A friend of mine polled a group of people, asking, "What is the most difficult issue facing teens today?" How would you answer this question? Do drugs come to mind? What about alcohol? Sex? Cutting? Suicide? Body image?
What if these issues were only the surface and at the heart lied something deeper? What if the deeper issue was a search for identity? And what if it wasn't an issue that only teens were facing?
I believe that we spend our entire lives searching for our identity, whether or not we are aware of it. We look for it in popularity, achievement, wealth, status, beauty, image, and intelligence. Psychologists say teenagers struggle with identity, because it is most pronounced in them in destructive means. But what if our adult lust for achievement or status is just as detrimental, only culturally acceptable?
As Christians, we know that our identity is already defined, but we still search. Our culture tells us to search. Our sin nature tells us to search. And somehow we buy the lie that all of this...stuff...is more pleasurable than God.
I am fascinated by all of the places in Scripture where God changes someone's name. It happened when Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel, and Simon became Peter. When God changes someone's name, it is more than an issue of semantics. It is an issue of identity. God sees who He wants a person to become for His glory, and He changes their identity. It's as if He is telling them to stop searching, or perhaps to change the direction of their search. Their identity has been found!
Where does that leave you and me? In Revelation 2:17, Jesus says, "To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it." I imagine Jesus handing me a stone with my name--my identity--written on it. And when I see it, I will have an "Aha!" moment. At that moment, everything in my life will make sense. My questions will be answered. My search will be over. I will discover that my identity has been there all along, held securely in the palm of Christ's hand. I will remember the times that God gave me the strength to reject the name that the world offered me on the stones of success and prosperity and external value. And as I look back up from my stone--my identity--into the eyes of Jesus Christ, I will exclaim, "It was all worth it!"
