Summer Remix Part 5: Identity

All right.

So this is my first time preaching solo, and I'm a little terrified, so bear with me.

But I have the privilege of delivering the final sermon in our old school remix series.

I was supposed to do this last week, but again, we had to pivot, which I think God did on purpose, because I went to a women's conference on Friday night, and I sat there as they preached my sermon to me.

So here we go.

But today we're going to be looking at identity.

We have looked at identity before, but we're going to look at it on how it's given, how labels we've given to ourselves or we have been assigned.

We often associate our identity with our job, our title, what others say.

But today I want to talk about identity a little different by sharing a part of my story and a label that I took on, which is a little scary.

But I also want to talk about how God is redeeming my identity and how He wants to redeem yours too.

I want to start by asking you a question.

Is there something about yourself that you hope other people never find out?

Maybe it's something you've done, maybe it's something that was done to you, or maybe it's a weakness you've spent a lot of time trying to hide.

I think most of us have done it.

And if we're not careful, those things can start to become more than part of our story.

They can start to become the way we define ourselves.

I know because I've done it.

My life hasn't always been easy.

I was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome at a young age.

What that means is my birth mother drank alcohol while she was pregnant with me.

And it affected the development of my brain and the way that I think and learn.

That diagnosis had a significant impact on me as I was growing up.

At the time, the clinical language used around intellectual disabilities included the term mental retardation.

And somewhere along the way, the clinical language became a label on me.

I was called retarded.

And when you hear a label like that enough, especially when you're young, it can start becoming more than something people say about you.

It can be something you believe about yourself.

I started believing I wasn't good enough.

I started believing there were things I simply couldn't do.

But underneath all of that was an even deeper lie.

I believed that I didn't matter.

And if I didn't matter, then what I had to say didn't matter either.

For a long time, that lie affected how I lived.

I learned to question my own abilities.

I learned to rely on other people's voices before trusting my own.

I was even encouraged at times to fake it till you make it.

Instead of being honest about how I learned or what I needed.

But God was teaching me something very different.

God says I do matter.

God says my voice matters.

And God has been calling me to obey Him by actually using the voice he gave me.

Which is part of the reason I'm standing in front of you today.

The power isn't my voice, it's his power activated by my obedience.

I'm still learning this.

I still have moments when the old lie shows back up.

There are still moments when I wonder if I'm gonna say something wrong, sound stupid, or be misunderstood.

But the enemy is an accuser and a liar.

And I am learning that the presence of a lie doesn't mean I have to obey it.

So today I want to ask you to think about your own life.

What is the lie that has been defining you?

And maybe an even harder question is this What has the lie been keeping you from doing?

Because the lies we believe about ourselves have a cost.

They can cost us our freedom.

Not just freedom from something, but freedom for something.

They keep us from obeying God.

And they can keep us from recognizing that God may want to use our story to bring dignity and hope into somebody else's.

Other people do not define you.

The world does not define you.

God does.

What you've done, what's been done to you, and what people have said about you may be part of your story, but it is not who you are.

And if we're going to learn to let God define us, I think there are three truths we need to understand about who we are in Christ.

We are accepted, we are chosen, and we have a purpose.

Before we get into these three truths, I want us to hear the story that is going to guide us today.

It is found in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

Jesus has been in Judea and he is traveling north toward Galilee.

John tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria.

Most Jews didn't want to go through Samaria.

And we'll get into why in just a second.

Geographically, Samaria was the most direct route.

But Jews and Samaritans had generations of religious and cultural hostilities between them.

So traveling through the region carried real tension.

The history matters.

Samaritan and Jews disagreed about where God should be worshipped, and each group viewed the other with suspicion.

Then Jesus arrives at Jacob's well near the Samaritan town of Sakar.

It was about noon.

His disciples have gone into town for food, and a Samaritan woman comes to draw water.

Jesus is a Jewish man, and she is a Jewish woman.

