Imposter Syndrome – Image Bearers

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

One other thing.

Today is the first Sunday of June, which is officially the first Sunday after Memorial Day, which means this it's officially summer at Access, everybody.

So fun.

Kids are out of school, driving parents crazy, and it's the most wonderful time of the year.

And on summertime, we do things a little differently around access.

This is fun.

Throughout the year, in spring and fall, especially, those are big growth seasons for the church.

And so in those seasons of the year, we intentionally preach messages that are aimed to help grow the church.

Now, why do we want to grow the church?

This is important for you to understand.

It's because people, your friends, your neighbors, your family members, people matter to God.

But in the summer, we always take a book of the Bible and we dig deep, deep, deep into the book of the Bible because we want to grow you.

The church needs to grow because people matter to God, and you need to grow because you matter to God.

And can I tell you the funniest thing that happens every year?

Every year in the spring and fall, when we we preach through the Bible, we grow the church.

And then we preach in the summer through like a book of the Bible and we grow you, which grows the church.

It's the weirdest thing, but that's what always happens.

So this year, this summer, we're kicking off today a seven-week series of messages going chapter by chapter through one of my favorite books in the Bible, the book of Ephesians.

Now we're calling the series imposter syndrome.

It's going to be a lot of fun, and I'll kind of tease this out in just a moment.

But the book of Ephesians has six chapters in it.

So I want to start with the challenge.

Every single week, I want to challenge every single person in our church to read through the book of Ephesians.

It's really easy.

Monday read chapter 1, Tuesday read chapter 2, Wednesday read chapter 3, Thursday, chapter 4, Friday, chapter 5, Saturday, surprise, chapter 6, and then come to church on Sunday and let's do this together.

Now the book of Ephesians is six books, six chapters, but we're going to stretch this into seven weeks because on the seventh Sunday, this is fun, in Revelation chapter two, Jesus Himself speaks to the same church that Paul is writing in the city of Ephesus.

So we're going to dig into some Revelation 2.

It's going to get spicy, everybody.

It's going to be a fun series.

And let me challenge you with this.

I understand how summer works.

I love summer.

Take vacations, visit the beach, go to Disney, do all of those summer things.

But if you can, make it a priority to be in God's house and let's grow together as we dig into one of my favorite books in the Bible.

Check this out.

Scholars call the book of Ephesians the crown jewel of the New Testament.

One scholar I read said this, he calls it the Grand Canyon of the New Testament, and here's why.

Because in it, Paul is going to talk about how deep, how wide, and how great is God's love for us.

And here's my prayer for every single person that when you leave this series, you walk out different.

That your relationship with God is completely changed.

Your shoulders are back, and you walk with a new sense of holy confidence because God is going to change us through this series as we dig into His Word together.

Let's get after it, okay?

Uh, to get us started today, several years ago, I got this big life insurance policy for myself.

Now, the reason I did this is for months I had put off all of these things, and I put all of these things you have to do to get yourself ready in case something were to happen to you.

I did it all in one day, and I called it my death day.

And it was a really brutal day, everybody.

I got all my ducks in a row if something were to happen to me.

And I got a big, big life insurance policy, so big that I will not walk down the stairs in front of my wife.

I have hidden all sharp objects in the house.

I don't I sleep with one eye open, everybody.

And um, so I got this big life insurance policy.

And when you get a big life insurance policy, they always send a nurse or a doctor to do a medical check to make sure that you're well.

Like you're not trying to, you know, defraud them or something.

And so when I when I had the initial phone call, they said, here's how this works.

The nurse will come and verify everything, but let us take some of your stats.

So they ask me my age, they ask me my birth date, they ask me my my height, they ask me my weight, and all these details.

And the salesperson goes, All right, listen, I got some good news and some bad news.

The good news is at your height and your weight, you are very, very close to getting our top tier.

It's the gold preferred status.

And I'm like, I like golden, I like being preferred.

What does it mean?

