I think we’ve all seen a guy who still lives his life like his senior year in high school. Maybe he hasn’t gone beyond the day he won the championship for his football team by throwing a perfect spiral to his teammate in the in-zone. He still goes out an drinks with his buddies and rehashes that one perfect moment in his life. Maybe he’s gotten married and had a few kids since then, but he still lives in that moment. He’s experienced external change, but no internal change. Twenty years later, he’s still that 18-year-old quarterback. None of us want to be like that guy.
That’s one of the problems with identity: it’s temporary. It should be. Who you are today doesn’t have to be who you will be in five years. Who you were ten years ago is hopefully not who you are right now. Probably the only people who truly know who they are—their true identity—are the people on their last breath. At that final moment, they’ve run the race. They’ve been through their struggles and trials and they can truly see who they are.
But for the rest of us, all we get is a snapshot of our identity. We only get one small glimpse of who we are. Your identity right now barely scratches the surface of what you will become—more importantly what you can become.
In 1 John 3:2, the apostle John tells us, “Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.” We know we will be like Jesus when we see Him. If you’ve surrendered your life to Jesus and made Him the Lord of your life, that’s a guarantee. That part of your identity is secure. But even here on earth, there’s more to who we are than what we see.