Hidden Identities: I Am

“Who am I?” It’s a question we ask ourselves throughout our lives. As children, the question hovers behind every choice presented to us so that by the time we’re teens, we’re choosing relationships and activities as if on a quest to better understand ourselves. 

I have a memory of one of my middle school teachers asking our class if anyone felt confident about who they are. My hand flew up, and her response puzzled me. Through scrunched eyebrows, she said, “Okay, good for you?” I have since pondered that moment and realize that I was naive in thinking I knew myself so well. And I certainly doused the conversation she wanted to have with my peers.

It’s not overstated to say that I’ve been unpacking all the layers of who I am since that moment. It’s also not an exaggeration to say that every human being has either floundered in their search for identity or has crashed into an identity crisis at some point in their lives. Young moms regularly lose their sense of self in those years where babies and young children demand everything from them. Ironically, mothers releasing their young adults into the world frequently feel lost within themselves as they realize that for too long their identity has been solely ‘mom’. 

Sometimes we fail to discover our true identities because they seem to be hidden from us – as though the hats we wear prevent us from knowing the real us. For others, we’re the ones hiding behind masks, careful not to let anyone see who we ‘really are’. 

But in the quiet, we wrestle. We yearn. We wonder, “Who am I?”

That’s the question we’ll set out to answer in this “Hidden Identity” series. Layer by layer we’ll peel back our emotions and assumptions, our motivations and obstructions until we get to the core of who we are. And we’ll discover, as Gretchen Saffles so perceptively points out, that all our identity problems stem from not knowing who God is!¹ 

Who I Am

To understand who we are, it’s important to start at the beginning…

“God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Genesis 1:26-27

Our Triune God capped off Creation by making man and woman, and they did so in unique fashion – in their own image. The Hebrew word for ‘image’ simply infers resemblance, but it goes well beyond appearance.² To say that we have been given God’s likeness is to say that the immaterial part of us – what makes us human and sets us apart from every other creature on the planet – is like God.³ Our essence of being, that part of us that brings heart, mind, body, and soul together, is of our Maker. 

If we can allow ourselves to imagine what humanity – Adam and Eve – were like in that perfect garden, we might see that their hearts were pure, their minds were righteous, their bodies were whole, and the souls were holy. Just as God intended. It’s why they got to walk and talk their way through the garden with the Almighty (Genesis 3:8).

It’s also why they hid from Him after they sinned (v.8). That part of them that was most like God had become marred, broken, impure, unholy. 

When that serpent slithered onto the scene, he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the best way to get to God was to bring down His most beloved creation. So, as his questions to Eve slipped off his forked tongue, he sowed seeds of doubt in their minds. Did God really say…? In doing so, he intentionally took “Eve’s gaze off the glory of God” so that she would try to “find her identity in her own image.”¹ 

Beneath his insinuations lurked lies. Even as he fed Eve’s doubts about God’s goodness by suggesting He was holding back on her, he simultaneously suggested she was not enough as she was (v.5).¹ And when he hissed that she could be like God, he was laying the groundwork for the ultimate lie – God was not enough for her (v.5).¹ 

Why He Came

Thankfully, the story doesn’t end there. From the moment God laid out the curses and cast all humanity from His presence, God has been going about the business of redeeming us back to Himself. Back to His original intent.

He led the Patriarchs into covenant with Him and moved with His people throughout the wilderness as cloud and flame. He handed down the Law to His people and filled the Holy of Holies with His glory – all of it a part of His rescue plan, but none of it enough to fully redeem.

So He sent His Son. “Christ came not only to remedy our standing with God but also to restore God’s image within us through sanctification.”² By the blood of Christ we are forgiven and made new. In Christ we can leave behind every false idea about ourselves and step into our truest being – all because we have been “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). 

I Am Who I Am

When we look inward, into ourselves, it’s important to recognize “we don’t have the answers” to the question, “Who Am I?”¹ 

I had a profound sense of loss-of-self my second year of college, and it took a failed relationship to force me to figure out why. That overconfident eighth grader carried the sense of knowing self throughout high school – and it seemed to work as I carved out my identity through achievement and friendships. 

But when those fell away in college, I felt gut-wrenchingly lost. Bereft of any true identity. 

I imagine this is how Moses must have felt. Growing up in Pharaoh’s palace as a son of the princess, Moses’ privileged life contrasted greatly to those of the Hebrew slaves, the people of his birth. I see his inner-conflict-of-self manifest as rage the day he murdered an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew man (Exodus 2:11-12). I relate to Moses’ flight into the wilderness because I too needed space to put together all the parts of me – to understand myself. In fact, God needs to get us alone with Him for a while in order to impart the truth of who He is and who we are.⁴ 

So when I watch Moses run right into the burning bush of God’s presence, I recognize that he only begins to know who he truly is as he gets to know who God is. Moses asks, “Who am I?” God responds, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:11,14),¹ which is a literal way of interpreting the most revered Hebrew name of God, Yahweh.⁵ 

As Moses stood before the Great I AM, he earnestly began wrestling with his identity. Some might describe the questions Moses threw at the Almighty as mere excuses – and, of course, they were – but this dialogue can also be seen as a demonstration of what happens when we get in the presence of God. 