He goes, Listen, if you can drop six pounds, it will put you in the top tier.

So you the medical test isn't for two weeks, so why don't you try to lose six pounds?

And I love a good challenge, everybody.

So I ate so clean, I exercised every day.

I did everything I possibly could to lose the weight.

And the weight that determines the tier you're in is based on your height.

And so if you're 5'10, you get a certain level.

If you're 5'11, you get a little bit more weight.

That's how it works.

So it's the day of the medical test.

I have been dieting, I am looking snatched, everybody.

I'm looking real good.

I'm clean, I'm tight, everything's good.

And the nurse comes over and she takes my blood and she takes my all the different measurements she needs, and she goes, All right, it's it's the moment of truth.

It's time to measure you and to get your weight.

I said, Let me run to the restroom one last time.

I'm talking like a trying to drop weight like a wrestler.

Now, here's what you need to know.

My whole life, I have been five foot ten.

Actually, not true.

I was 19 and a half inches at birth and I hit a growth spurt, and I have been 5'10 since then.

And I come out and she measures me, and when she measures me, she measures me at 5'10 and a half.

And she goes, We will round you up to 5'11.

And I was like, talk dirty to me.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, she's proud of that.

And then um the good news of 5'11 was it gave me a little bit more weight in the weight game to play with, and I knew I was gonna pass at this point.

I was so excited about it.

5'11, that felt good.

I've only always been 5'10, I'm always 5'10, but today I was 5'11.

And then the nurse goes, Hang on one second.

She pulled the paper out, she read through it, and she goes, It doesn't say here anywhere that you can't wear shoes.

If you want to run up and throw on a pair of shoes, maybe we can squeeze you up another one.

And I was like, Okay.

And I ran up to my closet and I got the thickest sneakers I had.

Any sneaker guys?

Nike Air Max 90s, that puts a solid inch on you.

Came back downstairs, measured 5'11 and a half, and she rounded me up to six foot, baby.

I was proud of that.

I was real proud.

So naturally, I picked up the phone and FaceTimed my wife with the nurse president, and I said, Um, girl, you must be so proud of yourself.

How does it feel to have landed a six foot tall, tall, dark, and handsome man like me?

Said, actually, almost none of those words are true, but your boy measured at six foot today.

Now, okay, I want you to play a game with me for just a moment.

Imagine that even though I've been 5'10 forever and ever and ever, imagine I started believing the lie that I was actually six foot.

And everywhere I went, I worked it into conversation.

How are you?

How's the family?

Yeah, I'm six foot.

Like, imagine I did that.

At some point, someone's going to call me out on it, aren't they?

Have you ever seen the videos on social media where they go up to guys that look like kind of tools, you know, and they're like, Yeah, how tall are you?

And they're like, six, three, and they measure them and they're like 5'11.

Guys lie about this stuff.

Like, if I lied about it and believed that I was actually six foot, for every single day and every conversation that it came up, I would know in my heart that I'm a fraud.

That it's not actually true about me.

And all of us kind of live at some point or another in our lives feeling like I have to protect the you that the me that you can see, because there's this fear in me that if you actually knew me, I would be exposed as a fraud.

That if you really knew me, you couldn't possibly love me.

And so we live with something called imposter syndrome.

It's this sense of like hiding and faking and feeling like you couldn't possibly know the real truth about me.

I'm an imposter, I'm a fraud, I'm not real.

According to the American Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 70% of Americans at any given time are living with this imposter syndrome.

And this affects all of our friendships, it affects all of our relationships.

But in this series, I want to look at it how it affects our relationship with God.

You see, God created us a certain way.

And here's the thing that I need you to understand today.

If we're gonna rewire and reunderstand how God made us, we have to go back to the original source.

And if you fall asleep today or have to leave early for some reason, let me just jump ahead and say this to you.

The only one that has permission to name you and label you is the one who created you.

And the funny thing about life is we live under the labels and the opinions of so many people.

