{"id":33471,"date":"2017-05-10T00:19:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T05:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josh.org\/?p=33471"},"modified":"2025-07-25T14:05:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T19:05:33","slug":"personal-identity-gods-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/personal-identity-gods-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Identity: See Yourself as God Sees You"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ladies, in this first blog post in our series exploring our true identity<\/a>, we have to ask: How do you see yourself? As God sees you — or as the world sees you?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Are you basing your personal identity on your job title? Your marital status? Your dress size? The car you drive? The volume of “Likes” your selfies and posts garner on Facebook? Be honest: you’ve ranked\u00a0and compared yourself to others in all or most of these areas, right?<\/em><\/p>\n

With so much societal pressure and manipulation to be “successful,” it can be dang hard to love and accept ourselves. To get through even a\u00a0single hour without beating ourselves up.\u00a0(Are you trying to be the perfect mom? Wife? Daughter? Employee? Christian? Ack!)<\/em><\/p>\n

So many women\u2014even Christian women\u2014<\/em>are unhappy, unfulfilled, and despondent on a daily basis. Why? Because\u00a0they’re not living out\u00a0their true personal identity. Are you among this group\u00a0of ladies who are utterly exhausted with trying to do enough, be enough, like themselves enough to fend off\u00a0self-condemnation?<\/p>\n

The good news: this vicious cycle of comparison and self-judgement can be smashed like a mirror if we’ll base our identities on the only criteria that matters: what God thinks of us!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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So, What Makes You You<\/em>?<\/h2>\n

Let’s start this blog series about your true personal identity with\u00a0who you\u00a0are NOT.\u00a0You are not\u00a0your physical attributes, your education, your career, or your accomplishments. You are\u00a0not your ethnic origin, your family pedigree, or your credit rating. <\/em>These are merely outer layers of your identity.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at\u00a0three\u00a0myths that our culture swears\u00a0determine our worth:\u00a0our appearance, our performance, and our status. Three myths that you’ve probably fallen for hard. Three myths you\u00a0need to shatter!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Myth #1: Your Image Determines Your Identity<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you’re insecure about your physical appearance, you’ve likely bought into the lie that you\u00a0need to meet society’s standards of beauty. Teased, tanned, toned, thin\u2014is it ever enough??? Society daily bombards us with messages that subtly and overtly tell us\u00a0that beautiful people are more valuable, loved, wanted, happier. This wrong messaging\u00a0leads many\u00a0women to beauty products and plastic surgery to “fix” what they become convinced is\u00a0wrong with themselves.<\/p>\n

Yet even after all that, some women can’t feel beautiful. Because they haven’t fixed the root problem of viewing themselves as flawed<\/em>. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ladies, as God’s unique creations, we are of infinite value and worth! Our looks don’t change God’s view\u00a0of our intrinsic\u00a0beauty. Won’t you stop handing\u00a0others the power to make you feel good about yourself?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Myth #2: You Are What You Do<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This myth suggests that our performance determines our worth and personal identity. Ladies, we live in a task-oriented society that assigns value based on how much and how well persons\u00a0do their jobs. Unfortunately, the measure of competence is typically comparison to others. Which is why so many of\u00a0us feel threatened when others\u00a0succeed. Workaholics almost always\u00a0base their identity on their performance.<\/em>\u00a0If you’re unable to satisfy your\u00a0need to perform, you probably find it very difficult to relax.<\/p>\n

A<\/strong>s <\/strong><\/em>a wise person once noted, we were created as human<\/strong> beings<\/strong><\/em>, not human<\/strong> doings.<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Ladies, won’t you stop striving in order to feel valued? You’re already so highly valued by the creator of the universe!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Myth #3: You Are Somebody Only If You Have Power<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Have you ever asked yourself, “How important am I?” If\u00a0you feel the need to constantly assess your level of influence or control over others, you’ve bought into\u00a0this myth. Let it go.\u00a0The Bible is clear that our identity as God’s children\u00a0does not depend on our\u00a0status here on earth.\u00a0Rather, God asks us to humbly demonstrate a\u00a0servant’s heart.<\/p>\n

Power, even if we achieve it, is fleeting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ladies, whether you are regarded as a somebody or a nobody by others,\u00a0God views you as having tremendous worth and value. Won’t you trust Him on that?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Next week we’ll talk about the mistaken identity that many of us walk around with<\/a>. Don’t miss it!<\/p>\n

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Our True Personal Identity<\/h2>\n

Part of rightly understanding our true personal identity requires that we know how God sees us. As our loving creator, God says two things to us: “You are my child,” and “You are chosen.”\u00a0Do you sense God’s heart toward you? Can you wrap you mind around the truth that God was thinking about you before He even created the world?<\/em><\/p>\n

Let that truth sink into the depth of your heart and mind.\u00a0It may take a lot of determination on your part, but as you begin to realize just how valuable you are in God’s eyes, you will be able to break the chains that keep you from accepting and loving yourself. Ladies, we CAN drop\u00a0the burden of what other people think\u2014and the\u00a0judgments we\u00a0hold for ourselves!<\/p>\n

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This blog series is based on Josh’s book\u00a0See Yourself as God Sees You<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/i>It is our prayer that during this series you come to recognize and accept your true personal identity! God couldn’t love you more!<\/p>\n

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Ladies, in this first blog post in our series exploring our true identity, we have to ask: How do you see yourself? As God sees you — or as the world sees you? Are you basing your personal identity on your job title? Your marital status? Your dress size? The car you drive? The volume […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23327,"featured_media":63421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"55","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"God see you as you are\u2014and He likes what He sees. Accept this truth to experience the true joy of being YOU! Your personal identity!","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[501,502,177,178],"translator":[],"blog-author":[78],"class_list":["post-33471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-women","tag-am-i-good-enough","tag-how-does-god-see-me","tag-self-worth","tag-self-image","blog-author-josh-mcdowell-ministry-team"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/607\/2021\/11\/personal-identity.jpg","meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92559,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33471\/revisions\/92559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33471"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=33471"},{"taxonomy":"blog-author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-author?post=33471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}