He's also a rabbi.

So, first of all, he's a man, so he shouldn't be talking to a woman.

He's a rabbi.

Rabbis definitely didn't talk to the women.

And he's he's a Jew, and Samaritans and Jews don't get along.

And the expectations of their world, and several reasons this conversation should never have happened.

But Jesus spoke to her anyway.

I want to read the whole conversation before we break it down, because I want you to hear what Jesus says, what she says, and how this encounter unfolds before we start pulling truths out of it.

So John 4, verse 4 through 26.

John 4:4–26

Now he had gone through Samaria, so he came to a town in Samaria called Sakar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well.

It was about noon.

So this is important that it's noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink?

His disciples had gone into town to buy food.

So most of the women came in the cool of the day, but she's coming at noon.

Jesus answered her.

Oh no, the Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman.

How can you ask me for a drink?

For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

Sir, the woman said, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.

Where can you get this living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, and did also his sons and livestock?

Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.

He told her, Go call your husband and come back.

I have no husband, she replied.

Jesus said to her, You are right when you say you have no husband.

The fact is you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.

What you have said is quite true.

Sir, the woman said, I can see that you're a prophet.

Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.

Woman, Jesus replied, Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You Samaritans worship what you do not know.

We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Yet a time is coming, as it has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

For they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.

The woman said, I know that Messiah called Christ is coming.

When he comes, he will explain everything to us.

Then Jesus declared, I, the one speaking to you, am He.

We'll get a little further in the story in just a little bit.

But that is the story I want us to stay in today.

And now I want us to go back through it because in this one encounter, I think we can see the three truths I mentioned a moment ago.

In Christ I am accepted, in Christ I am chosen, and in Christ I have a purpose.

Let's start with this.

In Christ, I am accepted.

Before Jesus ever addresses the complicated parts of this woman's story, notice what he has already done.

He has entered Samaria, he has stopped at the well, he has started a conversation that most people would have been like, we don't do that.

He has asked her for a drink.

He has offered her living water.

He treats her as someone worth speaking to.

Someone capable of talking about God, worship, and eternal life.

He does not treat her like a problem to solve.

He sees her as a person.

The conversation gets painfully personal.

Jesus tells her, Go call your husband and come back.

She answered, I have no husband.

Then Jesus tells her her story.

Yeah, you've had five husbands, and the man you're with now is not your husband.

Now, I want to be careful.

Because the Bible does not tell us what happened in every one of those relationships.

We do not know what choices she made, what was done to her, or all of the circumstances that brought her to that well.

But Jesus does.

Jesus knows the whole story.

He knows the parts she would have regretted.

He knows the parts that have caused her pain.

He knows the parts other people might have used to define her.

And he stays.

Say that again.

He stays.

He keeps talking to her.

Now, this woman would have been judged.

People would have whispered about her, people would have talked to her.

This is why I said it was important she came at noon.

She didn't come with the other woman, women.

Because her story was, people most likely judged her for it.

But Jesus doesn't reduce her to the worst things in her story.

He doesn't say, you're the woman with five failed marriages.

He doesn't say, you're too broken for me.

He doesn't say, come back when you get yourself together.

He tells her the truth.

But he tells her the truth while remaining present with her.

And I think some of us need to understand that about Jesus.

Jesus already knows.

You're not hiding anything from him.

He knows your story top to bottom.

He made you.

He knows where you're struggling right now.

And he still invites you into relationship with him.

That's what I mean when I say we're accepted in Christ.

Acceptance doesn't mean everything on our lives is okay.

It doesn't mean sin doesn't matter.

It doesn't mean we never need to repent, learn, heal, or change.

Actually, I think Jesus loves us too much to leave us exactly where he found us.

There's a difference between Jesus saying, I love you, come follow me and let me transform you, and shame saying, You are so messed up that Jesus could never want you.

Those are not the same voice.

