Identity theft is not only about stolen Social Security numbers or bank details. It begins with your innate desire to be seen as unique and significant.

This quest for significance can lead to a distorted sense of humility, where we equate being humble with playing small. Drawing from Dallas Willard's insights in The Divine Conspiracy, we discuss the importance of recognizing our God-given agency and the drive to count for good in the world is not rooted in sin but in being made in God's image.

Yet our identity can become stolen by false but seemingly "Christian" labels like "waiting for God" or "being faithful in the small things." These can be legitimate but they can also only appear legitimate while really stealing our identity.

Salvation is not the first step in God's plan to erase us but rather restore us!

Learn how your desire to matter is a foundational part of restoring a whole identity.

Empower yourself and your family to engage fully in God’s grand story. Subscribe to Hi(Impact) at Stephanie Presents for insights, encouragement, and practical resources!

Book Stephanie to speak to your women, parents, Christian educators, and students.

#spirituallystrong

#emotionalhealth

#relationships

#bible

#faith

#truth

#biblestudy

#christianfaith

#christianwomen

#christianity

#lifeskey3

#thedivineconspiracy

#identity

Have you ever been the victim of identity theft?

How do you know if your information is or isn't floating around on the dark web or sitting in someone's database just waiting to be exploited?

Well, the truth is, all of us have been the victim of identity theft.

If your desire is to become spiritually stronger, emotionally healthier, and relationally smarter, you're at the right place.

Speaker and writer Stephanie Smith inspires and equips you to achieve these three key aims.

If you're a parent, you also learn how to raise empowered kids ready for adulthood.

Let's get started.

Every year, when I file my taxes, I have to take an extra step, because years ago, somebody decided that they would file their income using my Social Security number.

And ever since, I have to go through some extra steps to verify that it's the real me.

All of my information is accurate, and I am not hiding anything.

I've also been the victim of identity theft in some other areas, and I can tell you it is not a fun process to try to correct that.

The reality is, all of us have been a victim of identity theft.

Not necessarily the kind that involves Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, or bank account numbers, but the kind that can steal much more than our money and destroy far more than our credit rating.

And the worst kind of identity theft is when we don't even recognize it as theft, but actually think it's a service being provided to protect us.

This theft occurs in a variety of ways throughout our life, and it usually begins when we are young.

And one particular way that I want to talk about today, that we have our identity at risk is our desire to be seen as unique and significant.

You know, every time I have a podcast episode, I close it with this statement.

You have an impact that is immeasurable, eternal, and irreplaceable.

That is true.

That is part of our identity.

Now, we don't necessarily live aligned with that truth, but that doesn't change its truth.

The reality is that all of us have a desire to be unique and significant.

And this desire to be extraordinary, outstanding, to make a unique contribution, is not wrong.

It is not a sinful desire.

Now, how we handle that desire will be right or wrong, but the desire itself is not wrong.

You know, evil attempts to steal our identity in a lot of different ways.

And there's one way in particular that Christians are at risk, and that is when we equate humility with obscurity.

It's when we think that humility is plain small, it's plain insignificant.

It's living in the shadows.

It's when we twist the warning, which is throughout the Bible, to be on guard against pride, and we distort that so that we end up playing small.

It is when we take that warning that we don't get too big for our britches out of context.

And no, you're not going to find that in the Bible, not at least in those kind of words.

But the meaning behind that phrase, I don't know.

Does anybody even use that phrase anymore?

Well, whether or not it's still a common phrase where you are, the reality is that we don't want to have our identity stolen because we fall prey to this lie.

As I talked about last week, I'm walking through parts of Dallas Willard's book, the Divine Conspiracy, rediscovering our hidden life in God over the next few weeks.

Now, this book is so rich and it's so meaty, there is no way that I'm going to be able to cover all of this content.

I'm just going to give you a taste of what is in this book, and my hope is that you will get it and read it or listen to it for yourself.

And one of the things that Dallas writes about, and this is a quote, he says the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being.

We were built to count.

As water is made to run downhill, we are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does.

That is our destiny.

