I am the vine, you are the branches; if you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10
We use labels all the time in our everyday lives because the labels on the outside tell us what’s on the inside. People, however, are different. We can’t always “judge a book by it’s cover” when dealing with others.
We are often quick to label people and situations in this world today. Isn’t it strange how quickly that happens and how we begin behaving according to our understanding of that label?
In the world of education and teaching, most teachers work very hard at not labeling the children who come through their classes over the years. Each child is unique, as is each person, but when children are passed from grades and teachers each year, it’s hard not to listen to the former teacher’s assessment of them. I have heard many teachers say, “Please don’t tell me any weaknesses or strengths or any labels, I want to look at the child with fresh eyes.”
Just as in classrooms, labels can limit us, so when someone tries to label us it immediately makes our world smaller. If we begin to accept that label, we find that we start to believe that’s who we are and that we’ll never amount to anything more than that. It begs the question, “Who am I?”
The question in life is not, who am I, but rather whose am I? Until we resolve the question of whose we are, we can’t really find out who we are. We can base our identity on a thousand different things, the degrees we’ve earned, the positions we’ve held, the salary we make, the friends we have, but if we base our identity on anything temporal, our identity is a house of cards.
At this point, it’s good to go to God to find out whose we are. God created us. God redeemed us. God calls us, He equips us, He empowers us, and He rewards us. No one can tell us who we are except God. So, when people try to limit us, we need to let God step in.
Where in life do we place our security, our strength, our loyalty, our hope? If it is in something other than God, that’s where the problem of who am I begins. The truth is, God loves and accepts us, and His approval of us trumps everybody else’s labels.