Awe.

When we step into the bush-burning glory of God, we know we’re on holy ground. Our eyes affix onto our Holy Father, our spirits become attuned to His, and something inside us expands – almost as though our hearts grow three sizes. At the same time, we become keenly aware of our frailty and filth (Isaiah 6:5). 

Yet, as we remain in His presence, the awe we experience causes us to shift our gaze from ourselves to the Almighty before us. We see that He is always enough. And we begin to see ourselves as He does.

If we only ever try to understand who we are with our own eyes, we will continue to spiral in the same patterns. Jen Wilkin calls this an ‘awe problem’.¹ In other words:

“The preciousness of all the truths about who we are in Christ and how we’re seen by our Father cannot be properly perceived until framed in the brilliance of His utter holiness. There can be no true self-awareness apart from right, reverent awe of God!”  

Jen Wilkin¹

We see this in the life of Moses. The longer Moses walked with God, the better he knew God and the clearer his own identity became. By the time he stepped into God’s presence to intercede on behalf of the calf-worshiping Israelites (Exodus 32-33), we see a once character-confused man come forward confident “in his identity as an image of God.”⁶ 

“Notice that [Moses] doesn’t intercede based on his own merit or any strategic method, but solely based on God’s own character.”  

Bible Project⁶

Moses knows himself better because He knows God better.

Who We Are

Whether we feel lost in our sense of ‘who I am’ or not, it’s important to consider the truth that we don’t know ourselves fully. We might be able to say and even want to believe that we are daughters of the King, but if we live plagued with people-pleasing tendencies, distrust of people, comparison with others, and insecurity, we know we’re not living from our true selves.⁷ And the starting point for getting to know who we are is to acknowledge that “our identity problems stem from not knowing who [God] is.”¹ We won’t discover who we are by looking at our own image – only God’s. 

The next step is to embrace the fact that we are not God.¹ If we consider the fact that we – each and every one of us – easily slip into control-mode when life spins out of control, then we will see just how often we put ourselves on the thrones of our lives. As image-bearers of our Holy Father, we are freed from the pressures of trying to carry it all and do it all as though we’re God. 

And, we can accept the invitation to be God’s image-reflectors.¹ 

What was true in the beginning is still true today. We are created in the likeness of our Holy Father, designed not for our purposes but His – to reflect His image and to declare His glory.¹  All of this is good news – because when our sense of self gets lost or feels hidden from us, we can discover who we truly are. And it all starts with knowing I AM.

Holy Father, You are the Great I AM – the One who was, who is, and who always will be. You created each of us out of love and for love, imprinting every heart and soul with your image. We confess that too often our eyes are fixated on ourselves instead of You. And we’re beginning to see that such self-focus causes us to displace You from the throne of our lives with ourselves. We recognize that we try to be God when we step into such controlling patterns and that if we keep our eyes only on ourselves, we’ll never really know ourselves. Holy Spirit, we ask that You would help us to take our eyes of our own image so that we can look more fervently at our Holy Father. Spark within us the sense of awe that will fill us with an assurance of His greatness and goodness, of the enormity of His being and utter holiness so that we’ll bow low before Him with all worship and praise. Be our Guide as we remain in God’s presence, helping us to know Him better. Lord Jesus, thank You for stepping into humanity to become our Redeemer, the One who reestablishes us as your holy image bearers. May we continue to look to You as the perfect human who lived in perfect connection with God and never lost your sense of identity. You always remained confident in who You were because You always knew God completely. How we long for that same connection – that of knowing God so well that we know ourselves as we truly are. In your holy name we pray, amen.
(inspired by Exodus 3:14; Revelation 1:8; 1 John 3:1; Genesis 1:26; Hebrews 12:2; Isaiah 26:3; Proverbs 3:5-7; Lamentations 3:40; Acts 2:43; Psalm 95:6-7; John 14:16; Ephesians 1:7, 4:24; Colossians 1:15; John 5:26-27)

Welcome to Week One of Hidden Identities! We’ll carry over all we learned about God’s character from our last series, Hidden Treasures, into this one — because, truly, the core of discovering our true selves is to know God. While this is a ‘serious’ series, we will have fun identifying names God is known by in Scripture and by unpacking hymns, Psalms, and spiritual songs that offer lyrics and lines that will help us on our search to know who we are.

This week we saw God as Holy — a Holy Father who loves His children enough to create them in His own image. And it’s that very holiness that evokes within us the sense of awe that is so necessary to instill in us the great understanding that He alone is God and worthy of all our obedience and trust and worship and praise.

We also got to see God name Himself: I AM. Another way we’ll have fun this series is watching for the seven ways Jesus plays upon God’s core identifying moniker throughout John to help us better understand who He is. And, of course, that will only further aid our quest to finding our true (not so hidden) identities.

