Who I Am - 1

Who I Am - 1

Subject - Finding Your Uniqueness in God

by Rick Welborne

Psalm 139:1‑16 (NLT) 

1 O LORD, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. 

2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. 

3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. 

4 You know what I am going to say even before I say it, LORD. 

5 You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. 

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand! 

7 I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! 

8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. 

9 If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, 

10 even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. 

11 I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night— 

12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you. 

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 

15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 

16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 

–This portion of Scripture has always brought me a measure of comfort and of great consternation. God knows everything about me!

–He knows what I am going to say before I say it...wow!  He goes with me everywhere! Verse 13-14 begins to talk about how God made you and I unique...

Psalm 139:13‑14 (NLT) 

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 

–Look at your neighbor and say...you are wonderfully complex!

–He was watching when we were formed and woven together (my body, my personality, everything about me). You were there watching and forming me.

–If that were not enough...every day of my life...every moment was laid out in your book before a single day had passed...God has a plan uniquely for me...just for me!

–God has left His unique print on you and made you...you!  Mark Batterson - Soul Print!

1. There has never been and never will be anyone else like you!

–Look at the person on your right and left and say “Amen”. This is not a testament to you.  It is a testament to the God Who created you.

–You are unlike anyone who has ever lived...you have your own finger prints...your eye scan would be different than anyone else...God is so incredible...snowflakes!

–Your uniqueness is not a virtue but a responsibility. Uniqueness is God’s gift to you, and uniqueness is your gift to God.

Mark Batterson - You owe it to yourself to be yourself.  But more important, you owe it to the One Who designed you and destined you.

–Before any of you start to get nervous...this is not going to be a self-help sermon or series.  Self-help is nothing more than idolatry dressed up in a pin striped suit.

–Please understand this...you are not good enough to get where God wants you to go without His help.

–Here is the good news:  There is nothing God cannot do in you and through you if you simply yield your life to Him. All of it. All of you. Think of your uniqueness in this verse

Philippians 4:13 (NKJV) 

13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 

2. No one can worship God like you or for you!

–This sermon is all about you, but it’s not about you at all. The fact that there has never been and never will be anyone like you simply means no one can worship God like you.

Batterson - You were created to worship God in a way that no one else can. How?  By living a life no one else can – your life. 

–God has created you to fulfill a unique destiny and no one else can take your place. Whether you believe this or not you have an irreplaceable role in God’s grand scheme.

–Fulfilling your true destiny starts with you discovering who you really are and this is probably our greatest challenge.

–Most of us live our entire lives as strangers to who God intended us to be. We know more about other people than we know about ourselves.

–How do we lose our true identities? They get buried in the mistakes we have made, the choices we have made, the insecurities we have embraced, the lies we have believed.

–You will never amount to anything...you are not supposed to be here.   When are you leaving home? 10 yrs.

–Hear me...we are held captive by others expectations of us...their belief of what we will become...we are uncomfortable in our skin. We are prisoners of others thoughts of us. 

–We spend way too much emotional, relational, and spiritual energy trying to be who we are not. Why?  Because it is easier! We think that it is safer!

–When I first got saved and went to Bible school everyone wanted to be Jimmy Swaggart. Preach and sing like him...amazing but we learned he was human too.

–When we try to be someone God has not called us to be it is the equivalent of selling our birthrights. The sad thing is not just that we are lying to ourselves...somewhere along the way, we lose ourselves.

Missionary Amy Singleton spoke about this: I am not sure where you are on your journey.  Maybe you are at the beginning trying to figure out who you are.  Maybe you are on the back end of your life trying to remember who you were meant to be. Possibly you are somewhere in the middle trying to close the gap between who you are and who God intended you to be. 

–The key, no matter where you are, is that I want you to experience the joy of finding out who you really are and the freedom of discovering who you are not. I am not Jimmy Swaggart or any other preacher on the planet.

–It is not necessarily easy to discover who you were intended to be (clouded so much by cheap imitations) and there are no shortcuts. 

--But if you are breathing and I think most of you are (ask your neighbor) God has not given up on you yet.

–I am challenging you tonight not to give up on yourself and let this promise soak into your spirit...it is never too late to be who you might have been...stop believing what others said about you.

–Pastor Rick, what if I only have two days, two weeks or even two years? It does not matter...become who God intended you to be for the rest of your life!!!

James 4:13‑17 (NIV) 

13 Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 

14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 

15 Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 

16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 

17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. 

3. To find out who you are supposed to be you will have to dig deep.

Batterson - Self-discovery is like an archaeological dig. It takes a long time to uncover the hidden treasures that lie buried beneath the surface. You can never be certain of what you will find or where you will find it. And it is a painstaking process.  

–If we fail to dig deep in discovering who we are in Christ. It will result in a superficial life.

--If you live as a stranger to yourself how will you ever find intimacy with others? Intimacy is a product of self-discovery. It stands to reason that it will be hard to get to know others when you do not even know yourself.

–How will this relate to our occupation? If you have not discovered who you are with your unique gifts and passions how will you find fulfillment in what you do?

Key - You might make a living, but you will not make a life. You will never experience the joy of doing what you love and loving what you do. 

–How does this unwillingness to dig deep and discover who we are in Christ affect us spiritually? 

Batterson: Superficiality is a form of hypocrisy. If you fail to discover the truth, the whole truth, about yourself, aren’t you lying to yourself? Your life becomes a half truth.

–Many of us live second persona lives because we have bought into the notion that image is everything.

Amy Singleton (Missionary) - Young adults are tired of seeing in our churches all the lights, the glitzes, and the superficial. What they are looking for are people who will be real and who will be themselves. When a real person speaks the truth hungry people will come flocking to them because of the void that now exists.

–I am so glad that Amy was who God called her to be...she did not try to be a female evangelist and strut around like a Bandy rooster...she opened her heart and touched us deeply when she shared with us. 

–When will live as the second persona we end up with a second hand life. Instead of living out God’s best for us we allow someone else to narrate our lives...Hypocrisy!

Psalm 139:14 (NLT) 

14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 

–No matter how bad your situation or life maybe God has a plan for you...exclusively for you. When God’s people were being led into captivity listen to what he says to them:

Jeremiah 29:11‑14 (NIV) 

11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 

12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 

13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 

14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." 

–We not only cheat ourselves and others when we fail to discover our God given identities and God ordained destinies, but we also cheat God Himself.

–Your life inside whatever image you are living needs constant care, feeding, and of course protection. It is like never being able to get undressed or be comfortable.

–We live in disguise presenting ourselves to be what we think we are meant to be...The reality is that we are lying to ourselves. 

–Superficiality is the curse of our culture and I am afraid it has crept into our churches. You see it with 60-70-year-old pastors with their designer jeans and spiky hair cuts...shirts out and pointy toed shoes.

–Nothing wrong with that if that is who you are and who God created you to be. Why do we this?  Why do we try so hard to imitate others...to be a copy?

–Here’s the answer...We are afraid of who we will find if we start digging deep into our own lives. We are afraid of digging up past hurts, failures, major sins we have done or major sins done to us.

–Pastor Rick, I don’t want to dig all that up in my life...keep digging...dig past all the junk and all the mess and you will find the truth that is buried beneath your sin...the image of God.

Genesis 1:27 (NKJV) 

27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 

–Keep digging and you will find your true identity and God’s true destiny for your life. As you do you will never see yourself the same way again because you will see yourself thru the eyes of your Creator!