Who Am I?

I've been thinking a lot about my identity. Our sermon series this winter is focused on the book of Ephesians and titled, "Letting Christ Define You".

My initial thoughts went to all the ways I've been identified during my lifetime. First I was a daughter and sister. Then I was a student, a teenager, a housecleaner, a bookstore worker, then a wife, a mother, a nurse aide, a receptionist, an insurance data entry person, a newspaper writer, a college student, a marketing supervisor, a grandmother, a retiree, an AARP member, and a senior citizen.

Many of my titles have been consecutive, others have overlapped for long periods of time. I wonder if God planned for me to have all those identities or if I just charged ahead and did things of my own idea. I'd like to think God uses all of those identities to get me to where He wants me to be: the person He wanted me to become all along.

But, maybe I'm not there yet. I still have so much to learn. As I work through the Bible again this year, I continually find new wisdom that I'd forgotten or that got overlooked in previous readings. I feel I will never be able to take it all in and preserve it. Yet, God shows me new knowledge every day. My ball of understanding gets larger and my foundation in Christ grows stronger and stronger.

So, who am I in Christ? Who does God want me to be? Am I following the right path? Am I growing as Christ desires?

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do," (Ephesians 2:8-10 NIV).

It is all by God's hand; His perfect workmanship. God is crafting me to be the individual in Christ that He intended from the beginning. Wow. I'm so thankful it isn't in my hand to accomplish it all. God has it all under His control, under His authority.

I am saved by grace, through faith, to be the creation God has planned for me from the very beginning of time. Not by anything I can do, but by God. Through Christ Jesus I am His workmanship. What a blessing it is; to know that I'm not finished until God says my final breath is here.

Lord, make me forever Yours.