Because We Look Like God

Hello all y'alls!

I had a thought a while ago which I have never actually heard anyone else talk about, so I feel slightly hesitant to bring it up, except that I'm pretty sure I'm right, and if I am, this is a new perspective that I think is really valuable.

So firstly, one thing I have heard people talk about a LOT in the past couple of years, is identity. The gist of all the identity talks can, I think, be broken down into three categories.

1. Your Identity is Not What You Think It Is
2. Your Identity is Under Attack
3. Understanding Your Identity is SUPER Important

Let's talk about these.

1. Your Identity is Not What You Think It Is

I love to dance. I want dancing to be what I do with my life, no matter how hard it is. In fact, I love how hard it is. Discipline and the feeling of achievement is one of my favourite things about the art form, and for a really long time, I couldn't wait til I could take on the title, "Dancer."
"Ballerina," I felt was even further from my reach, and I refused to call myself either one of those titles for a long time because I felt that I needed to earn it first. I couldn't wait to earn it. I couldn't wait to be able to call myself "A dancer."

But I realized one day, through hearing another dancer's story, that I wanted to call myself something because until I had achieved something great, I didn't feel like I had any value to give. As soon as I had done it, then my existence would be worth it. Then I would have value. But God challenged me on that and called back to my attention the fact that He could totally take away my ability to dance, and what would I do then? My potential identity would be gone. How would I live without knowing that someday I would be valuable?

Saying it in such blatant words makes it obvious what the problem there was. Of course it didn't sound like that in my head. I had wrapped my identity up in what I was able to achieve, I had told myself that until I got there, just being a beloved child of God wasn't good enough.

The truth of the matter is that your identity is not found it what you do, how you think, what you believe, your identity is simply you. It's who God created you to be. It's the pure core of who you are that God made, loved, and died for. He thought you, without any other credentials, were worth dying for.

2. Your Identity is Under Attack

The kind of scenario I mentioned above is SUPER common. For some reason it's like most humans are not content with who they are, they have to find their identity in something other than God's love, whether that is their work, their family, their achievements, etc.
It's almost like someone is selling us that lie.
Speaking of lies, you know what else "someone" tries to sell us? That in order to fix ourselves, we should hurt ourselves.
A couple examples are, throughout history every time pagan worship has been allowed to progress, it always turns to some sort of self-harm. In idol worship people would often cut themselves as they tried to appease or appeal to whichever god, and even further, it would often lead to child sacrifice, so not only would they hurt themselves, but they would hurt their children.
Not only pagan worship, but things most of us North Americans in 2018 can relate to more, like cutting. Eating disorders. If I may make a parallel to going a step further, pagan worshippers sacrificed their children to the gods, we have abortions.
Why would demonic forces work so hard to make us find identity in wrong places and hurt ourselves? Because if we believe and rest in who we are in Christ, we don't need anything else to be satisfied. We don't need to play any of the devil's games, we're happy right where we are, completely protected by our Saviour, and that is the last place Satan wants us to be.

3. Understanding Your Identity is SUPER Important

I sort of touched in this already, but the reason it's so important to understand your true identity, is because the more you are under Christ's protection, the less you are in dangerous enemy territory.
If you are looking for identity in your job, this opens you up to potentially making an idol of your job, but it also shows that you think you need more than God.
If you completely understood how much God loves you and were perfectly at peace with that, what could convince you to hurt yourself? It would seem like utter foolishness to you.
If we as a nation understood people's identity as "Made in God's Image," would we kill our children?
There are just so many things that would be changed if we only knew who we were in Christ. We wouldn't hate ourselves, we wouldn't hurt ourselves, we wouldn't be always longing for something to make us valuable.

I know that was a long winded prologue, but if you hadn't thought through all of that before, it's better that you do before I say my new perspective on this.

The thought suddenly came to me one day. "Why does Satan have a bone to pick with us?"

Seriously. Think about it.

He was jealous of God, organized a rebellion, and got kicked out of heaven, before we were ever created. That had nothing to do with us.

He has supernatural power. Obviously not as great as God's, but if we didn't have God's protection, imagine a fight between me and the devil. It would be like:

Me: Take this! (Starts running forward with a sword and a battlecry)
Satan: Yeah, that's enough.
I'm dead. The end.

So seriously, why does he care about harassing us? We are no threat to him, we had nothing to do with his fallout with God, even if he did manage to win all of us to his side, he's not creating an army, we're just all going to hell, which, by the way, was God's invention, not his.

The answer, I believe, is simple. We are just tools in his fight with God.

It's true, God kicked him out of heaven. God will always be stronger, and always win every fight they have, but Satan is a schemer. What better insult would there be than to hurt what God loves?

Imagine an analogy, let's say you have a nemesis, but you're basically Superman and can't be beaten. Your nemesis can't kill you, but he can kill your sister. Your spouse. Your child. You and I both know that would hurt as bad or worse as if he had just killed you.

So that's exactly what he does. He does everything he can to fracture the relationship between God and His church, everything he can to get the one God loves to turn away after other things, and everything he can to make those who bear the very image of God, mar it. Because if he can't hurt God, he can make us hurt that which most closely resembles Him. Another analogy: If someone burns a picture of someone else, you imagine they probably hate them.

One more thing! When God made Himself vulnerable and came to earth in the form of a man, Satan tempted Him in the wilderness by challenging WHO HE WAS. His identity. "If you really are the Son of God..."

In summary, Satan has a bone to pick with us only because God loves us, and because we look like God.

So friends, this inner struggle we have all the time as Christians, what the bible calls "the race," and "the good fight of faith," it's not just a battle we have to win for ourselves. It's a battle we have to win because Jesus gave us the power to do it, and if we don't, we aren't the ones who end up the most hurt, He is.