We live in a world screaming for identity. 

In a society more connected by social media than ever before, people feel less seen, less heard, and less loved.

My personal belief is that it's because identity-driven statements and observations today are external statements trying to represent internal battles. Without an internal compass to help guide you, it's easy to get off track.

Our world has lost its core identity of being created by God. The one true God. The Genesis 1:27 God who says, "So God created human beings in His own image. In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them." New Living Translation

And until we anchor ourselves into that abiding truth, we never discover peace, or rest, or harmony in a world screaming to be heard.

Read more on https://donnawoolam.com/embrace-your-god-given-identity/

Please LIKE and SHARE this podcast if it has been a help to you.

Hey, I'm curious. Have you ever wondered

why so many people struggle to

find their true identity?And what

was it about the 1st century Christians

that they didn't have to worry about

that, that they were so settled and

secure in who they were that they

changed the world?Let's talk about that

today, OK?

Hey there, I'm Donna Wollam and I just

want to welcome you to today's broadcast

about the belief revolution. And our

subject today is about embracing

our God-given identity and

understanding who it is that God has made

us to be so that we can be free of

always looking for someone else's

opinion and someone else's approval to

identify us now. My own

journey into discovering my self identity

has been a long one, like it has for most

people, and piece by piece God has been

able to shift me and change

me and help me to unlock parts

of my heart that. Help me to

walk in confident assurance of

who he has made me to be. And part of

that was in my business journey

that I started a business in an area I

promised I would never work in. Have you

ever made one of those promises where you

say I will never ever do that?

And then you find yourself doing that,

right?Well, part of that journey

was helping women to find

their own definition of success and

how they could walk in

such great powerful.

And purposeful success in their life, no

matter what their definition of success

was. For some of those women, it was

having a lot of money. For some of those

women, it was having a lot of time. For

some of those women, it was just being

able to make enough money to maybe do a

remodel in their kitchen or take their

family on a vacation. But what I learned

is that each one of us, uniquely and

beautifully crafted by God,

has been made for something. That is

similar to all of us, and that is

expressing the beauty and the glory

of our God and of our King. In Ephesians

210, we hear that we are

God's workmanship, created

in Christ Jesus for good works,

which he ordained beforehand that we

should walk in them in a

world that wants us to believe that we

are an accident. And that there's no

purpose for us, that we just muddle

through life and we live and then we die,

which is a popular saying. We

have evidence right here

that our God, our King, our

Creator intentionally

crafted us. We read in the Psalms

that we are fearfully and wonderfully

made. We know that our God

loves us. He crafted us.

He has. Seen us and established us. The

book of Acts tells us that we were born

in the perfect time so that we could come

to know him. So when we look at all of

these different things and how God is so

intentionally and purposefully

crafted us, how could we even think

that there's not something

intrinsic in all of that that

helps us have the stability and

confidence in the identity that he's

given us?We can read over in Second

Peter, First Peter, Chapter 2, verse 9,

that we are a chosen generation, a

royal priesthood, a holy

nation. We are God's

own special people,

that we can proclaim the praises of

Him whocalled us

us out of darkness. Into his

glorious light.

There is a purpose in us, in our

identity, that we are chosen by

God. We are crafted by him

purposefully. We are chosen by him

intentionally. And before you start

thinking that I'm saying that there's

only a few that are chosen, I can tell

you that the Bible says that it is God's

will for all people to be

saved. For all people to be

saved and come to the knowledge of

God, there's no cutoff limit that

you're in or you're out. There is this

desire of God to bring us

into relationship with Him, into His

family and into His work, which is what I

want to talk about now. He has

called us to be His ambassadors in the

earth today. So when you're thinking,

what is my identity?The first

thing that the children of Israel knew

is that they were God's chosen people.

And when Jesus showed up on the scene and

he opened the door for not just the

Jews but also for the Gentiles, there was

a war in the hearts and the minds of

people. We see that in the Apostle Paul

in the book of Acts, where he was out

doing the work that every good

Jewish. Worker would

do is stopping this false

prophecy, false teaching of Jesus

Christ. And then Jesus met him on the

road to Damascus and said, hey, the one

you've been waiting for your entire life

for generations, I'm that one.

