From SHE – Girls Night Out and the preceding blogs preceding this one.
5. Everyone must discover their identity. How did you encourage your kids and support your husband in finding their identity in Christ?
That\u2019s a good question. Honestly, my husband and I, both set the example in finding our family\u2019s identity. We got hold of the \u201cWord\u201d movement a long time ago. We insisted on believing that if God\u2019s Word says it, we believe it and that settles it! We were adamant that what we spoke had to be positive, optimistic, and faith-filled and truth inspired.
When our kids said, \u201cI can\u2019t!\u201d We pulled out what God\u2019s Word said in Philippians 4:13 — \u201cYou can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.\u201d When our son was in Cub Scouts and they were selling Scout-a-Rama tickets, we spoke \u201cYOU CAN through Christ who strengthens you\u201d and then we took him door-to-door selling tickets. Yes, he won the grand prize. And today he is a successful entrepreneur and teaching those principles to his children.
Our tiny, but scrapy and fierce, basketball-handler daughter and 9th grader, wanted to play on her high school\u2019s varsity girls\u2019 team. My husband would say to her those words \u201cYou can do all things through Christ who gives you strength\u201d plus, \u201cIf you want to be the best, you must do your best. Get out there on the court and don\u2019t come in until you\u2019ve made 40 free throws.\u201d Yes, she became a starter on the Varsity Team and the announcers called her the Tasmanian Devil because of her ballhandling skills, her three-point shots and the fact that she could slip around those bigger girls like no one else. Today, both of our kids are strong and successful in business, ministry, and in their personal lives and continue to believe \u201cnothing is impossible with God\u201d.
When tough times came to us financially, we believed God was working it out for our good. When my husband got so very, very sick, not one time in that season did we ever think that he would die from the illness. We confessed healing. We stood in faith for healing. People around the world were praying for us. He had six surgeries and you know what — at the end of the day, November 16th, he got to go home to heaven. It was God\u2019s plan. I got to be his midwife that day and coach him into heaven.
Were our prayers answered? Oh, yes, they were. He received the ultimate healing when he got to go home to be with Jesus. And I was not just a surviving widow but a thriving widow because of the joy in my heart and the confidence of who I am in Christ.
I know I was called to be on this panel-of-one because of knowing my identity in Christ \u2013 the great I-AM-dentity. And you will receive that same I-AM-dentity too when you completely let go and let God mastermind your life.
The Bible tells us in John 10:10 \u2013 \u201cThe devil came to steal, kill, and destroy.\u201d And that includes identity theft. The devil wants to steal our identity. He wants to steal our joy, and he wants to rob us of understanding who we are and what God created us to do. The rest of that verse says — \u201cBut Jesus came to give us abundant life!\u201d
So, when joy isn\u2019t a part of our life, then we know who stole it and when we are happy, carefree, and joy-filled, we know that we are living in Jesus\u2019 abundance that He died on the cross to give us. It\u2019s not life in abundance when we\u2019re comparing ourselves to others. It IS abundant life when we have gratitude and thank God for giving us what we have.
We can shift identity theft to identity in Christ by saturating our minds with the truth of God\u2019s Word. It is filled with reminders of His unconditional love for us. He says: \u201cYou are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). He says \u201cNothing can separate you from His love\u201d (Romans 8:35). It\u2019s time to stop letting the enemy steal our identity. We are God\u2019s masterpiece. It\u2019s time to believe it! We are insulting our Creator when we don\u2019t appreciate Who we are in Him.
And, lastly, we must put a gate with a lock on it on our mind. When the enemy comes in to tell you you\u2019re not enough, pretty enough, capable enough, wise enough, then remind him of his destiny. WE win. He loses. We are conquerors. He is our defeated foe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From SHE – Girls Night Out and the preceding blogs preceding this one. 5. Everyone must discover their identity. How did you encourage your kids and support your husband in finding their identity in Christ? That\u2019s a good question. Honestly, my husband and I, both set the example in finding our family\u2019s identity. We got…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15922,23666],"tags":[1210,1769,267,23663,2188,23626,173,3679,1522,3446,40,23665,23635,1685,2194,23664],"class_list":["post-16064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abundant-life","category-wonderfully-made","tag-blog","tag-christian","tag-faith","tag-family-identity","tag-fearfully-and-wonderfully-made","tag-girls-night-out","tag-healing","tag-i-can-do-all-things-through-christ","tag-i-cant","tag-identity-in-christ","tag-inspiration","tag-lock-on-our-minds","tag-our-identity","tag-philippians-413","tag-psalm-13914","tag-truth-of-gods-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16070,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16064\/revisions\/16070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}