We we live under the words spoken over us, we live under our worst failures, we live under our shame, we live under our abuse, we live under the worst moments of our life, and sometimes those words have a tendency of making the 18-inch journey from our minds to our hearts and taking root, and we live as imposters.

But the only one who can truly label you is the one who made you.

So Genesis chapter 1, we'll start in the beginning of the Bible.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

God creates the world, he speaks it into existence, and in verse 27 it says, So God created mankind in his own image.

It wasn't clear, he repeats himself.

In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.

I want you to understand that the whole Bible is littered with language that speaks to your identity.

And from the beginning of the Bible, it's clear that your identity and my identity is that we are image-bearers of God.

Created in God's image.

The funny thing about life is life has this way of coming in and distorting the actual picture that we have.

Life has this way of coming in and trying to re-identify us.

We live in a world and a culture where the general belief of our culture is you can be anything you want, you can identify as anything that you want.

And this is a really detrimental way to think because there is either truth or there is not truth.

And we believe as followers of Jesus that God's truth, God's word, is the final word, that God has the final voice, the final authority.

There's all different things that will compete for your identity.

All different language, all different words, all different things that are spoken over you that will compete for your identity.

But I want you to see this today when it comes to your identity, who you actually are.

Your identity is the truest thing about you.

Now, if we were to ask you a question, if I were to say, what are some true things about you?

You might list off lots of true things.

Your height is true, your weight is true, uh, what you like to eat, your favorite food is true, your hair color, that could be true, but there's lots of things that are true for you.

But your identity is the thing that's actually the truest.

Of all the things that are true, it's the truest thing about you.

And when you can understand this, now you understand to whom Paul is writing the letter of Ephesians.

Paul was in prison in Rome and he writes this letter to a church in a city called Ephesus.

I'll tell you more about them, but they were this proud group of people who lived on the western coast of modern day Turkey.

And he writes this letter that's all about your identity.

It's about re-like it's about fixing all the misconceptions you and I might have about our identity.

And here's how he writes the letter.

It's six chapters.

Chapters one, two, and three are about who you are.

Chapters four, five, and six are about how you should live.

And I want you to understand that this language matters, the order matters.

One, two, and three are about who you are.

He starts with your identity first, and then he deals with how you live, or he deals with your behavior.

And here's what I want you to understand that's so important.

A lot of churches get this backwards.

A lot of churches talk about your behavior.

You gotta fix your behavior, you gotta work harder, do more, give more, serve more.

You gotta like behave, behave, behave.

And behavior modification is good a little bit, but it never produces lasting change.

Like I can prove it to you.

Like, how many of you have started a New Year's resolution or you set a goal for yourself and you didn't quite hit it?

Anybody wanna be honest about this?

Like at the end of April, I was like, man, I've gained a few pounds.

I need to do something.

I literally wrote down in my phone a diet plan for myself for the month of May, and my goal in May was to create my own May cover.

I'm like, I'm gonna make money on this thing, I'm gonna sell it to people, may cover, and I was gonna lose 10 pounds in the month of May.

I tried to modify my behavior, and here I am on June 1st to report to you.

My goal was to lose 10 pounds in the month of May, and by the grace of God, I'm only 15 pounds away from that, everybody.

I'm gonna get there.

You understand this?

Behavior modification only moderately or temporarily helps.

Unless you identify and fix the identity issues, you'll never like create lasting change.

Here's why identity determines behavior.

Your behavior flows from your identity, and when you get this backwards, it messes everything up.

A different way to say it is who you are determines what you do.

Who you are determines what you do.

So, like as the parenting tip to parents in the room, don't just focus on behavior, set the bar for who your children actually are.

Like my children know, we're the Burns family.

Like it doesn't matter how people treat us or what they do, we live at this standard.

I don't just work on trying to modify behavior, we set the standard high of who they actually are.

Now, when you understand this, now you understand the letter of Ephesians.

Paul writes to this church in a city called Ephesus that's got all kinds of issues.