Conviction draws you back to Jesus.

Shame pushes you away.

Conviction says, this needs to change.

Come back to me.

Shame says, you're the problem, hide.

And some of us have spent years hiding because we confused shame with God's voice.

We think because we failed, God must be disgusted with us.

We think because we have problems, God must be disappointed in us.

We think because healing isn't finished, we must not be good enough yet.

But look again at Jesus at the well.

He knows her and he stays.

Not after she explains everything, not after she fixes her life, not after she proves she deserves the conversation.

Jesus meets her right there.

That's grace.

And I've had to learn what that means for me too.

For much of my life, I felt like an outsider.

I often felt like nothing I did was quite right.

Because of my diagnosis and some of the ways I learned differently, I came to believe that maybe other people were more capable than I was.

Maybe other people's judgment was safer than mine.

And then, God blessed me with my husband.

One of the things my husband began telling me was, I want your voice.

I want you to participate.

I don't want you to be a shadow behind me.

I believed him, but I was also afraid.

Because what happens if I make the wrong decision?

What happens if I mess up?

And underneath that was an even deeper fear.

What happens if I mess up enough that he made the wrong decision?

He realizes he made the wrong decision in marrying me.

That was a hard one.

But over and over again, even when we go around the mountain a few times, because we have a joke with a grain of truth in it, his brain thinks XYZ, I think Z Y X.

So sometimes we go around the mountain and we get right back where we started because I finally understood it.

But he has continued to tell me I'm not going anywhere.

That safety gave me room to take risks.

And I've been learning that my relationship with Jesus has an even deeper security.

I can get something wrong and come back.

I can repent.

I can learn.

I can grow.

I don't have to live as if one wrong decision is going to erase my value.

Because my acceptance isn't based on getting everything right.

It's based on Jesus.

That's why I like one of our values here at Salt and White as well.

It says, what happens on a Sunday can be fixed on a Monday.

So take the risk.

Just like with Jesus, it's not based on me, things can be fixed, it's based on Jesus.

That brings us to the second truth.

In Christ, I am chosen.

John 4 shows us something powerful here, too.

Jesus doesn't merely tolerate this woman long enough to point out what is wrong in her life.

He continues the conversation.

She asks him a serious theological question about worship, and he answers her.

Then she says, I know that Messiah is coming.

And Jesus tells her, I, the one speaking to you, I am He.

I'm the Messiah.

Think about who's standing there with Jesus.

This makes it make, gives us a revelation.

She's a Samaritan, she's a woman, someone whose story could have made religious people decide she was the wrong person for a serious conversation about God.

But Jesus has already chosen to see her, to speak with her, tell her the truth, and reveal himself to her.

He treats her as someone capable of receiving what he has to give.

I don't mean that she is chosen because she is better than everybody else, or that Jesus only came for her.

I mean that all the reasons people might have used to exclude her did not exclude her from Jesus.

She is not invisible to him.

She is not disqualified from encountering him.

And for those of us who are in Christ, the rest of Scripture gives that belonging a name.

Chosen.

God chooses us in Christ and adopted us into his family through Jesus.

Think about that word for a moment.

Chosen.

For some of us, that's a difficult word.

We understand tolerated.

We understand overlooked.

We might even understand forgiven.

But chosen?

That's a little harder.

Maybe you've spent your life feeling like the person standing on the outside.

Maybe other people were chosen first.

Maybe you've wondered whether there was something about you that made you harder to love.

But scripture gives followers of Jesus a different identity.

You belong to him.

You are his.

That means my belonging to Jesus isn't as fragile as my emotions sometimes make it feel.

Life can change.

People's opinions can change.

I can have a good day or a terrible day, but God's love isn't changing every five minutes based on my performance.

I need that truth because when someone questions my capability, I still have a reaction.

Sometimes I get angry.

Sometimes I shrink back and start guessing myself.

And then eventually I get angry again.

