Have you ever watched “Sunrise” in the mornings? Have you seen the “Cash Call” competition? A registered phone number is randomly selected and called. If they answer within five rings they win $10,000 (or more if it has jackpotted!).

You can imagine there’s a whole lot of screaming and repeating things like “are you serious!?” and once that has died down the hosts often say to the winner, “tell us something about yourself.” [The only thing the viewer submits is their name and where they live – nothing else is known about them.]

It intrigues me to listen to what they say – things like “I’m a mother of 3” or “I’m a retired architect”; “I have 3 cats and a budgie” or “I’m 29 years old”.

Think about that question for yourself. If you were the winning caller and they asked you to tell them something about yourself, what would you say?

In the previous blog we looked at “why we do the things we do” – how our need for love drives all of our actions and responses – and tied up in that is our sense of identity; how we define ourselves, how we make sense of where we fit in, and what our value and purpose on the earth is.

We can build our sense of identity on a range of things … friendships and romantic relationships, body image and physical appearance, financial status, personality, success, future plans, family, intellect, even serving and giving. While these may seem like acceptable measurements of self, they are all entirely changeable – at any moment for reasons within or beyond our control, they can be taken away. This means we need to work to secure, control or protect these things in order to remain sure of who we are.

Alternatively, we can build our sense of self on who we are in God!

He says we’re fearfully and wonderfully made, we are His “work of art”, we are His sons and daughters, saved by Grace, we have the promises of His Word, we are invited to share in Jesus’ mission, God has great plans for our lives, we are the objects of His love, we are made in His image, our days are ordained … and we could go on.

If this is our foundation we truly have a foundation that can’t be shaken! These things don’t change based on our feelings, they aren’t impacted by our efforts (or lack of) and they aren’t subjective … they are truth!

So, back to that question … ‘tell us about yourself’ … how DO you define yourself? What do your actions and lifestyle choices reflect of the source of your sense of identity? How does it shift your thinking to align yourself more closely with God’s definition of who you are? How do you help people around you look to the right place for their source of identity?

While you think about that, I’ll keep watching Sunrise to see if anyone ever answers the “tell us about yourself” question with “Well, firstly … I’m a child of God!!”