Living Out Who He Says You Are: Identity in Action

What does it actually look like to live out who God says we are? That question sits at the heart of this message, and it pushes us past comfortable, familiar answers. We spend so much of our lives allowing other voices to shape our sense of self, whether that is the opinions of coworkers, the approval of friends, or the sting of past failures. But if our identity is truly rooted in Christ, that identity is not meant to stay locked inside the walls of a church building. It is meant to spill out into every room we walk into, every relationship we carry, and every ordinary moment of our week. Drawing from the account in Acts 11 of the early believers in Antioch, we are reminded that those first followers of Jesus were not called Christians because they announced it loudly. They were called Christians because the people around them could not help but notice something different about the way they lived. That is a challenging and convicting standard, and it invites us to ask honestly whether the people closest to us, our families, our neighbors, our coworkers, would be able to connect our lives to Jesus simply by watching how we treat people, how we respond under pressure, and how we love even those who are difficult to love.