A hit song many years ago, Who Are You? has a chorus that echoes the current generation’s issue. We all struggle with our identity at one time or another but it seems especially hard today. As I was watching the movie, Overcomer, it hit me particularly hard and made me take a look at where I put my own identity.

The scene was in a hospital room. A blind, Christian man was lying in his hospital bed having a conversation with a man he met by chance the previous day. During their second encounter, the patient wanted to know more about the man visiting him.

He asked him, “Who are you?”

Shrugging his shoulders, giving a sigh the visitor finally responded, “Well, I’m a man, thirty-five years old, a father, a husband, I coach high school basketball..”

“I don’t want to know about you, I want to know who you are,” the patient interrupted.

Looking bewildered and taking a moment to answer, “I’m a Christian and I go to ..”

Before he could finish, the patient raised his head, smiled broadly, and said sharply, “You are a child of God, that’s who you are!”

Long after the movie was over I kept reflecting on who I was really and where I had placed my identity in years past. Growing up I was Dick and Virginia’s daughter and Craig’s little sister. In college, I was known as a PE major. When I got married I was Gary’s wife and when my son came along I was Scott’s mom. Throughout many of those years my identity hung on my weightlifting career and being an athlete. I had a jolt of reality when some of those circumstance changed and I lost those identities. Obviously, when I got married and left the home I was no longer associated with my parents and brother. But my biggest challenges were when my son died and was no longer anyone’s mother and when I quit competing I was no longer a weightlifter. Yes, I was still Gary’s wife (and glad to be so) but the bulk of my identity was ripped out. Those words, “Who are you?” made me strip away all the ways in which I had hung my identity.

No matter what changes come about in my life my true identity is in Christ; I am His child and that will never change. Identity issues are at the forefront of our society today, especially in transgenderism. If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior you are a child of God, first and foremost and He has a plan for your life. If you haven’t and are still searching for your identity, begin with that first step in finding your relationship with God, who desires you to become who He created you to be.

You can do that by realizing you are a sinner by birth and believing that Jesus Christ paid for all your sins by dying on the cross. (John 3:16 and Acts 16:31) But He rose from the dead to be alive, just waiting for you to accept Him as your Savior. Won’t you do that now so you can have that new identity and be a child of God?