Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | TuneIn | RSS

“In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind.” – Blaise Pascal

At some point in our life we ask ourselves the question, Who am I? We can spend our whole lives trying to solve this question and still never feel satisfied with the answer. In this episode, James Bryan Smith gives his answer to that question with a thought from above.

The thought from above is this: We are who Jesus says we are. While studying the Bible, James came across a verse that stopped him in his tracks. The verse is 2nd Kings 17:15. “They went after false idols and became false; they followed the nations that were around them” (2 Kings. 17:15).

The background of the story is that the Israelites had rejected their god, Yahweh, and in turn worshipped 5 false gods, five false idols. In committing idolatry, in worshiping false gods, the writer of 2nd Kings tells us this amazing thing: the people themselves “became false.”

When Smith came across the words, “they became false,” he thought immediately of the battle we all face with our false self, and the challenge we face in becoming our true self. James then thought of Henri Nouwen’s two famous “lies” about our identity, which are:

1. “I am what I have.”
2. “I am what others say about me.”

James acknowledges in his life that he has struggled mightily with these two lies, but he adds three additional lies about our identity that have plagued us all as well. The three additional lies are:

3. “I am what I do.”
4. “I am how I look.”
5. “I am what I have done (or what others have done to me).”

Smith closes with a quote from Henri Nouwen to help further explain his thought from above. “Jesus’ whole message is that you are not what you have or what people say about you. That is not who you are. Jesus says to us, ‘I come to reveal to you who you truly are…you are my child. You belong to me.”

Related Episodes:
1. Different but One
2. Conversation with Carolyn Arends
3. Qualifies the Called
4. Jesus with Skin
5. Identity