In most conversations, the first thing you start with is identification:
“What’s your name? What do you do?”
Be careful not to confuse the two. Your identity is not found in what you do! To get a glimpse of this concept in the Bible, let’s look to Peter.
First, Jesus met Peter at the sea to call him to be a disciple. As soon as Jesus performs the miracle, Peter falls to his knees in humility. Why did Jesus call Peter? Obviously, because He wanted to. But I think it had something to do with the fact that Peter, at the end of the day, was a humble man who would follow His Master.
Pretty positive, right?
Wait for it.
It’s all uphill from here.
Next, there’s the moment where Peter is invited to walk on water. He gets distracted when he sees the wind and the waves and begins to sink. Immediately, he cries out to Jesus to save him; and immediately Jesus reaches out, grabs him, and rebukes Peter for his lack of faith. Tough moment.
What about the time that Peter rebuked Jesus, right after Jesus gave the whole “You are Peter and on this rock” speech”?! Yep. Jesus responds, “Get behind me, Satan.” Not a good day.
Oh, and then there’s the “denying Jesus” bit.
Here’s the interesting point: Immediately after Jesus rises from the dead, He doesn’t head to the media to talk about His miracle. He doesn’t sign a book deal or try to grab a reality TV show. He makes a beeline for Peter. Why? Because Jesus was deeply invested in who Peter was becoming. If it were any one of us, we would have given up on Peter at the beginning.
And that’s the beautiful thing: Jesus should have given up on us long ago. But He didn’t. He is deeply invested in who we are becoming. What you do does not equal who you are!
If you pay attention to what Jesus wanted from His disciples, He was far more concerned with who they were becoming,
NOT what they were doing.
Let us not place our identity in the what. It has to be the who.
If you have time, you should check out this talk by Jud Wilhite at the Newspring Leadership Conference 2011. I haven’t heard a better talk on this concept in a long time!