I do hope you’ll invite someone new to join us on this adventure. I believe discovering who we truly are is enormously significant in our growth as believers and necessary to becoming more like Christ. XOXO

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – Gretchen Saffles in her Bible study, Redefined: A Bible Study on Identity in Christ, pp.13-14, 18, 109-110. (As of this writing, it’s on sale! No kickbacks for me — it’s just GOOD STUFF!)
• 2 – Gospel Coalition article on “Man as the Image of God” 
• 3 – Got Questions article on what it means that humanity is made in the image of God
• 4 – Adapted from a quote about Moses on this blog.
• 5 – “Yahweh literally means ‘I am/will be’ or ‘he is/will be.’ It’s a statement of being and existence without qualifiers—without mention of source, origin, or characteristic. Yahweh was, is, and will be. Yahweh wants to be known as the God who listens to his people and acts to bring about liberation. In the Gospel narratives, Jesus refers to himself multiple times by the Greek version of this name, ego eimi, identifying himself as Yahweh.” (Bible Project podcast, “Exodus Scroll” series, episode 1) 
• 6 – Bible Project podcast, “Exodus Scroll” series, episode 10. 
• 7 – These are a few signs of lost, confused, or false identity as documented on this site. Several of these we’ll tackle through this series.
• 8 — James Bryan Smith’s book The Good and Beautiful God (pp.33-35) includes a “Soul Training” exercise at the end of each chapter. His very FIRST soul training is SLEEP. He does a great job of explaining why we should start there with facts and stats about the effects of not enough sleep. It’s a for-real deal!
• The Bible Project video, “Image of God,” is really interesting and helpful!
• This God Questions article helps unpack what is meant by “know thyself” – so helpful.
• We have a new playlist!! Songs always play a significant role in my life and in the life of the Church, so having a playlist for each series not only seems inspiring but significant to our learning and growth. Our Hidden Identities playlist, I’m sure, is incomplete — because we’ll be learning as we go! As it stands, however, it’s off to a great start. Soak it in!!
  • The first song, “Made for More,” leaps right out there with main theme of this post and series: “I know who I am because I know who You are.”
  • I recently added Chris Tomlin’s “Be the Moon” because it so perfectly describes the way we reflect God to others: “You’re the Lord of all Creation, God. You made me in your image, and I’m just a reflection of the love I have been given; If You’re shining on me, I’m shining right back for You. I wanna be the moon.” 
  • And both of these songs capture the awe-factor of our Holy Father. Charity Gayle in “I Speak Jesus” sings with great conviction, “I speak the holy name Jesus.” And, “The Name of the Lord” belts out the truth that “The name of the Lord is holy; let your name be glorified.”
• It’s that time again! If all goes as planned, our September newsletter, The Abiding Life will come out this week. I’ll talk a little more about this identity series, how abiding looks in this crazy season full of moves, and, as always, a few books that have inspired or entertained me. You can subscribe here if you’d like to join in.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

• As we lean into the process of learning more about ourselves — our true identities in Christ — we are going to step into the spiritual practice of REST. Not only has God given us the command for Sabbath, but, as James Bryan Smith points out, “the number one enemy of Christian spiritual formation today is exhaustion.”⁸ And without enough rest in our lives, our bodies suffer. When “our bodies suffer, so do our souls.” So, for the next thirteen weeks, we’ll focus on ways to rest our bodies, minds, and souls.
  • This week it makes sense to start at the beginning, doesn’t it. Let’s sleep more. Maybe we forego a TV show each evening and get to bed earlier. Maybe we take a nap each day — some say 17 minutes is ideal. 😉 And if we’re just not able to sleep no matter how long we’re in bed, maybe it’s time to figure out why — spiritually and physically. James points out that “sleep is an act of surrender” and that gets my attention. When my thoughts won’t stop rolling or my body won’t relax and give in to the healing properties of sleep, I’m learning to stop trying to sleep and go to God. I name my feelings. I name my worries. If I have to sit up and make a list so I can go back to sleep, I do it. I also have learned to have no shame in taking Melatonin — or whatever healthy sleep aid is best for you. Friends, we need our sleep! Here is the list James offers in his book:
    • Go to sleep at a consistent time each night. (Having a bedtime routine helps me, as well).
    • Try not to engage in activities that increase stress (ie: TV, computer, phone) just before bed.
    • Avoid stimulants in the evening.
    • Read, meditate on a psalm, listen to soft music until you feel drowsy. Don’t try to force sleep.
    • If you awaken in the middle of the night, stay in bed. Give your body a chance to fall back asleep.
  • And while it’s not a spiritual practice or rhythm, I invite you to share this site. This is such an important topic that I want as many people as possible to join us here. Together we’ll find support and encouragement and the simple truth that we are not alone in our struggles.

Featured Photo by Mike Moyers at Fine Art America. “All the Bits and Pieces” photo by Zrng N Gharib on Unsplash.
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