Maybe you've done that too.

Someone says something about you, and immediately you either shrink under their opinion or you decide, I'll show you.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to show you I can.

But I've started realizing something.

Both responses are still giving that person too much authority.

If I shrink back because of what you said, your voice is defining me.

If I spend my life trying to prove you wrong, your voice is still defining me.

Freedom looks different.

Freedom sounds like this isn't what Christ told me about who I am.

I belong to him.

I'm going to listen to him, and I'm going to obey him.

Now that doesn't mean that other people don't have wisdom for us.

Please hear me clearly.

We need community.

We need correction.

We need mentors, counselors, pastors, friends, and people who love us enough to tell us the truth.

I have a counselor.

I have mentors.

I have trusted people who are incredibly important.

But there's a difference between receiving wisdom.

And surrendering your identity.

Other people can speak into your life.

They do not get to define your life.

God does.

And sometimes we take something real and attach a lie to it.

I messed up.

Therefore, God can't use me.

I have problems.

Therefore, God doesn't love me.

People have said I can't, therefore it must be true.

But the conclusion doesn't automatically follow from the circumstance.

There are things I struggle with because of fetal alcohol syndrome.

That's real.

There are ways I learn differently.

That's real.

There are times when I need something explained differently or need support in a particular way.

That's real.

But I've learned an important distinction.

Having a limitation does not mean I'm incapable.

Sometimes it means I have to do something differently.

I remember being encouraged at one of my jobs to actually tell people how I learned best.

For someone who had been taught to fake it till you make it, that was scary.

But I explained how I learned and what would help me succeed.

And you know what happened?

It helped.

Being honest didn't make me less capable, it helped me become more successful.

And that was another place where God began challenging the lie.

My diagnosis is part of my story, but it is not who I am.

And maybe there's something in your life you need to say that about today.

This happened to me, but it's not who I am.

I did this, but it's not who I am.

I struggle with this, but it is not who I am.

Because if you are in Christ, your deepest identity is rooted in him.

You are accepted, you are chosen.

And then we get to the third point.

In Christ, I have a purpose.

The passage we read ends in verse 26, with Jesus doing something remarkable.

He tells this Samaritan woman plainly that he is the Messiah.

He has crossed the barriers.

He has told her the truth about her life.

He has spoken with her about worship.

And now he entrusts her with the truth of who he is.

But John does not leave her story at the well.

If you keep reading, you immediately see what this encounter produces in her.

She leaves her water jar, goes back to the town, and tells the people to come and see Jesus.

She does not suddenly have all the answers.

She does not go back with a theological theology degree or a polished testimony.

She simply knows what she has encountered.

Someone who knew her story and still spoke life to her.

And she uses her voice to point other people toward him.

And people came.

A few verses after the passage we read in John.

John tells us that many Samaritans from the town believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony.

Our testimonies are important.

We are not spectators in the kingdom of God.

He wants to use us for something.

Then they came to Jesus themselves, asked him to stay with him, and many more believed because they heard him for themselves.

Her testimony was not the destination.

Jesus was.

But God used her voice to bring people to him.

The woman could have reduced her history.

Excuse me.

The woman could have been reduced to her history, but she becomes a witness.

The story Jesus already knew becomes part of the story she is willing to tell.

She was accepted in his presence.

She was chosen to receive his truth.

And then her life immediately has a purpose, and she carried that truth back to other people.

Because purpose doesn't begin with me proving how impressive I am.

Purpose begins with God.

He made us, he saves us, he forms us, and then he invites us to participate in what he's doing.

I think sometimes as Christians we hear the word purpose and we make it too big.

We think purpose must mean a platform.

Purpose must mean becoming a pastor.

Purpose must mean God is going to send me across the world to do something dynamic.

Maybe he will.

But purpose can also look very ordinary.

It can look like being faithful at work.

It can look like investing in one person who needs you.

It can look like noticing the person in front of you.