There's all kinds of sexual immorality, all kinds of problems, all sorts of like this cultural misappropriation of like this belief that that like that their nationalism, where they're from, is the most important thing.

And to them he writes this letter.

We're gonna read a bunch of verses today.

We'll start with verse 1, Ephesians 1, verse 1.

Ephesians 1:1

Paul, author of this book, author of like half of the New Testament.

An apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God's holy people in Ephesus.

We'll come back to those four words.

The faithful in Christ Jesus, he says, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

He literally starts with these four words that are identity words.

He says, To God's holy people.

Well, these people who are reading it are brand new followers of Jesus.

They've got all kinds of issues and sin issues.

And he says, that might be who you were, but that's not who you are.

He gives them a new label to live by.

You're God's holy people in Ephesus.

This is the city in which they lived, and this was important to them.

And I want you to see this in a moment.

We're gonna read about 11 verses, and nine times in 11 verses, Paul's gonna use a little two-word phrase or a very simple derivation of those two words that literally are the definition of your identity.

Okay, like if you're a fall asleep person, you're gonna miss it.

According to Paul and according to the Bible, this is your identity.

Here it is, ready two words.

You are in Christ.

Because it's in Christ or in relationship with Jesus, everything changes.

I want to read you 11 verses, way more than I normally read, but pay attention to the language and then the promise that's connected to every one of the phrases.

We'll start with verse 3.

He says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

The blessings come from being in Christ.

For he chose us in him, God chose us, before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one or in Christ he loves.

In him or in Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he has lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth, and under Christ, in him, in Christ.

We were also chosen, big word, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.

And you also were included in Christ.

When you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

One more.

He says, When you believed, you were marked in him with the seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory.

A lot of verses, a lot of words.

Let's take a few minutes and unpack it because I want you to leave different than you came today.

I want you to leave with a sense of holy confidence that you are not who you once were.

You are not what's been spoken over you, but because of what Jesus did, you have a new identity and it is in Christ.

Give your message notes, pull those out.

If you don't write on your arm or find a place to write, I want you to write these down.

Ready?

In Christ, number one, we are chosen.

Alright, I'm gonna take you back to a painful moment.

Anybody remember like middle school PE or recess?

We're gonna play kickball.

We're gonna have two teams and we pick two captains, and they pick people based on their ability.

Come on, anybody remember this?

Is this like triggering for somebody?

And you just stand there in the line and you just wait for your name to be called.

And you look down the line, you're like, that kid's better than me, but I'm way better than that kid.

And that kid's got a booger hanging out of his nose.

I'm better than that kid.

Like, we rank ourselves in the list, right?

And a lot of us think that this is like how it is with God.

But I want you to know you don't have to wait for your name to be called.

You've already been chosen.

We live in this world where where there's a lot of language around our identity that feels fluid.

It doesn't feel like it's truth and that's binary, it feels fluid.

And so what tends to happen for a lot of us is we think that we choose our identity.

That's the message of culture, but that that's not the message of scripture.

The message of scripture is that you have been chosen by God.

The God who spoke the world into existence chose you and invites you into his family.

It's beautiful.

Here's the second piece of your identity.

In Christ, we are holy and blameless.

And this one's funny to me because we don't see this one in the mirror.

Like we look at the mirror and we see and we know our true self.

We know our mistakes, we know our shortcomings, we know the areas we've messed up.

And when we look at ourselves, we don't see that we are holy and blameless.

Why does this matter?

Because, first of all, when you've made the decision to follow Jesus, you take on his identity, and when God sees you according to Scripture, He sees His Son in you.

You've been made holy.

And then the whole blameless thing's weird to us because the thing is, a lot of us we can't stop blaming ourselves, and blame leads to two outcomes.

Blame leads to shame, which often leads to anger, and if you find yourself as an angry person, anger is always a secondary emotion that you should trace back.

Often it's to blame and shame.

Or blame causes us to run and hide.

It's the Adam and Eve syndrome.