And Jesus took him and taught him and

trained him. And Paul then

became the greatest teacher to

tell Gentiles, hey, the door is open,

the way is open. So

as ambassadors of Jesus on the earth,

as if God himself were crying out,

be reconciled to God, we

get to carry that same kind of identity

as a beacon and a carrier and a

crier out to the nations that they are

loved by God and he is hungry for

relationship with them, that he wants

us to know him, that he has

made us a nation of kings and

priests. Before God.

Wow, ambassadors. Kings,

priests, intentionally crafted,

chosen by God.

For us to be able to declare that the

Kingdom of God has come, that for

those who were far away, who are

aliens and strangers to our

God, that Jesus has come

so that we can know God, be in

relationship with God, and be filled with

the Spirit of God so that we can do.

The works of God,

that's a lot. And so you may be sitting

at your house today saying, well, you

know, I'm just living in my city, doing

my stuff. I go to work every day. I come

home. What is there in me

that God wants to use?

There are a lot of things

that create barriers for us in

accepting this role.

That God has placed on us. Now we have

our own thought processes, thousands and

thousands and thousands of thoughts that

we think every single day that are

opposed to everything that God says. So

the first thing that we have to do is get

our mind right. And we do that,

Romans 12 tells us, by renewing our

mind through the word of God that when we

have. Transformed, been

transformed by the Word of God. Then we

can know the will of God. A

lot of us come from families where

there's a lot of negativity. I call

them Nats, generational negative and

toxic sayings. These things that we

grow up with, our family never, or

women don't, or men can't, or all

of these things that we carry around

ourselves or wear as garments around us.

As our family identity,

those people don't do that. We never

do that kind of thing. And we carry that

and we have to begin to just kind of pull

that stuff back and ask how does this

align with what the Word of God says

about me?So we have these generational

thoughts that we carry. We have societal

thoughts and maybe because of the.

The place where you live, maybe you're

not even supposed to be a Christian.

Maybe your family's always been one

particular brand of

religion. And so the idea that you would

ever become a Christian is the 1st

place where you run up against these

barriers. And you know, it was the

same way for the Jews and for the

Romans and for all of the Gentile nations

if you turned your back

on your God. Then your

family disowned you. I mean, it was it

was OK to have lots of gods with the

Roman Empire, but to have one true God

that was over Caesar was absolutely out

of order. To be a Jewish

believer who then believed that

Jesus was the Messiah was, even though it

was the fulfillment of all that God had

promised, it was absolutely opposed to

the history of the family and of the

culture. So these first century.

Believers understood what it

was like to come up against pressure from

the family, come up against pressure of

the political system, come up against

pressure of all of the beliefs

that had always surrounded them.

But when they began to understand that

Christ in us is the hope of glory,

whenever they were able to lay

aside the old things and take up.

The Kingdom of God, Paul

said. I die daily.

He died to all the old

stuff and was born again

into the truth of who Jesus said he

was. In fact, we hear Paul say

often that we have to. We have

died and our life is hidden with

Christ and God. So if there's one

secret. that those first century

believers knew is that that

old man is a dead man.

And it's time to be born again and to

live and to rule and to reign

in Christ Jesus in this new life.

And to be able to put behind

ourselves like they did, put behind those

things that don't serve life any longer

and take on yourselfthis

understanding and this identity of

being hidden in Christ. Jesus

tells us, well, Paul tells us in

Ephesians chapter one, that we are seated

in heavenly places in Christ

Jesus, far above all the

powers and principalities of this earth.

That those things that are under the feet

of Jesus are also under our feet.

And when we can begin to live out of this

knowledge,of relationship and

be able to stand against the

barriers and the binders that want to

hold us to a life that is

really full of death and fear, then we

can begin to experience the abundant life

that we have in Christ Jesus.

There are some things that you can do to

help you begin to live this

abundant, full, God-given

identity. The first of those, if

you are not a believer in Jesus

Christ, the very first thing to do

is to confess that you

don't know Jesus, that you haven't made a

decision to follow Him, that

you are in desperate need of a Savior.

