others converse with the Father. 

 

Each of us is unique; and each of us has a unique relationship with God. 

 

Our own intimacy with the Father can be deepened by seeing the way others commune with him; 

 

C.S. Lewis argues that it takes a community of people to get to know and individual person. He observed from his own friendships that some aspects of one of his friend’s personality were brought out only through interaction with a second friend. 

 

If it takes a community to know an ordinary human being, how much more necessary would it be to get to know Jesus alongside others?

 

By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived.

 

So, prayer is varied: it’s praise and thanks and pleas and outcries and confession and community. 

 

 

3. PRAYER THROUGH THE WORD

 

Prayer also should —at it’s core—be born out of our immersion in the scripture.

 

To know someone intimately and to continue to grow in that intimacy, you must first learn who that person is: we come to knowledge of who God is through reading, studying, pondering, reflecting on his Word—day and night, always and forever. 

 

In fact, David shows us many times in the Psalms that his cries to God are a direct result of his meditation on his “laws” or “precepts”

 

Martin Luther says that “we must first hear the Word, and then afterward the Holy Ghost works in our hearts; he works in the hearts of whom he will, and how he will, but never without the Word.” 

 

Without knowledge of the truth of who God is by seeing him in the Word, we will never have an adequate prayer life, and—thus—will never have the intimacy with the Father that we were created for. 

 

After all, Jesus is the Word (John 1:1). 

 

Now, I understand that a good deal of our prayers will be pleas or thanksgiving based on things that are happening outside of the word—in our own day to day lives. 

 

And I think this is right and good and exactly how God intended it. 

 

However, I do think that the trunk of our prayer life should be deeply rooted in scripture and only when this happens will our prayer life be able to grow and branch off into our own lives outside of the Word. 

 

Also, keeping our prayers based on our understanding of God through the scriptures will help us to make sure our prayers are focused on God and not ourselves. God will remain at the center. 

 

So, God speaks to us in his Word, and we respond in prayer, entering into the divine conversation, into communion—and ultimately intimacy—with God.

 

 

SECURITY IN OUR INTIMACY

 

Now, how can we know that we will be able to gain intimacy with the Father and subsequently come to know him?

 

We have assurance of our intimacy with the Father in the death of Jesus. He gives us access (Eph 3:12)

 

Through Jesus, we come to know the heart of the Father. 

 

Keller says “When we grasp his astonishing, costly sacrifice for us, transfer our trust and hopes from other things to Christ, and ask for God’s acceptance and grace for Christ’s sake, we begin to realize with the Spirit’s help the magnitude of our benefits and blessings in Christ. Then we begin to want almost desperately to know and love God for himself.”

 

John Calvin argues that you may know a lot about God, but you don’t truly know God until the knowledge of what he has done for you in Jesus Christ has changed the fundamental structure of your heart.

 

We have been adopted as sons of the Heavenly Father; this means that now God loves us as if we had done all Jesus had done. 

 

This is ultimately what it means to pray in Jesus’ name—to pray to the Father while always keeping in the forefront of our minds the incredible sacrifice given by the Son so that we even would have access into the presence of the Father at all. 

 

We also have assurance of our intimacy and subsequent knowledge of the Father due to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

 

Because we are sealed by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13), we have the most intimate and unbreakable relationship possible with the God of the universe.

 

This Spirit “testifies with our spirit” and allows us to cry out “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8) This “Abba” would’ve been the same word Jesus used. Thus, the Holy Spirit allows us to cry out to the Father with the same level of intimacy as Jesus. 

 

The Spirit gives believers an existential, inward certainty that their relationship with God does not now depend on their performance (it isn’t a boss and employee). It depends on parental love. 

 

This should turn us to prayer of thanks for the cross of Christ that gives us access to this Father-child relationship; and the prayer will then—naturally—lead to deeper intimacy. 

 

As Christians, we are able to come to a deeper knowledge of God than Abraham or Jacob or Moses or Job ever had. 

 

God’s Spirit dwells within us and gives us a intimacy with God that neither David nor John the Baptist ever could even know. 

 

As we come to a more full and rich intimacy with the God of the universe, he will make us his dwelling place. 

 

He will fill us with his presence, beauty, and glory. 

 

And this deep indwelling of the Spirit within us will transform our hearts and make us desire to know who he is more through his Word which will in turn lead us to desire to respond to him more through prayer, giving us a yet even deeper intimacy with him;

 

over and over and over again. 

 

FROM INTIMACY TO IDENTITY

 

This is what changes how we view ourselves. This is what radically alters our self-worth. This is what gives us the ability to see our true identity. 

 

Intimacy with the God who created us will cause us to continue to desire more of his Spirit’s transforming work in our souls and this will profoundly reorient the way we see ourselves. 

 

As we allow the Spirit to alter us to be more and more like Christ through more and more intimacy with the Father, we will come to see ourselves in the light of who God is. 

 

So We must devote our lives to growing closer to the God who created us; it is only when we desire to know God above all else that we will really start to believe the things he says about who we are. 

 

And then we will see that All comparisons, all lack of self-worth, all feelings of being less than or feelings of being a burden to others will be completely shattered in the light of our deep knowledge of this God that created us in his image and by whom we are fearfully and wonderfully made. 

 

I believe that If above all else we truly seek to understand the majesty, the glory, the unending and unconditional love of God displayed so beautifully on the cross of Christ and sealed within us through his Holy Spirit, then it will be more difficult for the world to convince us that we have no worth or that we have no purpose than the other way around. 

 

 

 

ACTIVATION

 

For activation, I have given each of you a Bible verse to read over the past couple of days.

 

These verses are all about our identity in Christ. I encourage you to write down some or all of these verses and over the coming months, or years, or even the rest of your life I want you to continually go back to these verses. 

 

And, as you go back and read them over and over, I want to see how their meaning changes with your growing intimacy with God. 

 

My prayer is that as you grow closer to the Father, these verses will come to impact the way you view yourself more and more and more. 

 

So, what I would like to do now is for each of you to stand up and read your verse and remain standing so that by the end of this thing we all are standing together in unity, declaring who God says that we are over each other.

 

Genesis 1:27

Psalm 139:14

Eph 2:10

John 1:12

John 15:15

Eph 2:4-5 

Rom 8:17

1 Cor 1:2

Eph 1:1

Phil 4:13

Eph 4:24

Col 3:3

Eph 2:6

Rom 8:1

Rom 5:1

1 Cor 2:16 

Eph 1:3

2 Tim 1:7

1 Peter 2:9

Gal 3:26-28

1 Cor 6:19-20

Psalm 139:15 

Phil 3:20

Rom 8:2 

Col 2:9-10

Rom 8:14

Col 3:12

Eph 1:7

2 Cor 5:21

1 Cor 3:16

John 15:16

Romans 8:15 

Matt 5:14

Eph 2:13

1 John 3:1 

Eph 1:11

Eph 5:8

Eph 2:10

1 Thess 1:4

Isaiah 49:16

Isa 43:1

Rom 8:37

2 Cor 5:21

1 John 3:2

2 Cor 5:17

Psalm 139:13

Rom 8:16

1 Thess 5:5

Isa 62