It's like we we hide because we think if you really knew me, God, there's no way that you could possibly love me.

And this is funny to me because for so many of us, we live our lives looking over our shoulder.

I heard the story this week in the news of a man in Missouri in 1999.

He was arrested after robbing a Burger King store, stole$2,000 in cash.

The manager took a picture of his license plate, they caught him a few hours later.

He was taken to court, and there in court he was found guilty and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

So his lawyer worked out a deal where he could go home for a couple days, get his affairs in order, and he went home.

And a few days later, he was scheduled to be picked up by the police and taken to prison, and he was home by himself and the police didn't show up.

Then the next day came and they didn't show up again.

The next day came and the next day, pretty soon it was a week and the police didn't show.

A week turned into two weeks, two weeks turned into a month.

And the man called his lawyer and he's like, Bro, what do I do?

Like, they haven't come and gotten me.

And the lawyer said, You don't have to turn yourself in, you just wait and be good.

One month turned into two, two months into six, six months into a year.

And pretty soon nobody came to get him, so he just decided to live his life.

And he got married and had a kid, got divorced, got married again.

He got jobs, he got parking tickets where they ran his driver's license and nobody picked him up.

He literally started multiple business, which means you have to file paperwork with the state, and nobody picked him up.

In fact, he literally turned his life around so much that he started a program to help troubled teenagers to not get in the problems he got himself into.

And then on the 13th anniversary of the day he was to be checked into prison, the police knocked at his door.

They had made a clerical error, and they only realized it on the day that they thought he should be released.

When they saw his name, they realized he wasn't there.

And they took him in and they said, You still have to serve your 13 years in prison.

I want you to imagine this.

This guy's name was Mike Anderson.

Imagine you're Mike.

And for 13 years, every single day you're looking over your shoulder.

Every single day you're worried about what could be said about you.

You're worried that one simple incident could lead to an investigation which could lead to you going to prison.

Imagine living like that.

The story goes on to say that his lawyer took him back to court and said, Listen, he he didn't serve 13 years, but he's been good.

He's turned his life around.

The judge agreed and said, based on the time you've served and the way you've radically changed your life, we're literally communicating your sentence, you are a free man.

You don't have to serve your time.

Okay.

This is a beautiful picture, in my opinion, of what you and I get to experience.

As believers in Jesus.

If Jesus has saved you and forgived you, you don't have to keep looking over your shoulder anymore.

You have been made holy and blameless in Jesus' sight.

How amazing is that! Number three, what Paul says is in Christ we are adopted.

Now you want to get your boy emotional?

Show me a video of a family that is obviously a blended family, and they're sitting around and they they give their kid a gift, and the kid opens the gift and sees what the gift says.

Have you ever seen one of these?

And the gift says, We want to adopt you as our very own daughter or our very own son.

Kids break down in tears, mom and dad hug them.

It's one of the greatest gifts that you can ever give in this life is to adopt someone who is not a part of your biological family into your actual family.

And this is one of the pictures that Paul says in Christ, this is who we are.

Invited, chosen by God to be a part of his family.

The problem with a misidentified or a misguided identity is you will spend all of your time and energies trying to figure out who you are.

And this is the wrong question.

If you want to live a life that lives an identity that is fully rooted in Christ, it's not about who you are, it's about whose you are.

As a follower of Jesus, according to scripture, you are a son or a daughter of God.

He literally brings you into his family.

Final one, according to Paul from Ephesians chapter 1, in Christ.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

We are redeemed and forgiven.

Redeemed means restored to your original intent before sin got in and marred the whole picture.

And forgiven means once and for all, all charges are dropped.

You are a free person, you can walk out in freedom.

One of the craziest things that I see so many believers struggle with is God, the creator of the universe, who spoke them into existence with his words, says you're forgiven, but they keep punishing themselves.

I want you to look at me.

If God has forgiven you, you're ready, you can forgive you.

So why don't you walk out receiving his forgiveness?

I want you to see this.