And it can look like responding when God prompts you.

What makes something significant isn't always its size.

Sometimes it's simply obedience.

I remember training someone at a job once.

They weren't very there very long.

I didn't think much of our interaction after they left.

But later I happened to be visiting someone somewhere else, and I bumped into that person.

They told me that I was one of the nicest people they had met and that I had made a significant impact on them.

I had no idea.

I didn't think I was doing something important.

I was just doing my job and treating somebody kindly.

But that movement moment gave me hope because one of the biggest lies I had believed was you don't matter.

And here was someone telling me without even knowing the battle happening inside me, you mattered to me.

It made me realize that God can use us even when we don't know He's doing it.

Some of you may already have had an impact that you don't see.

You may never know about the conversation.

Somebody remembered.

You may never know how much your kindness mattered.

You may never know what happened because you chose to obey God in a moment that felt completely ordinary.

That's why I don't want you to hear God has a purpose for you and become afraid.

I want you to become excited.

God can use you right where you are.

And that's why the Samaritan woman's story hits me so deeply.

Jesus knew her story.

And somehow, instead of his knowledge causing her to hide, her encounter with him gave her courage to speak.

The very story that could have silenced her became part of her testimony.

Her voice didn't save the town, Jesus did.

But her voice helped point people toward him.

Her voice mattered.

And I think about that because my biggest lie has been, your voice doesn't matter.

And what would have happened if she believed that?

What if she thought they know my story, who I am?

How can I tell them anything about God?

What if she had gone home and stayed silent?

She would have missed the opportunity to participate in what Jesus was doing.

That's why I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the lies we believed don't only affect us.

Sometimes there are people on the other side of our obedience.

Your story may help someone else begin to heal.

Your invitation may help someone take one step toward Jesus.

Your obedience may matter in ways you will never completely see.

Your story isn't something you have to hide.

God can redeem even the parts you wish you could erase.

He can use what he has done in you to bring dignity and hope to someone else.

That doesn't mean you have to tell everybody everything.

Wisdom matters.

Boundaries matter.

Some things belong in safe places with trusted people.

But shame should not be the thing deciding whether you ever tell the truth.

You don't have to wait until you're completely healed before you obey.

That has been important for me to understand.

I'm still on this journey.

There were a lot of hard struggles in my childhood.

But one good thing I remember being told was that I could overcome, and that I did not have to be defined by other people or by my diagnosis.

God has done healing in me, but I still have healing to do.

And yet he has healed me enough that when he says, use your voice, I'm becoming willing to say yes.

When he says, take the risk, I'm becoming willing to take the risk.

I don't have to wait until I'm never afraid again.

I can obey while I'm still growing.

Now, when I talk about purpose and obedience, there's one thing I think gets in the way more than almost anything else, and that's fear.

Fear tells us you're not qualified.

Fear tells us you're going to fail.

Fear tells us people are going to misunderstand you.

That last one is big for me.

I can be afraid that I won't sound right.

I can be afraid that somebody will misunderstand what I'm trying to say.

I can be afraid of rejection.

That doesn't mean as Christians we never feel afraid.

I'm standing here preaching my first solo sermon.

Trust me.

Fear can still show up.

The question is not whether fear shows up.

And it's not whether fear speaks.

The question is whether fear gets to lead.

And I think someone needs to hear this.

Maybe the thing defining you isn't something somebody did to you.

Maybe it really is something you did.

Maybe you failed.

Maybe you sinned.

Maybe you hurt somebody.

Repent.

Bring it to Jesus.

Make things right.

But don't build a house in your failure and decide you have to live there forever.

You don't have to remain in your sin.

You don't have to remain in your shame.

Come back to Jesus.

Because conviction draws us toward Jesus.

Shame tells us to hide from him.

But Jesus is still calling people to follow him.

And I'm learning that when I believe God is asking me to do something, I have to trust that he will give me what I need to obey him.

