Who do you think you are? Or in other words, Where is your identity? Is it in Christ or in the world?
The world calls us worthless and insufficient. Personally, I carried a belief that I was insufficient for most of my life, without even realizing it. The world attempts to empower us by saying things like "You can do this on your own", but really, we can't do it all on our own and deep down we know that. So the world really ends up just making us feel even more insufficient. When we fail miserably, or even just a little, we feel like we can't say that we failed because were supposed to be able to do it all. So we spend all sorts of time and energy creating the appearance that we are doing it all on our own, all the while, struggling fiercely on the inside. We let the world convince us that everyone else has it all together, even though they are playing the same game we are. Believing this lie further pushes us into a sense of insufficiency and away from our true identity.
Much sin is rooted in a sense of dissatisfaction with our identity. Satan was dissatisfied with his identity. He challenged the Almighty trying to steal Gods identity and instead, he fell. This sort of tactic became his MO and an early documentation of that is in Genesis with Satan's approach to Eve in the Garden of Eden. He went and told Eve that she could be like God and in so created a dissatisfaction for her identity. What she forgot was that she was already made in Gods image and likeness, and so was already like God. Rather than receiving and owning her identity as given by God, she was manipulated by the enemy and believed she could achieve her identity.
We read later on in Genesis about Jospeh's brothers, who wanted Josephs identity. They forgot that they had their own value and identity and were deceived to believe that if Joseph wasn't around, they could achieve the identity they desired. It was in that state that they chose to sell Joseph, fake his death and lie.
When we spend too much time entertaining a worldly view of our identity we can more easily enter into self seeking and self ambitious attitudes and it becomes a slippery slope into more sin.
Counter to what the world tells us, we do not achieve our identity, we can only receive it. In my early professional career, I spent all sorts of energy trying to achieve my identity. Everything I did was focused on achieving what I thought I wanted. I failed time and time again. It wasn't until I was so broken that my heart softened enough to see that what I was trying to attain was nothing compared to what God was waiting to give me.
Many of us are trying to achieve our identities, as the world defines them. The most amazing thing out there for us is actually receiving our identity from the Father, the Creator, the one who has already made us in His likeness. We are totally and completely adored by The Father. When were in Jesus, there are no expectations for perfection or doing it all on our own! We truly become perfected in Jesus. This means that because of His sacrifice the Father sees us as righteous, that Jesus intercedes on our behalf to the Father and that we are forgiven when we ask! It is only in knowing that truth, that we can truly live knowing our identity as a child of God, totally and completely loved by Him.
Take up Gods truth for you! I promise its better than anything the world has offered!