These four phrases are phrases in Ephesians chapter 1 that Paul says, In Christ you are these things.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

But we still get it all messed up.

So let's go back to the beginning, Ephesians 1, verse 1, and see how we get it messed up.

Ephesians 1:1

Remember, Paul writes the letter and he says, To God's holy people in Ephesus.

Here's a way we get it messed up.

In Ephesus, it tends to compete with in Christ.

Ephesus was this massive city.

It was the city that people were proud to be from.

It'd be like in America, you're proud to be from New York or Los Angeles or Plant City, I don't know.

Like the people are proud to be from there, right?

Let me show it to you on the map.

On the map, this is like this is Europe.

This is modern-day Turkey.

Ephesus was on the coast of the Aegean Sea.

It was this massive city for like ships and has huge ports.

Paul writes the letter from Rome in prison to Turkey.

By the way, best pizza I've ever had was right there in Naples.

So good if you ever get to go.

Write that down.

And so Ephesus was this important city, really big deal.

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world was there.

Here's the remains of it.

It was called the Temple to Diana or the Temple of Artemis.

It was this place of like all kinds of pagan sacrifice and pagan culture.

All kinds of like sexual immorality happens here.

Another thing that Ephesus was famous for was they had this amphitheater that sat 25,000 people, so they were into the arts and entertainment.

Another thing Ephesus was famous for was they had a shopping or a commerce area the size of two football fields.

And people from all over the world would save and go to Ephesus because it was cool to be from Ephesus.

In the same way as Americans, we tend to like root our identity in where we're from, don't we?

And let me say this to you.

I love America.

I am grateful for our country.

I'm grateful to be an American.

Right now we're living in the in-between, between Memorial Day, when we remember and we honor the people who bravely gave their lives to protect our freedom in July 4th when we cook all kinds of food and blow up all kinds of stuff to celebrate America.

Can I tell you something?

I'm here for it.

I love it.

I love America.

Of all the places in the world God could have chosen for me to be born, there ain't no land like the US of A.

I love our country.

Okay, but I want you to hear this.

But it's not my truest identity.

In the book of Philippians, Paul writes another letter to a church in a city called Philippi, and he says that you and I actually have dual citizenship.

We are citizens of earth.

For us, it's citizens of America, but our first residence is actually heaven.

So when you get your identity messed up, you'll start to try to find it in all the wrong places.

You'll try to find it in places and questions like this.

Like, my identity must come from what I do.

And so we'll strive really hard.

We'll rank ourselves based on our jobs or our achievements or all that we've accomplished.

And you need to know about your identity according to scripture.

Your identity is received, not achieved, so you can stop striving.

Some of us find our identity in number two, what I have.

And so it's this game of comparing my car and my house and my vacation and my job and my portfolio and my stock index and all the stuff that we have to everyone else, but it's not about what you've acquired.

For some of us, we get our identity in what I did, our mistakes, our failures, our shortcomings.

And I want you to hear this.

It's important to receive forgiveness and move on.

But your identity is not in what you did, it's in what's been done.

Jesus died and paid the price for your sins.

And if it's a gift for you, just receive it and walk in forgiveness.

And here's the last one, and this one's so heavy for some people.

They struggle with their identity because they think it's what I deserve that defines.

I just want to ask this question: what would it look like if all of us could reappropriate or place our identity in the right place?

And what if once and for all of us could start to understand this?

That there's lots of things that are true about you.

But there is only one thing that is the truest.

A couple days ago, uh sitting on the couch with my wife, she was on some social media that will show you old pictures.

And it's from this day, a year ago, three years ago, and she goes, Oh, look at this.

And she showed me pictures from five years ago.

2020.

What a joy that was, everybody.

And when she showed me, I was like, Oh, don't show me that.

It triggers this PTSD in me.

And I remembered as I was working on this message a conversation I had between two guys in our church that months before, 2019, sat together, worshiped together, served together, gave together, loved others really well together, just two different guys.

