You'll have many experiences of being rejected and you can't understand why it always seems to be the same no matter where you are. It's because of what you believe in your heart, so the way we see ourself will affect how we run our life. Think about that. The way you see yourself will affect how you run your life. Your heart beliefs and expectations will determine your life, so one of the things that God does to us, first He brings us into relationship, then He wants us to become established in the relationship with Him and in understanding who we are as He sees us. The dilemma is when you become a Christian is we carry a lot of mental and emotional baggage with us, and we don't catch up inside with what God has done inside us. We're still thinking the way we used to think. We're still expecting the way we used to expect, but God says no, a total change has taken place. Notice what God does. God speaks directly into him.
There's an interesting example that I came across. If you want to train an elephant what you do is you get the elephant when it's very young and you tie a chain around it's leg and you tie it to a tree. The young elephant will buck and pull and tug and eventually it learns that when that chain's around your leg you can't move. Later on they have the same chain and they just put it to a stake in the ground and the elephant will not move away, because he's been programmed I can't do that. I'm not strong enough to do that; yet actually he's got all the strength. He could pull the thing out and take off, but as soon as he feels the tug he remembers. He remembers what? I'm powerless to overcome that, and so he doesn't even try. People are very much the same. We have past experiences, they become part of our life and who we are, and then we become a Christian and we don't change in our understanding of who we now are in Christ.
If you don't know who you are you won't carry yourself the way God wants you to carry yourself. You'll still live like you used to live, so have a think about this. How do people define their identity? That's why I gave you the little thing, go out there and introduce yourself. So how many introduced yourself as a child of God? How many introduced yourself as a mighty warrior? As more than a conqueror? As a king? See, we don't think to. It's not in our thinking to introduce or to even see ourself that way, so how do we find ourself? Well let me just give you a definition. Identity are the personal characteristics that define you. It's the things, the characteristics by which people know you. It's how you're known. It's what makes you like who you are. That's your identity. Your identity are the characteristics by which you're know.
Now I'll give you a few ways that people know us. Number one, the most obvious way is your face, your face. As soon as you see your face, ah, there we are, Alex. I know that face - so we're known by our face see? Unfortunately you can't do too much about your face. You can make it a little bit prettier, but you can't do a lot about that part of you see? That's the way you've been made, the way God designed you, get used to it. Get to live with it. Enjoy the face you've got. Let it smile because it's the only face you've got. Show it off to the best you can - so our face. The second way we're identified is our name, our name, what we're called. So I look over there, well that's Alex, that's her name. So if I call out into the room Alex, there's one person in the room will identify with that and she'll stand up because she knows her name, so a name is another way we identify ourself.
Another way we identify ourself is who we're linked to, who we're connected to, so for example people are connected into a family so people are identified not only by what they look like and their first name, but also by their surname they're linked into some family. If you're from a tribal culture then you're linked into a tribe, or we may be linked into a nation. So you go overseas and people say who are you? You say I'm a kiwi, so your identity is attached to your nation, where you've come from, your source, your origin. So we use a whole number of ways to define our identity. Another way that we define our identity is by what kind of racial group we're part of; well I'm an Indian. I'm an African. I'm a this, I'm a that. Another way that people identify themselves is by what church they're part of, what denomination they're in; oh, that's Catholic - so put a label on them, now box them so I don't have to actually find out who they really are.