BIBLE TEACHINGS WITH JOEL OSOBA
Hi there, welcome to the second part of my conversation with my friend Reina. It’s not about the ice creams. You are not ice cream, haha and don’t start salivating already… Let’s focus. I hope you remember her from last week’s post and I hope you enjoyed the flow of the conversation.
In the last post, I stopped at the place where I mentioned the parameters for defining Identity. I listed three (3) things, Your Nature, Your relationship and your assignment. In this post, I will be sharing what I explained to Reina so that it will help you also. Even though I’m sharing a conversation with you and I spoke in personal terms, you should allow your thinking analyze the conversation and apply what I was sharing with Reina to yourself and your identity. What I share holds for me and for you if you are in Jesus.
A quick one though. In case you didn’t get to read the last post where I shared the first part of my conversation with Reina, you can click here to catch up on the whole story. Let’s get into it. The conversation continued as follows…
I said to her “Reina if I say I derive my identity from three things, my nature, my relationship and my purpose in life, this is what I mean”
My nature: “I derive my sense of identity from my nature because of the substance or the essence of my being and person. God made me and he used a substance he got from himself to form me, that substance is called righteousness.
Righteousness is the personality, disposition and nature of God. Righteousness is his nature of being good and just; exercising his benevolence and justice without any flaw and at a standard that is beyond what any man or other beings can fault. God is flawless. The substance of his nature has no flaw in it and that substance is what he used to form me when I accepted Jesus his son who died for me. I am the righteousness of God, formed by him and I am flawless” as I said this I noticed her brow creasing, she must have been thinking “You mean you have no flaw”, so I explained a little further, “When I say I am flawless, it is because I know that I am fundamentally a spirit, then I have a soul that contains my Intellect(thinking), emotions(feeling) and will(choosing) and I express my spirit’s and soul’s intentions through the activities of my body. So, when I say I am flawless in my nature, I am referring to my spirit, my spirit has no flaws, however, if you see me behave in a flawed manner, that flaw is coming from my soul (thinking, feeling and choosing).”
Righteousness is the personality, disposition and nature of God. Righteousness is his nature of being good and just; exercising his benevolence and justice without any flaw and at a standard that is beyond what any man or other beings can fault. God is flawless. The substance of his nature has no flaw in it and that substance is what he used to form me when I accepted Jesus his son who died for me. I am the righteousness of God, formed by him and I am flawless” as I said this I noticed her brow creasing, she must have been thinking “You mean you have no flaw”, so I explained a little further, “When I say I am flawless, it is because I know that I am fundamentally a spirit, then I have a soul that contains my Intellect(thinking), emotions(feeling) and will(choosing) and I express my spirit’s and soul’s intentions through the activities of my body. So, when I say I am flawless in my nature, I am referring to my spirit, my spirit has no flaws, however, if you see me behave in a flawed manner, that flaw is coming from my soul (thinking, feeling and choosing).”
I added “This is my lifelong work, to become the flawless person I always have been in my spirit, to get to a place where I am expressing the flawless me (my spirit) through my soul (thinking, feeling and choosing) and my body. I am becoming who I am, and therefore I do not define myself by any of my flaws, mistakes and level of growth because I am constantly changing into someone new. Who I was last week has been more modified into the perfect me and that ‘me’ is who I have always been in my spirit.
Therefore, I do not define myself by how I am at any point in time but I define myself by a fixed reference of who I’ve always been, will always be which is also who I am becoming. Also because God formed me in his nature, when I received Jesus, he made sure I can now approach Him without inferiority. I do not feel inferior to God but I have a right standing before him and confidence that comes from him to me.” With this, I answered part of her questions.
Therefore, I do not define myself by how I am at any point in time but I define myself by a fixed reference of who I’ve always been, will always be which is also who I am becoming. Also because God formed me in his nature, when I received Jesus, he made sure I can now approach Him without inferiority. I do not feel inferior to God but I have a right standing before him and confidence that comes from him to me.” With this, I answered part of her questions.
Now to you, my reader, defining your identity in this way is to agree to the fact that God is your creator. He formed you as a new creation when you accepted Jesus, and this new creature he formed you to be is patterned directly to be like Jesus. God became a man in Jesus and that way he becomes the perfect kind of man. The exactness of God as a man.
My relationship:
“My sense of identity, security and self-assurance is next founded on my relationship with God. God didn’t just form me, he also birthed me. I am God’s child. To accept Jesus as my Lord and savior was on the promise that I will be reborn by God as my father. The event of my rebirthing was not an intellectual one, nevertheless, it was an intelligent one. I was reborn by God when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior. I accepted Jesus by faith. Faith is the part of every human spirit used to perceive and interact with the reality of an unseen realm of existence; but the faith that got me born again by God, the faith that helped me receive the life of God and become his child was not just my natural faith, it is a Faith God gave me as a gift on the spot at the point of believing in Jesus as my savior and accepting him into my life as my Lord. With this new Faith, I was able to receive God’s life and become his child. So, I have my identity embedded in my relationship with God as his child. God is my father. I am God’s son.”
