If you find your identity in any external thing, you will be let down every time.
If your identity is in your job, what happens when you get laid off, or when you are passed by for that promotion, or simply when you are disciplined for not doing something you didn’t know you were supposed to do?
If your identity is in your children, what happens when they don’t live up to your expectations (which is inevitable)? Your worth as a parent is decimated
If your identity is in the security of wealth, what happens when the economy tanks?
If you find your identity in external things, then if that thing goes away (and that thing will eventually go away), you will have lost your identity.
But if you find your identity in the unchanging nature of God, then when the uncertainties of life come in waves, you are able to rise above the circumstances. You can truly say like Paul did, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith the the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 NIV)
If your identity is in Christ, it ceases to be about you. It’s not about your shortcomings or your giftings or your dreams and aspirations. Your life becomes about how to do His will above all else. Oswald Chambers said, “There was never the slightest tendency [for Jesus] to follow the impulse of His own will as distinct from His Father’s will.”
If you have placed your identity in any earthly thing, make the desire of your heart be the same as that of John the Baptist when he said, “He must become greater; I must become less.” (John 3:30 NIV)