EPHESIANSOur Unshakable Identity in

Christ

I AM

WHO DO YOU

THINK

YOU ARE?

What is your

IDENTITY?

It’s the one thing that changes everything,

because when you know who you are, then you know what to do. If you

don’t know who you are, then you don’t know what

to do.

How do you see

YOURSELF?

How does your IDENTITY alter and affect your

DESTINY?

WHO DOES GOD SAY

YOU ARE?

GENESIS 1:26-28

26 Then God said, “Let us makemankind in our image, in ourlikeness, so that they mayrule over the fish in the sea andthe birds in the sky, over thelivestock and all the wildanimals, and over all thecreatures that move along theground.”

GENESIS 1:26-28

27 So Godcreated mankind in Hisown image, in theimage of God Hecreated them; maleand female He createdthem.

GENESIS 1:26-28

28 God blessed them and said tothem, “Be fruitful and increasein number; fill the earth andsubdue it. Rule over the fish inthe sea and the birds in the skyand over every living creaturethat moves on the ground.”

GENESIS 5:1

1 This is the writtenaccount of Adam’s familyline. When God createdmankind, He made them inthe likeness of God.

Who are you? God says, “I’ve made you in

my image and likeness.”

That’s your identity. There’s the identity

statement.

FOUR THINGS THAT

GOD SAYS WHO YOU ARE:

1YOU ARE A

REVELATION

RECEIVER.

That God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit have been

communicating with one another forever, and they make us in their

image and likeness, and they make us as revelation receivers.

They speak to us - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do. God

speaks to us.

Caleb Byerly& the Salimbaa

instrument

Caleb Byerly& the Salimbaa

instrument

You don’t have to determine or decide what your identity is

because God has already chosen to

reveal it.

You must be in the Word of God and have the Word of God in you, because you

were created as a revelation receiver. God wants to

speak to you through His Word. He wants to hear

from you through prayer.

2YOU ARE HUMBLY

HONORED.

Humility, the root of which literally means to know your place, is to

know that your place is under God, but above

lower creation.

3YOU ARE MADE TO

MIRROR.

WE WERE MADE TO MIRROR.

aGod is loving, and when we love, we reflect His love to

others.

bGod is truthful. When we tell the truth, we

reflect His truthfulness to

others.

cGod is forgiving. When

we forgive others, we’re reflecting His

grace and His mercy to others.

dGod is generous, and when we’re generous,

we’re reflecting His generosity to others.

So many of our identity decisions are about, “How will this make me look?”

That’s the wrong question.“How could they see God?” That’s the right question.

That is why Jesus is called the image of the INVISIBLE GOD.

Everything that could be seen about God’s character is made visible on the earth through the life, death, burial, resurrection of

Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God. If we’ve seen Him,

we’ve seen the Father.

3YOU ARE

BLESSED TO BE

A BLESSING.

Adam and Eve had not

done anything. He just blessed them.They didn’t earn their

blessing.

aOur God is a God who begins with

blessing.

bOur God is a God

who likes to bless His people.

cOur God is a God who is filled

with grace, and filled with love, and filled with mercy, and in an infinitely perfect

way, far superior to mine, He’s a Father who adores His kids

and would do anything for

IN FCC, WE ARE BLESSED TO

BLESS.

aWhatever God

teaches you is so you might teach others.

bWhatever God gives you is that you might

give to others.

cWhatever God does

for you is so that you could learn to do that

for others.

TWO THINGS THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OUR IDENTITY:

1YOUR IDENTITY IS

RECEIVED,

IT IS NOT ACHIEVED.

Adam and Eve didn’t do anything to obtain this identity.

God made them, God spoke to them, God defined them, and God

blessed them. It’s all God. Your identity is not achieved, it’s

received. It’s not something you do, it’s something God does. It’s not what you earn, it’s what He

gives.

2YOU ARE NOT MORE

VALUABLE THAN ANYONE ELSE AND YOU ARE NOT LESS VALUABLE THAN

ANYONE ELSE, AS WELL.

All people equally bear the image and likeness

of God.

One of the great lies is that some people are more valuable than

others.

Your net worth has nothing to do with your self-worth.

WHO DOES SATAN SAY YOU

ARE?

Genesis 3 Satan tells us who he

thinks God is and who he thinks

we are.

An angel who was, according to the Bible, dissatisfied with their

identity. Their identity was created and under God to

serve God.

Angels are created as messengers and ministers of God, and the Bible says that

Satan was an angel who became proud in his heart. He didn’t want to be under God, he wanted to be alongside of God or over God. He

didn’t want to obey God, he wanted to do what he wanted to

do.

The Bible says

repeatedly that he’s a

liar, he’s a deceiver, and

he’s a killer.

GENESIS 3:1

1 Now the serpent was morecrafty than any of the wildanimals the LORD God hadmade. He said to the woman,“Did God really say, ‘You mustnot eat from any tree in thegarden’?”

But the first thing he does is he questions the

authority of the Word of God.

Satan is always going to question the clarity and

the authority of the Word of God.

GENESIS 3:5

5 “For God knows thatwhen you eat of it youreyes will be opened, andyou will be …”

What?

“LIKE GOD”

Satan erodes their confidence in the

Word of God and lies to them.

IDENTITY IDOLATRY

EZEKIEL 14:4

4 Therefore speak to them and tellthem, ‘This is what theSovereign LORD says: When any ofthe Israelites set up idols in theirhearts and put a wicked stumblingblock before their faces and then goto a prophet, I the LORD will answerthem myself in keeping with theirgreat idolatry.

1Idolatry is when we

take a good thing and we make it a God thing, which is a bad thing.

2Idolatry is when we take a created thing and we put it in the Creator’s

place.

3Idolatry is when we live

for something or someone other than

Jesus.

4Idolatry is when our identity, our hope, our joy, who we want to be,

and who we want others to perceive us to be is something

achieved, by us or others, and not received from Him.

5The Bible says it has two

categories: worshippers and

idolaters.

ROMANS 1:25

25 They exchanged thetruth about God for alie, and worshiped andserved createdthings rather than theCreator—who is foreverpraised. Amen.

DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF

I. D. O. L. S.

Idols make promises

they never keep. Lies

never bring life, they

only bring death.

ITEMS

So, you’re your own idol. All you care about is what you

think about yourself.

DUTIES

Again, idols can be good things in a God place, which is

a bad thing.If your identity is in your duty,

you try to find your thing.

WHO YOU ARE DETERMINES WHAT

YOU DO.

OTHERS

“If you will idolize, you will demonize.”

PROVERBS 29:25

25 Fear of man willprove to be a snare,but whoever trusts inthe LORD is kept safe.

LONGINGS

SUFFERINGS

UNDERSTANDING YOUR IDENTITY

CRISIS

Most of us don’t even know we have an

identity idolatry until we have a crisis.

1You live in fear that

your identity idolatry will fail you or be taken

from you.

2Your identity idolatry crumbles under the weight of being in

God’s place in your life.

3When your identity idolatry begins to

crumble, you become panicked.

JESUS AND HIS PEOPLE

That’s all that ultimately matters in the end,

and the only thing that will be together forever

is Jesus and His people.