“My sense of identity, security and self-assurance is next founded on my relationship with God. God didn’t just form me, he also birthed me. I am God’s child. To accept Jesus as my Lord and savior was on the promise that I will be reborn by God as my father. The event of my rebirthing was not an intellectual one, nevertheless, it was an intelligent one. I was reborn by God when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior. I accepted Jesus by faith. Faith is the part of every human spirit used to perceive and interact with the reality of an unseen realm of existence; but the faith that got me born again by God, the faith that helped me receive the life of God and become his child was not just my natural faith, it is a Faith God gave me as a gift on the spot at the point of believing in Jesus as my savior and accepting him into my life as my Lord. With this new Faith, I was able to receive God’s life and become his child. So, I have my identity embedded in my relationship with God as his child. God is my father. I am God’s son.”
My assignment or purpose for life:
“Finally, my sense of identity constantly gets clearer and satisfying by the continuous discovery of what God intended for me to do with my life. What God had in mind when he was forming me gives fullness to my identity. The quest for meaning, the question about purpose is something every human asks. Some people create a purpose for themselves, some go through life moving from one thing to another, from one person to another, from one place or job to another in search of meaning and direction to life.
But when a person decides to have a conversation with God in search for meaning it is like drinking from a source of water that never runs dry but enters into you and becomes a flowing stream itself. You get to a place of satisfaction, your thirst is quenched and your vision is clear because you now have a sense of direction given to you by God. Your purpose is what God intended for you to do to add value with both earthly and eternal consequence, to the lives other people in the world.”
“Finally, my sense of identity constantly gets clearer and satisfying by the continuous discovery of what God intended for me to do with my life. What God had in mind when he was forming me gives fullness to my identity. The quest for meaning, the question about purpose is something every human asks. Some people create a purpose for themselves, some go through life moving from one thing to another, from one person to another, from one place or job to another in search of meaning and direction to life.
But when a person decides to have a conversation with God in search for meaning it is like drinking from a source of water that never runs dry but enters into you and becomes a flowing stream itself. You get to a place of satisfaction, your thirst is quenched and your vision is clear because you now have a sense of direction given to you by God. Your purpose is what God intended for you to do to add value with both earthly and eternal consequence, to the lives other people in the world.”
“I have come to define my identity by my assignment given to me by God. I have come to discover and accept that God created me for a purpose and that purpose is to encourage, teach and help people live fulfilled lives on earth by regularly interacting and spending time in conversations with God. This is my assignment, this is how I define my identity this is how I make sense of my life, my pains and joys, my successes and my failures, this is how I maintain my sanity in a crazy world.”
When I said all these, she looked at me with a smile and said “Pastor Joel, I know you are a Christian and I see that you and Jesus are so intertwined to the point that you can hardly say anything about yourself without adding Jesus to it, but I want you to tell me your identity without adding God, or Jesus to it, I don’t want any “Church talk”, If someone asks you who are you what will you say?”. To this, I replied, “Depending on who is asking. If a prospective business client is asking I will say I am a business writer If my father-in-law is asking I will say I am the son of Late Rev. ‘Deremi Osoba, so depending on who is asking I will give the expected answer” But she seemed unsatisfied and said “If they ask you who are you gan-gan, not based on your profession, your family background, etcetera, etcetera, what will you say?” To this, I answered and said, “See ehn, if anyone really wants to know, I will let them have it, my identity, who I am is founded on my nature as God’s righteousness, my relationship as God’s son, and my assignment as an encourager of men.”
To this, she said thank you and went back to what she was doing.
Now to you my dear friend, are you also having questions about your identity, or you’ve never thought to ask yourself that question. It has never occurred to you. No situation in life has broken you to the point that you think you are just existing and don’t know yourself. If you have or haven’t, kindly take some cues from this conversation, I shared to establish your identity on a solid rock. A foundation that doesn’t change or fade away. To do this you must define yourself by God’s standards of identification. God made you therefore he is the only one who really knows you, not your parents, not your partner or spouse, not your friends or families, not your foes or even the Devil. God made you and God knows you.
Your identity remains shrouded, confused, skewed, flawed and incomplete until you accept God’s system of identification by asking Jesus to become your Lord, Master and Savior. When you do this, God creates you a new person in your spirit, he then gives you his own life as his new child and you begin to discover your assignment in life.
I’d love to hear from you, what you gained, or a question that arose in your heart based on this post.
Remember you are to define yourself by these same three things Your Nature, Your Relationship and Your Assignment.
Cheers!
Joel Osoba is a bible teacher and businessman focused on teaching and inspiring people to find, follow and fulfill God’s plan for their life. He believes that finding, following and fulfilling God’s plans is the true meaning of success in life. Joel blogs at LifeSpringWeb