And then he talks about egotism, because oftentimes we can interpret this desire for significance as egotism.

And we do need to be mindful that it can become egotistic.

And so he writes that egotism is pathological self obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count right now in the US and not just in the us, but I know in other countries around the world, there has been a significant, significant uptick, especially among young people, about mental health and about anxiety and depression.

And one of the ways in which anxiety gets a hold of us is exactly what Dallas wrote about.

Here it is, do we really count?

Do we really matter?

Now, that often doesn't get tied to anxiety and mental health issues as we talk about it in the broader culture.

And that's tragic, because if we recognize this is at the root of a lot of anxiety, it's not just always about what's out there.

It's not just always about the events that we can't control.

It's not just about the economy.

It's not just concerns about climate Change.

It's not about all of these external factors that can drive anxiety inside into us.

It is also about anxiety that originates within us, that then affects how we see and how we respond to external circumstances and situations and events.

So again, egotism is pathological self obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count.

I mentioned earlier that there is a particular way that Christians can be targeted in this area of identity theft, specifically about our drive to be significant, to count, to matter.

And that is that we climb into boxes with labels that, that read so quote Christian.

I mean, they just sound biblical.

But those are the worst kinds of lies, the ones that are 95% truth.

But it's that 5% lie, that 5% untruth, that 5% distortion that changes the whole thing.

You know, if I make a recipe of brownies, I can put in all the regular ingredients.

I can put in the flour and the sugar and the eggs and the cocoa and all of those things.

But you know what?

All I would have to do is add just a tablespoon of dog poop to ruin the entire recipe.

Doesn't that sound lovely?

Now I know.

Yes, there are people that would say, to heck with 1 tablespoon of dog poop, I'm still going to eat the brine.

But most of us would say, are you kidding me?

There is no way I am going to eat those.

But sometimes what happens is we end up doing the equivalent of swallowing things in our lives that might be 95% good, but it's that hidden 5% that actually does damage to us.

So what are some of these labels that ways that we can these boxes that we can climb into that sound kind, very Christian, but actually are destructive?

Well, here's one.

For example, we talk about waiting on God to open doors instead of going out and knocking on several doors and see which ones open up.

Is it true that God often calls us to wait for Him?

Absolutely.

That is something we see in Scripture.

But as I've talked about several times before, there is always this tension between two truths.

Not just between what is right and wrong, not just between what is true and what is a lie, but between two truths.

On one hand, there is the truth that we are sometimes called and told to wait in God and not just go blasting out and under our own power and on our own direction.

It is also true that God has given us agency.

God has given us brains.

He's given us desires, he's given us a will.

And he didn't just give those to us so he could strip them away from us.

He gave those to us so we could use them.

Salvation is not the start of a process where God seeks to erase us.

It is the first step in restoring us.

And that includes our agency and our drive for significance.

Another box that we can climb into as a Christian.

That sounds very biblical, but it again, we have to keep it in.

We have to hold it along with this other truth.

You know, we talk about the importance of being faithful in the small things.

Absolutely, that is true.

We are called to be faithful in the small things.

We are told that we can't expect to be given large things to handle unless we first prove ourselves to be faithful in the small things.

We're told to not despise small beginnings.

But many times the reality is we are afraid of going after the big things.

It's not that God is telling us to wait and to be content in the small things because that's where we need to stay at that particular season in life.

It's that fear is keeping us from going after the big things.

We don't want to see be seen as being prideful.

We don't want to be seen as being arrogant.

We don't want to be seen as being too big for our britches.

We don't want to be seen as materialistic.

And the list could go on and on.

So yes, it is true that we are to be faithful in the small things, but not when we're motivated to stay there because fear is keeping us from going after big things.

One of these stories that we read in the scripture, this wasn't a parable.

This was an actual example that Jesus pointed out to his disciples.

And it was the widow who gave her two coins.

It was all she had as an offering to God.

And Jesus singled her out for attention and for recognition.

We also want to remember the woman who anointed Jesus feet as an act of worship with this bottle of perfume that was so expensive it would take a year's worth of wages to buy that bottle of perfume.

