Glory belongs to God who through His Son has healed us and forgave us, even the debt of our sin has been paid through His death and resurrection. For us to have true identity, it was all the work and the plan of God to give us eternal life by being born again. The body dies so we cannot identify ourselves through it, our soul is unstable, because that is where emotions, feelings and consciousness of human dwells, so we can't measure our identity by our soul and personality. Most confused and frustrated people on earth are those who label oneself with their physical features and their personalities, because such things need you to always perform then anxiety attacks when you don't have audience.
God is self existing. He doesn't need to perform in order to prove Himself to be God. Hence, Jesus on His last day of fasting the devil tempted Him to perform, by "turning a stone into bread" (Matt 4:3-4). The problem that the devil had it was that Jesus identified Himself as the Son of God. "If you are the Son God" , He wanted Jesus to doubt Himself of who He is, little the the devil knew that Jesus Christ was God Himself, and He doesn't need to show and prove a point to anyone.
As long as we identify ourselves with unstable things that we find in this world the devil is not moved or threatened. Africans if we still identify ourselves with our ancestors, with our surnames, with nature, we will always perform for the devil to prove ourselves. Westerns if we still identify ourselves through individuality and science pride will always lead us to fall. Even eastern perspective is no good. We need to understand that we came to this world not from this world! We must identify ourselves from where we come from. Since we are created and manufactured by God, He is our source, He is the one whom we must identify ourselves with. God is "God is a Spirit:" so are we.
People of Athens were the most confused and frustrated people. What you worship is what you identify yourself with. Our identity is rooted in worship! It is the source that sustains the resource, but religion has its own way to make us think it is the product that supports the producer. Now that God is our Father and we are His children, we depend on Him to provide, because it is not for children to support their parents. Athens were too religious, they worshiped idols and the city was wholly given to idolatry. Athens were living for those idols, but idols never lived for them. Paul had to remind them that God is the only one who need to be worshiped. He had to remind them that it is God who created us, it is in God where we find our true identity. Never identify your salvation on the basis of the denomination you submitting under, never make your identity lean on pastors, and leaders of ministries. It is good to serve but never mistaken service with identity. As long as you still abide by the church rites and rules, pastors will love you, but when you start to put the name of their brand in the mud, that's when you'll know what they're made of. But with Christ our Source and potter, whether we are broken, smashed, deformed, not in good shape even in cracks, He said "I will never leave you nor forsake you".
(((As He is, so are we in this world)))
