Made In God’s Image

Identity
Identity is such a vital component of knowing ourselves and God. It is a foundational piece of information to help you understand where you are going. It is a place of reflection or anchoring to build on or build from. It becomes a place of safety and being familiar with oneself. It distinguishes us from other people or other things. It has unique marks or qualities of each individual person.
To Identify is to be or become the same. It is also to perceive or state the identity of (someone or something). Next, it is to ascertain the identity of someone or something. This helps us understand Identity.
Genesis 1:26-27 ESV – “26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
We are knit together because we are all made in the image of God himself. We are called his children, so we are all the same in the Kingdom of God. We are the Family of God. Have you ever met someone and know you have never met them before? And you know they are so familiar. Often it is the familiarity of the Spirit of the living God that dwells inside of them. I have noticed they light up when we run into them and there is a natural attraction to the Spirit of God that dwells in them and you.
I would like to speak to the familiarity for a moment. When we come together in the Kingdom and we are building, we need the strength of each other to build. The strength (encouragement) or gifts we have will help the building process. So, identity is key.
1 Peter 2:4-6 ESV – “4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Psalm 118:22 ESV – “22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
Isaiah 28:16 ESV – “16 therefore thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.'”
False identity is often the killer to our path. The enemy of our souls will attack relentlessly to stop us from knowing our identity and try to sell us a bill of goods saying we are something otherwise. Satan is the great perpetrator of identity theft and assault.
If our identity can be distorted, stolen, or stopped we then will have a challenging time co-creating with God which is part of our identity. With His image we have His and our righteous imagination and play to use in the Kingdom.
Currently, in our present day and age, we are suffering as a body with unity. We have not come to understand who we are and who we belong to. Our uniqueness is not celebrated. The Kingdom of God is absent from most believers’ daily lives.
In this book, we will look at unity and knitting together. False identity and assault from the enemy, is the destroyer, of who we are created to be.
We are ALL created in His image.

This is a chapter out of my coming book “The Sexualization Of America”.