I may not feel qualified.

I may not know exactly what happens next, but I can still say yes.

And I was reminded Friday night.

God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called.

God, you're asking me to do this?

Okay, I'm scared.

But yes, let's see what you can do.

Because it's not me.

It's Him through me.

I think some of us have lost that sense of adventure with God because we've become so focused on whether we're good enough.

What if the question isn't, am I good enough?

What if the question is, is God trustworthy?

What if instead of asking, do I have everything I need?

We begin asking, God, what are you asking me to do with what you've already given me?

Because purpose isn't about becoming somebody else.

It's about becoming increasingly faithful with the person God has created you to bring to be.

One last time.

She came to the well carrying a water jar, but she left carrying a testimony.

Jesus knew what was behind her, but he also showed her that her past did not have the authority to decide what came next.

In his presence, she was accepted.

In his presence, she was seen and chosen.

And because she encountered him, she had a purpose.

That is what I want you to hear today.

Your past may be part of your story, but it does not get to define you.

Other people's words may have shaped you, but they do not get the final word.

Your fear may still speak, but it does not have the lead.

God gets to define you.

So I want you to leave you with three questions.

What lie or label have you allowed to define you?

What is Jesus saying is true about you?

And if you really believe him, what would obedience look like next?

Surrendering those lies to God isn't a one-and-done thing.

I wish it were.

Sometimes I have to just surrender the lie, my voice doesn't matter.

Again tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the next day.

But every time the lie comes back, I can bring it back under the truth of what God has said, and I can choose to live from the truth even before my feelings catch up.

We're gonna respond.

I'm gonna have a Pat and Michelle come back up.

They're gonna play and sing the song Made for More.

Because you were made for more than the labels and the lies that are on you.

As they play the song, I want you to bring those three questions before God.

Name the lie, listen for his truth, and ask him what obedience looked like.

And if you need help doing that, we'll have some people to pray with you.

You were made for more than living under a label that Jesus that Jesus never gave you.

You were made to belong to him, to be transformed by him, and to participate in what he is doing.

So as we worship, let God define you.

I was calling a race back to I wasn't made to be a grave I was calling all in a race back to I forget.

I was made for made a beat and then a grave I was called by forget I was made for made to be sent in a grave I was called Bone and Race back to my forget I was made for me for so bake me, bake me, you want me to be okay with me.

The soil now surrender you are breaking new ground in the crushing, in the pressing, you will make in the soil now surrender.

You will break in new ground so wait until you careful hand when I trust you.

I don't need to understand.

Make me your vessel, make me an offering, make me whatever you want me to be.

I came here with nothing, but all you have given me, Jesus bring you one out of me.

Jesus bring new one out of me in the crushing, in the pressing, you are making new one in the soil now surrender.

You are breaking new ground, you are breaking new ground, so make me a vessel, make me an offering, make me whatever you want me to be.

I came here with nothing, but all you have given me Jesus bring new wine out of me.

Cause where there is no one, there is no power, there is freedom, the kingdom is here, I lay down my old flay to carry a new fate Cause where there is no one there is new power, there is freedom, the kingdom is here, lay down the old flame and give me a new fruit yes Lord, just thank you for the fact that when we choose to become your disciple, you call us into our true identity.

That the names and the labels that we have given ourselves, the names and labels that have been given to us that rule our lives, don't complete our story.

Even the song that we're singing about doing something new, we get to continually do that.

That every time we come together at the altar, every time we get into your word, every time we sing a song, you are making us new.

That's what you did on the cross is to make all things new.

Forgive us for the times that we have chosen to stay in that old place because it's comfortable.

Stayed in that old place because we think we don't deserve better.

Help us to move into those new places.

Give us courage to move forward.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, I know that we still have uh some people praying, but what I want what I actually do right now is Blake, can you come up here?

I want to actually pray for you.

Just come around here up front.