Ministering: Pastor Walter Ekelemu
Topic: I Know Who I Am
Text: 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV, TPT), Galatians 2:20 (TPT)
The greatest challenge man has ever faced is an identity crisis. What is your identity? If you understand who you are in Christ, you will realize that your identity is more than your nationality or ethnicity. Identity is critical because it defines who you are. Your identity can either promote or restrict you. If you don’t understand your identity, you will deny yourself the privileges you are entitled to.
Ecclesiastes 10:7 (NKJV) exemplifies what is at stake when you don’t understand your identity. Therefore, it is imperative to understand who you are. Identity confers on you, your rights and privileges.
Identity shapes your life. It affects your character, thoughts, and perception of who you are. If your actions differ from the person you identify with, then there is a problem. In Luke 15, the prodigal son acted based on the knowledge of who his father was. When he left his father, he forgot his identity and became someone he wasn’t meant to be. His liberation was a function of the realization of his identity.
Do you understand the identity of whom you carry?
If your vision is limited to the surrounding things, you tend to live beneath your capabilities. The reason man has dominion is that he is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26 NKJV). Dominion is a function of identity. As long as you are like God, you have dominion. You are a God-man, with no restriction on what you can accomplish because you have His identity!
Without God, man is merely a natural element, vulnerable to what the enemy throws at him. Having the identity of God shields man against the attacks of the enemy. When God took man out of the Garden of Eden, it was not done with the intention to punish man but to reconcile man to Himself and protect him from eternal condemnation (John 1:1, 4, 12, & 14 MSG).
Before Jesus came for the redemption of man, there was the sacrifice of animals. These sacrifices could not take away the sins of man. Jesus had to come as the sacrificial lamb and become the sin that man committed, so man could become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21 NKJV).
If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. You have been born again with a new start because old things have passed away. You have a new identity. The qualification for you to be a new creation is to be in Christ. When you are in union with Christ, you can do anything He can do. Your life is in Him, and His life is in you. If Christ cannot fail, you cannot fail!
You are the representative of Jesus because, as He is, so are you on earth (1 John 4:17 TPT).
Reasons you don’t function in the capacity of who you are in Christ:
1. You cannot operate in a realm you have no understanding of. You must gain the knowledge of who you are (Hosea 8:10 NKJV & Daniel 11:32 NKJV).
2. You must nurture the nature of God. You must develop the nature of God through prayer.