This implies that this woman was wealthy or somebody in her circle was wealthy enough for her to be able to even have this bottle of perfume.

It's not that waiting on God to open doors.

It's not that being faithful in the small things.

It's not that honoring the poor is not part of the Christian life.

These are absolutely part of what we're called to do.

It is rather that these are not the sum of the Christian life.

Because we can wait on God for one of two reasons.

We can wait on God because that is what he is telling us to do.

And he is.

He is working something in us so that we trust him and we don't just try to go through life under our own power.

We also want to be faithful in the small things because we are content and we honor the small things because we are prioritizing our character growth and development.

And we also absolutely want to honor the poor.

However, it is also true that we can not really be waiting on God, but we can be using that as an excuse to hide from taking ownership of our own life.

It is also true that we can remain doing small things because we are afraid of the risk of doing big things.

And it is also true that we can stay focused on honoring poverty because we are afraid of getting too big for our britches when it comes to finances, when it comes to managing wealth.

And yet, when we don't use our abilities, when we don't seek opportunities and make the most of those which come our way, this is a way that we bury our talents in the ground.

And that is something Jesus greatly condemned in his parable of the people with the 1, the 5, and the 10 talents.

Now, recently I had a conversation with an individual, and this is a 10 talent person, no doubt about it.

And as we were speaking and he was talking about this new opportunity in front of him and trying to make decisions about that and talking about wanting to make sure that he wasn't taking on something he wasn't qualified for and that he wasn't basically getting too big for his britches.

I just spoke to him and tried to affirm that he is a ten talent person.

And acting like he is a five talent person or a two or a one talent person is not faithfulness.

And recognizing the talents and the abilities and the opportunities that God has given us is not arrogance.

It's faithfulness.

The truth is it's a whole lot harder to invest a lot of abilities to invest a 10 talents than it is to invest one.

You know, the person that had the 10 talents, that didn't make his job easy.

He had to get a return on 10 talents.

The person who just was given one and then ended up burying that one in the ground, all he had to do was get a return on one talent and chose not to do this.

Taking stock of the abilities that you have is not arrogance, it is faithfulness.

You know, Dallas writes in the Divine Conspiracy, he says we are all of us never ceasing spiritual beings with a unique eternal calling to count for good in God's great universe.

All of us have a unique, eternal calling to count for good in God's great universe.

And one of the ways that we make that goodness real and tangible is we use the abilities that we have.

So how do we navigate this tension between false humility and real pride, between serving ourselves with our abilities and serving God?

Well, it's not that we give up our agency.

It's not that we stop making choices and that we just kind of sit and wait for God because we're afraid of making decisions, but rather that we align our will, we align our agency with God's.

Dallas describes the kingdom, our kingdom, that every person has a kingdom.

And he describes that as it's the range of our effective wealth.

Whatever we genuinely have the say over is in our kingdom.

One of the reasons we know that slavery is wrong is because it deprives people of their will in such significant areas of life.

One reason we know that all government structures are not equal is because some deprive people of the ability to exercise their will in significant areas.

And it's not that government is just supposed to say, do whatever you want, because the Bible clearly condemns that.

But it also condemns totalitarianism, because government is not to subvert people's agency so that they are not able to live out their effective will and choose to align it with God's kingdom.

You know, we can feel kind of off when we have been seduced by the beliefs that sound Christian but really aren't, because we're designed to be people of agency.

We are designed to be people of action.

You know, Jesus, take the wheel.

Sounds like great faith, but I think if we look through Scripture, faith really reads more like Jesus, empower me to hold on to this wheel and give me the wisdom to steer it in the right direction.

I have lived long enough, and I have done enough of life to know that there are times that there are things that are absolutely out of my effective will.

There are things we cannot will ourselves to do, to feel, to experience.

I get that.

But I also understand, and this is what.

And I agree with what Dallas wrote here.

The sense of having some degree of control over things is now recognized as a vital factor in both mental and physical health and can make the difference between life and death in those who are seriously ill.

And I would expand on that in today's culture and with anxiety and depression to say one of the factors in that is that people can feel helpless.

