Transcript
Now, there are only two places to look for identity. You look for it vertically or you look for it horizontally. It is absolutely true that every person in a leadership community is functioning in that community and ministering out of some form of identity. We are meaning-makers. We're rational human beings made in the image of God and one of the ways we make sense out of our lives is by assigning to ourselves identity.
Daddy Is a Boy, Mommy Is a Girl
My granddaughter walks into the room when she was three years old. She says, "Daddy, I'm a girl. You're not a girl, you're a boy. Daddy's a boy. Mommy's not a boy, mommy's a girl. Grandma's a girl," and she walks out of the room. Now, that's identity stuff. She's making sense out of her world by telling herself who she is.
Now, there are only two places to look for identity. You look for it vertically or you look for it horizontally. One of the beauties of new life in Christ is Christ is our identity. We get our identity, our sense of meaning and purpose, our deepest sense of inner well-being from Him.
And so, we don't have to shop horizontally to get our identity; but I'm afraid, often, in the process of ministry and identity, change exchange takes place where identity in Christ gets exchanged now for identity in ministry. I look to ministry to tell me who I am.
That will always produce bad things. That will produce fear. That will produce pride. That will produce a desire for greater control. That will cause me to take credit for things I could have never earned or produced on my own. That will cause me to be a little bit concerned about the rise of the gift of somebody else in the ministry community. It will cause me to be too competitive. What I'm saying is it will cause me to be spiritually unhealthy. Ministry is not where you get your identity. You get that identity from Jesus and that frees you from the psychosis of looking at it horizontally.
