WHO ARE YOU?

I was getting ready for a meeting and, while I headed toward my meeting, the Lord asks me,  ”Who are you Angie?” I said confidently and with eagerness ”I am a daughter of the most high king.” Immediately I knew that was not the answer He was looking for. He said, ”yes you are and who are you?” I said again, in a more condensed excited way, ”I am your daughter Lord.” He paused waiting for me to say something more. So I with a little less eagerness, but trying to find an answer before I headed into my meeting said, ”I am anointed and ….” Again immediately I knew this is not the answer He was waiting for. So I am in  the meeting waiting for others to join the meeting, I hear the Lord ask me again, ”Who are you?” I ponder for a minute, but knew this will take time for me to think through and I just knew the answer was not going to come before my meeting started. God’s persistency in this questioning urged me to realize this was something important to Him. So after the meeting, I sat intentionally pondering the question and knew in this is something I am going to have to search out. My patent answers were not satisfying to the Lord. I knew whatever limited knowledge of who I thought I am was not enough to answer the question. So I thought the quickest way to get an answer was to ask Him who already knew the answer. So I asked the Lord,  ”Who am I Lord? Who am I? You tell me Lord who I am.” I have learned that even in His silence He is speaking.  I knew I would have to think this through and study a little, and the answer would come. So the searching began… Who are you?

I thought about the phenomenal list of I AMs I made several years earlier.  It was a list of confessions I made to reset my thinking to God’s way of thinking about myself and to remind myself daily who I was in Him. I had a set of I AMs for every day of the week. A list like the ‘Wednesday I Ams’ below is a helpful reminder of Godly characteristics we should maintain in our lives. By speaking these words in our lives helps us to reset our thinking and expectations to greater heights.

However, as good as these lists of I AMs are God was not talking about a list of confessions. Don’t get me wrong, all of these confessions are great spiritual truths and are things we should absolutely speak to ourselves and over our lives. However the Lord was not referring to the list of I AMs.

I then began thinking about the many roles I play in life. We all have many roles in life: mother, sister, brother, dad, uncle, aunt, cousin, coworker, son, daughter, singer, guitarist, musician, employee, politician, business owner, stay-at-home mom, pastor, wife, husband, sports player, student, salesman, nurse, and the list goes on and on. Any one of these roles can be time consuming, let alone the multiple roles we often play.

We can easily identify ourselves by the roles we play in life and they ultimately can consume our identity. It is easy to do when most of the time in our day is consumed in with fulfilling the multiple roles we play. Though I have identified myself in the the roles I have played, I knew that the Lord was not talking to me about the roles I play in life. There was something more I was missing.

I began to ponder some more. God made us into a three part being, Spirit, soul & body. We use all three to take hold of truths and grow. Our Spirit is Christ in us. Our soul is our mind, will and emotions. Our body is our physical body.  We are often in touch with what is going on in our physical bodies, how we feel in our physical bodies. How our physical body feels can often lead us. For example, if we do not feel well, have a pain in the leg, have a headache, stomach, or hungry, we get pain medication and do whatever it takes to make our bodies feel better. After all our bodies are God’s temple and we should take care of it the best we know how.

On one hand, within our soul we use our minds to address problems, assess and analyze things constantly. Our minds can find reason for anything that we are doing good, bad or indifferent. For some, logic is everything. If it does not logically make sense in their minds then it is dismissed as not relevant. For many, there is an awareness that God has made us to have a mind to think and reason, but our mind in and of itself is not our identity.

On the other hand, our will can hinder us from moving forward in doing what we know is right and we say things like “I will not forgive that person.” Sometimes we are strong willed and God has to work that out of us. However, God is not going to force His will upon us. We have choices and we get to choose to have our identity in Him. 

Our emotions tend to lead us based on our situations and circumstances happening in our lives. Through all the the various highs and lows in life our emotions can be all over the board. We can be mad, happy, sad, and angry all in one day. Learning to stabilize our emotions is a great gift we give to ourselves, but also realizing that it is the Spirit in us that helps the most. The Spirit keeps our soul anchored. Self-control is a fruit of the spirit.

I AM a Spirit being

As I pondered what it meant to be a 3 part being, it dawned on me that the Lord wanted me to focus on the part of me that is Spirit. I am Spirit—that is the answer He was waiting for. His Spirit in us. The Spirit in us affects the physical body and our soulish part. It was like a lightbulb came on and though we are a soul & have a body (God’s temple), the greatest of these is our Spirit.

As a believer, you and I have accepted Jesus Christ into our hearts. If Christ is indeed in us then Christ must be acknowledged regularly, consistently and in all things. He is not an outside person who only helps us in our time of need. He is not some heavenly being that lives up in the sky somewhere and visits us only on occasion. No.

Galatians 2:20 (AMP) says “I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

It is the Christ in us that enables us to live for Him. All of what Christ overcame lives on the inside of us. The same Power that got Jesus through His most difficult time in His life, lives on the inside of us and will get us through the most difficult times in our lives. It is why we can say with confidence, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13). He came to earth, became like us, performed miracles, was persecuted, brutally beaten, crucified, and ultimately defeated death, hell and the grave so that we too can do the same. That is it!! The Spirit on the inside wants to live the same life that Christ lived and overcame. If Jesus believed in miracles, then we too should believe because He is in us. If Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead, why…we too should do the same because He is in me. If Jesus was confident in His Father’s provision and protection, then we too should do the same because Christ is in us. If Jesus was obedient unto death with no limits, then we too should be found in obedience unto death with no limits. It is the Christ in us that helps us to have the abundant life. Jesus is our example.

So with that thought in mind, whatever our role is as a mother, father, student, friend, employee, activist, chef, etc., we cannot do without acknowledgement of the Spirit within us. The Spirit desires to lead our lives in every area of our lives. We do not have to separate our daily roles apart from the Christ in us. In fact if we try to live apart from Christ in our daily roles, we will live frustrated, fruitless lives. John 15:5 (TPT) says, “I am the sprouting vine and you’re my branches. As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—but when you live separated from me you are powerless.”

Staying connected to God, the True Vine through constant communication in all our dealings throughout each day and in every decision is what keeps our lives fruitful, peaceful, and powerful. Turning our Spirit ‘on and off’ as we think is needed only weakens our faith. There are moments we feel anxious, or unsure, and there is a tendency to try to figure things out on our own, and we even tell God, “I got this,” but we must remember the part of us that is Spirit— God on the inside of us always knows what is best and our tendency in these moments should be to move toward God not away from God. If we don’t acknowledge Him living on the inside, we miss out on the immediate answers to our dilemmas. You may say, ‘I know this already and I talk to God already about my problems and everything.’ That is great! I am talking to those of us who have fears, unsure about things. We are working out insecurities and have tendencies to want to do things on our own and have not really understood the Spirit inside of us and have not really acknowledged the Spirit part of our being regularly. We often wrestle with being led by feelings versus being led by God.

The beautiful thing about the Spirit living on the inside of us is that He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is always there ready and waiting for us to draw near to Him so that He can show us a more excellent and prosperous way. He always has our best interest at heart. Always.