They can feel like they have lost agency, the ability to make decisions that have any real consequence.

But we do have choices in what we believe about ourselves.

You know, one of the reasons that we give children choices, we should give them choice.

I mean real choice, not fake choices, but real choices that are appropriate from the time that they are little is we want them to develop their agency.

We want them to learn how to use their will to make decisions rather than to be ruled by their emotions.

And that's where our understanding of, quote, the strong will child has been very a mess in so many areas and it really needs to be corrected so many times.

What we term strong will is actually a very weak will and it's a person who is ruled by their emotions.

But that's a whole nother topic and something I'll talk about in a future episode on Thursdays where I focus more on helping parents raise kids who are ready for adulthood.

Two of the key teachings throughout the Divine Conspiracy book are, number one, understanding what the kingdom of God means here on earth now, not just someday in the future, and understanding the difference between the Gospel of kingdom living and the Gospel of sin management and how we view our identity, our agency, and our desire for significance is foundational to correctly understanding and living in the Kingdom of God.

Now, Dallas writes, when Jesus directs us to pray thy kingdom come, he does not mean that we should pray for it to come into existence.

Rather, we pray for it to take over all points in the personal, social and political order where it is now excluded.

And I'm just going to step away from his quote for a minute and I just want to be clear.

He's not talking here about making certain that we have certain people in power.

We just finished a very divisive election here in the United States.

And so don't confuse what I'm saying here with anything to do with the people who were or were not elected.

So continuing going back with Dallas's quote with this prayer, we are invoking it as in faith, acting it into the realm world of our daily existence.

We are to bring the kingdom of God into the real world of our daily existence.

It's not just something that we look for in the future.

Going back to Dallas's writings, his intent, Jesus intent, is for us to learn to mesh our kingdom with the kingdom of others.

Love of neighbor, rightly understood, will make this happen.

But we can only love adequately by taking as our primary aim the integration of our role with God's.

And that is why love of neighbor is the second, not the first commandment and why we are told to seek first the kingdom or rule of God and only as we Find that kingdom and settle into it.

Can we human beings all reign or rule together with God?

We will then enjoy individualized reigns with neither isolation nor conflict.

This is the ideal of human existence for which secular idealism vainly strives.

But living all of this out, it is a process, isn't it?

It's not a one and done decision that we make.

And Dallas also writes, the interior castle of the human soul, as Teresa of Avedale called it, has many rooms and they are slowly occupied by God, allowing us time and room to grow.

And this is a crucial aspect of the conspiracy.

So, my friend, wherever you are in your life, know this.

Your desire to be significant, to be extraordinary, to matter, is not arrogance, it's not pride.

It is not born of sin.

It is born of God's design within you.

Now, what you do with that desire will either lead into sinful ways or into right ways, what we would call righteousness, right living.

But the desire itself is because you are made in the image of God.

Next week we are going to move further and we're going to look at how do we live this out?

How do we really live this gospel of the kingdom of God out right now here on this earth?

And unfortunately, what we have done for far too long and what we are still pulled back into is living in a reductionist gospel of sin management.

So we're going to start to unpack that next week.

But you have to understand first of all that your desire to matter, to be significant, to use your abilities, is born because you are made in God's image.

And if you're a 10 talent person, own that.

If you're a 5 talent person, own that.

If YOU'RE a 1 talent person, own that.

And don't look around at other people and say, oh, I should play small so they feel more important or I should play big so I can feel like I matter.

Our call is to faithfulness wherever we are and with whatever we've been given.

All right, my friend, that's going to wrap us up for today.

If you haven't already, make sure that you go to the website Stephanie presents.com Sign up for my weekly newsletter there.

High Impact.

Be part of the High Impact community.

Why?

Because you do matter.

You do have an impact that is immeasurable, eternal and irreplaceable.

I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening.

Visit the website stephaniepresents.com and sign up for High Impact to join the mission of building spiritually strong, emotionally healthy and relationally smart women and families.

You can also book Stephanie to speak at your event and check out additional resources.

Together we can invite and equip generations to engage fully in God's grand story.