That's easy to do, is just to,

Romans tells us to believe in our heart

and confess with our mouth that Jesus is

Lord. That he was born of a

virgin. He lived a sinless

life. He died and was raised

bodily 3 days later and now sits

at the right hand of God. That

he is God

incarnate to believe

in your heart and confess with your mouth

that you need a Savior and he is

your Savior. The second thing to

do. To be able to move through is to

take the Bible, the word of God. And I I

understand a lot of us have our phone

devices and we read online,

I cannot express enough how important it

is to have a paper Bible and a pen and

to write and to highlight and to

mark and put things in the margins as

God speaks to you through his word. And

let him change your life. Let him

transform your mind. Let him

transform from the inside out.

That identity and to just drive out

all of the lies and let his truth come

and take that place. Meditation

in God's word, journaling every day

is a powerful, powerful way. One of

the things that I encourage my clients to

do is to just take a sheet of paper and

just write down what they believe about

who they are, the lies that they've

believed and the truth, and then to

search scripture about that. So.

A lot of women that I work with

battle debilitating anxiety.

So doing a scripture study about

what God says about anxiety is

one way that you can be able to shed

this. Anxiety, personality,

persona, this garment of I

am anxious and begin to take

on that. I am not afraid

that God has given me a sound mind. He's

given me a saved mind. He helps me.

I cast all my cares on him because he

cares for me. Those kind of things. So

doing a scripture study of the areas

where you battle,

and do a study and find out what the Lord

says about all of that. It can

transform us in just a few minutes every

day to help us transform ourselves

by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit

coming in. Scripture affirmations

are one of my very favorite things, and

in fact you're going to find a link inthis

description of some scripture affirmation

cards that I have for you for free. Just

go down there and grab those. But

scripture affirmations, where the Word of

God then becomes personal for you,

where you're able to take a

scripture like Ephesians 2:10 that

says we are God's workmanship to be able

to say I am God's workmanship,

created in Christ Jesus for good works.

Which the Lord created beforehand for me

to do. That's one of the most powerful

things to be able to shed the lies and to

take hold of the truth of who God has

said you are by doing scripture

affirmations. So Bible study

and scripture affirmations are a great

way. And then to be able to join in

community with others as you're on

your journey for

being transformed by the renewing of your

mind. So here we have these few

things. Let me just highlight quickly for

you. Number one, your

identity is not the outward

expectations. It's not the outward

opinions of others. Your true

God-given identity is who God says you

are. And he says you are chosen, that you

are beloved, that you are crafted

intentionally, and that God sees you.

Your God-given identity. Is

that you are not the person you were

before you became a Christian. That

person is dead. Scripture says the old

has gone, the new has come. You are a

new creation in Christ Jesus. So

whatever it is that holds you in guilt

and shame from your past, you can let

that thing go. It is a dead

thing and God has called you to life.

Jesus has said he's come to give us

abundant life, that the enemies only come

to steal and kill and destroy you.

Those things of your past are the

things that want to destroy you. But

living in Christ is where our life is.

We are hidden in Christ,

hidden in Christ. The hope of

glory resides within us,

that we don't have to be afraid, we don't

have to be anxious, we don't have to be

tormented. By the things that have held

us in the past, that through the

scripture and through knowing what God

says about us, we can begin to be

transformed. And day by day

by day, the real person, the

hidden man of your heart, will come

out. The person that God created you to

be will begin to bloom and to

flourish, and your life will be one of

hope and joy and victory.

I'm not saying everything's easy.

I'm just saying that whenever we have

Christ in our lives, then things

become more simple. I've

had a lot of hard things in my life. I've

had people that I love die. My husband

died, the church that I was going to.

Things changed and I'm not there able to

be with them. But God has led

me on a path to where there are new

people in my life that I'm able to have

life and community with. My family

and I are closer than ever before, and

I'm able to, out of the pain of the

past, be able to take those things that

God has taught me. and to bring strength

and help and hope to others. See, my

identity is who God says I am.

It's not that I'm an orphan because my

parents are gone. It's not that I'm a

widow because my husband is gone.

It's that I am loved and

seen and cherished

by God. And

that's who you are too, my love.

If you are willing to receive the

truth of who God says you are.

So I'd love to hear your feedback on

today. So down in the comments, you know,

you know what to do. Let's be nice out

there, OK?But also what I would love for

you to do, if this has been a help to

you, would you go ahead and subscribe to

the channel?It'd be a great, great help

to me. Like this. Share it with your

friends. And let's join back here on the

next time when we talk about who it

is that God has made us

and we continue our journey into the

wholeness that God has for us.

Thanks so much.