And then 2020 happened, it 2020.

That's a verb, it 2020.

And they were at it with each other, publicly on social media, privately in their direct messages and in their text messages with each other.

They were at it with each other.

And here was the funny thing.

If you remember 2020, it was like everybody was polarized, it was vaccination, no vaccination, masks, no masks, social issues, both sides.

And then on top of all that, the cherry on top of it was we had the election.

Remember this?

And it was such a contentious election, and we can talk about it now, years later, without all the emotions tied to it.

But in the moment, they were angry at each other and they were literally shooting arrows at each other because one identified as a Republican, one identified as a Democrat, and they were at it with each other over every single issue imaginable.

So here's a question Is it true that one was a Republican and one was a Democrat?

Sure.

But what or which thing about them is truer?

And this is something that you should ask yourself because there's lots of things in your life that are true, but which is truer for these guys.

What was actually truer is that they were sons and daughters of God.

What is truer about them is that Jesus has saved them, changed them, restored them, adopted them, chosen them, marked them, redeemed them, called them holy and blameless.

This is what is truest about them.

What is truest about them is their true identity is in Christ.

When you start to understand this about you, all that other stuff that starts to compete for your attention, it starts to fall off of you.

When you start to understand that the truest thing about you is not who you vote for, it's not what you look like, it's not your height or your weight or your skin color or your eye color, it's not what you do for a job, it's not the diagnosis, it's not your failure, it's not your betrayal, it's not what your kids do with your life, it's none of those things.

All those things might be true about you, but look at me, the truest thing about you is that you are in Christ, and in Christ you are completely new.

So here's how I want to end today.

When I was a kid, there was this game we played.

Played at youth group, you played at school.

The game is stand up if.

The way the game would work is the teacher or the leader would have a list of questions, and this is a way to get to know each other.

So they might say, stand up if, and then if it's true, you stand up and you stay standing until something is said about you that isn't true about you.

So, like, we're not gonna play, but just for fun, I might say, uh, stand up if you're a Philadelphia Eagle, stand.

So a couple people might stand up, and then the next question might be stand up if you have bad breath and nobody really likes you that much.

And the same people would stay standing and nobody else would stand.

I don't know.

Okay, we're gonna play.

We're gonna play.

And I'm gonna read some statements.

These are some I am statements about you.

And how we're gonna end is we're gonna I'm gonna read this list over you, and if it's true about you, because of you being in Christ, I want you to stand and I'll give you a little spoiler alert.

You're gonna keep standing.

Are you ready?

Stand up if it's true that I am chosen.

Stand up no matter where you are, stand up.

I want you to stand up if you are adopted, stand up if you are holy, stand up if you're blameless, stand up if you are redeemed, stand up if you're forgiven, stand up if you're loved.

Come on.

Because it's the truest thing about you.

So, God, in this place, we thank you that because of Jesus and what you've done for us, our identity isn't found in culture, it's not found in the words spoken over us, our identity is found in one place and in one place alone in Christ.

So, Jesus, would you help us to see from your perspective and to see ourselves the way you see us?

May we leave different and changed because of that.

Before you go, no matter where you are, if you don't know that you are in Christ, maybe that means you've never made a decision to follow Jesus or you just feel like you did, but you've walked away, and today you want to restart.

I want to give you a moment to let Jesus change you and save you.

If this is you, would you say, Jason, look, I want to pray this prayer.

Would you raise your hand right now?

You don't know if you're right with God, but today you want to.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

No matter where you're joining us, this moment's for you.

If this is you, would you pray this with me?

Say, Jesus, today I give you my life.

Would you be my Lord and Savior?

Would you change me, save me, make me new?

Jesus, I believe that you're the Son of God and you came into this world and gave your life for me.

And because of your sacrifice, I believe my life can be changed.

So, Jesus, today I make this decision for the rest of my life.

I choose to follow you.

I give you my life for the rest of my life, and it's in your name I pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Come on, church fam, let's celebrate.