Remember Who You Are

My grandmother – Mother Ruth – used to tell my brothers and me to “Remember who you are” when we would be going out with friends or when she and my grandfather – Big Daddy – were leaving after a visit. My grandparents were very respectable people, and I think that the sentiment was more “You’re from a good family, so try to keep it that way” or “You’re a good young man, so don’t spoil it”. While these statements are certainly good advice, to me they had taken on a very prideful air that I do not like or want to live by.

Some of the definitions of “remember in Webster’s Dictionary are:

• to bring to mind or think of again
• to keep in mind for attention or consideration
• to retain in the memory

Basically, remembering is an act of the will – choosing to recall things in the mind, meditate on them, mull them over. The point of remembering is to recall information from the past that will affect my actions in the present.

As a believer in Christ and follower of him, I am very aware of my sinfulness and need of a Savior. Anything good in me comes from the Spirit of God living in me and expressing through me – not from my own “goodness”. God has done wonders in my life, and in Him there are incredible truths about my identity now!

THOSE are the things I need to remember about myself – all of truths He has spoken to me in His Word and all of the truths He is speaking to me daily as I commune with Him. Learning to hear His voice - walk in His Spirit – is what I am about right now in life.

I’ve been a Christian – better yet, a follower of Christ since “Christian” can mean so many things in this world today and is not descriptive enough – since I was 7. Unfortunately, it was twenty+ years later I believe that I began to mature. God has moved in many ways – ways I’m sure I’ll write about in the coming entries and months and years to come.

Someone once said that men and women are the only creatures created to receive their identity from another. God’s intent is that we receive our identities from Him alone! Most often, I know that I have turned to others to tell me who I am – giving them the power and authority they do not deserve or own and forfeiting the freedom and security God wanted for me. I have been a slave to what others thought of me, how I believed that I measured up against them, etc. That is all “dead” now! I need to put the shovel down and stop trying to resurrect the rotting flesh.

A brief intro into why “Remember who you are”. It is a good phrase now! It is not from a place of pride or fear of losing an identity, but from a place of security. My identity is in Christ – He is the one telling me who I really am!