Mike Parsons –
I believe the world is beginning to experience a series of awakenings. A love awakening, a grace awakening, a joy awakening, a peace awakening. A true God awakening to the reality of who God really is. We are part of that awakening, helping people discover the truth as we discover the truth ourselves, and then share it and live it. It is important that we embrace these awakenings. As we do, we begin to carry and express them naturally.
For a long time, God kept asking me a simple but profound question: who are you? He asked it in various ways over a period of time. At first, my answers were always works-based, tied to what I was doing. Like many people, I identified myself by what I did rather than by who I was. My soul defined my identity, but God was seeking to reveal the true me. For that to happen, my soul had to accept it, and that was not an easy process.
All of us go through a process, and God reveals who we really are in different ways. At the same time, he exposes what hinders us from accepting that reality. Each of us carries things that God has to deal with. Our souls have constructed identities using the data collected throughout our lives: things that happened to us, information we received, and the programming we absorbed through culture, religion and family. Information flowed through our senses, shaping survival strategies that helped the soul cope and protect itself from harsh realities.
Those defence mechanisms, however, often become prisons. They falsely promise safety while preventing us from knowing who we really are. Until the soul surrenders control, we cannot fully trust God for protection, provision and direction. Letting go of control is difficult, especially when we have learned to do everything ourselves. Trusting God sounds simple, but it is not. I believed I trusted God implicitly until he began to challenge what trust really meant in my relationship with him.
So, who am I? That question sits at the core of most people’s inner life.
Imagine a scene. You are in a boat, adrift on a vast ocean. You do not know where you are, and you do not realise that this ocean is unconditional love. You have no sails and no oars. This is the position humanity often finds itself in, unaware of where it truly is and protecting itself from the very reality that surrounds it. This state of despair is an illusion, a deception that causes people to try to navigate the surface of an ocean of love through self-effort.
The answer is to get out of the boat and sink into the depths of unconditional love. There we discover who we really are and who God really is. We are never separated from God, because we exist within him. Acts 17:28 tells us that in him we live and move and have our being. Everything exists within God, who has created space within himself for relationship. Separation, therefore, is an illusion we have created through guilt and shame. That illusion keeps us from intimacy with God and traps us in a lost identity.
Getting out of the boat feels counterintuitive to the natural mind, which has been conditioned to follow an independent, self-directed path. Yet the question remains: who are you, and how will you find out? I would suggest that you will never truly know if you stay in the boat. Even when it feels safer to stay there, paddling with your hands requires constant effort and never brings you to truth.
Who do you think you are? Ten years ago, I would have answered differently than I would today. Five years ago, my answer would have changed again. Thirty years ago, it would have been completely different. Who do others think you are? That question matters, because if we allow it, the opinions of others can define us. Are you shaped by your past experiences, your circumstances, your parents, your friends, your boss or even your genetics?
The deeper question is this: who does love say you are?
Get out of the boat. Sink into the vast ocean of love. Surrender, be immersed and saturated in unconditional love. Return to first love, because it is there that we discover who we really are. God, who is love, defines us. He defines who you are.
So, who are you? I would suggest that we can only truly know through a restored, face-to-face love relationship with God as Father, Son and Spirit. It is that relationship which enables us to discover the truth and to live in it.
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510. Discovering Your Worth: The Truth of Being a Child of God
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Sons of Issachar 