Who am I? A question of identity

Are you one of those people who always knew what they wanted to be? Not me. I have searched most of my life for who I am and what I am to be.What is my purpose in life? I have a natural confidence so I find it somewhat easy to fake it usually.

I love to watch people. Often I wonder what makes them tick. Some seem so confident in who they are and where they belong. They have figured out their careers. It gives them a sense of being. It can define our existence. Where people come from or their cultural underpinnings can give them meaning. What we have accomplished, where we live, the size of our income, the size of other things, who we know, who we date, who we love, where we went to school, physical prowess, mental prowess, sexual prowess, our clothes, our cars, our figure, our hair, our height, our weight, our discoveries, the books we read, our position at work, whether we own a business, our toys, and plenty of other things we use to tell others who we are. It helps to establish our value and defines us. If you are in church, you've been taught how important it is to believe correctly. We have used those beliefs to define us and from what I can tell to exclude others. We have formed groups around those beliefs to state our position and to clarify who belongs. I have a friend who coined the term "doctrinology." What doctrinology means is we define who we are by what we believe. If we believe correct, we are correct or so the saying goes. In the christian circles I have run in, people were defined by their gift or their office. Sometimes meaning came from the particular church they attended, or who their pastor was. If the church is successful and I go there, then naturally by definition I am successful as well.

So do I actually have anything to say? I think so and this is it. We were created by God and by definition it has always been His intention that we are to find our meaning, our value, our purpose, and our identity in Him. He's the only thing that never changes. Because I know Jesus, I am a loved son, a child of God. Accepted because of what He has done, forgiven, empowered, and satisfied. The world and all the things we mentioned change and adjust and, if our identity is in those things then when they change we become insecure. We no longer know who we are because our basis of belief has now shifted and we must shift with it. It causes us to have to defend our position (some call that being defensive.) Our sense of personal meaning can not endure that shift. We become unstable because our foundation is unstable. God has built into each of us a need for stability and a need to know who we are. His grace has liberated us. It's not what I do for Him that defines me it's what He's done for me. That's something that will never change.