FINDING WHO I AM IN THE GREAT I AM

What does it mean to find who I am in the Great I Am?

Every year since I was a senior in high school I have attended a summer camp known as Student Life. The past three years (this one included) I have been given the opportunity to help chaperone on it. What is amazing is that, while it is a youth camp, even me as a chaperone always find myself walking away each year astounded at the work that God does in my own heart. As I was sitting in the first session listening to David Platt speak, we were going over the question “who is The Great I Am?” Right towards the end of this session, something compelled me to flip backwards through my notebook and look at what the last thing I wrote in it was. A little side note: at the end of every sermon journal entry, I always find a key word and write it in big bold letters at the bottom of the last page as a way to quickly overview what that entry was about. Well, my last entry involved that of talking about finding my identity in Christ. This was the last sermon I listened to during the spring semester of Liberty almost two months prior. I do not believe this was just a coincidence that these two came back to back and it honestly shook me a little bit. I knew I needed to look into this. I felt a pulling to do it. So, each night that week, I put off all other free work, even school assignments because I just could not shake this feeling that there was something I needed to learn from this. This past year has been a real-life definer for me and it was in the calms, the storms, the ups, the downs, the highs, and the lows that I really truly found my own identity in Christ. He had been molding and shaping me like the potter He is (Isaiah 64:8). I praise God I am no longer in that area of uncertainty anymore, but that He has made known my identity in Him.

Before we start trying to find who we are, we need to ask ourselves, “Who is the Great I Am?” we need to think about and know who He is before we are able to know who we are in Him.

Who is He – “He said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’” (Exodus 3:6). This is a huge deity claim as to who He has said He is.

Within this chapter, it is interesting that God has no problem talking about and exalting Himself 19 times in the chapter. 19 TIMES God speaks of Himself! This is fully right when you know who HE is.

More than that, He is Love – 1 John 4:8

Another is that He is our Savior – Isaiah 45:21-22; John 3:16; Jude 1:25;

What has He done? – He has created us (Genesis 1 & 2), He will keep us safe (Psalm 57:1), He has saved us (Titus 3:5), He will help us (Psalm 46:1), and best of all, He will never forsake us! (Deuteronomy 31:6)

What do we do - “Give thanks unto the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount of your wonderful deeds.” (Psalm 9:1)

Now with the help of seeing who The Great I Am really is, and what He has done for us, we can move on to look at who we are:

Who are we? - In Ephesians we see what could be the gospel in a nutshell, “the Mantra Carta” of Christianity if you will, all of this put into just ten verses (Ephesians 2:1-10):

It starts with showing who we WERE: DEAD in our trespasses and sin, not just unclean or dirty, but DEAD! (vs 1). Later Paul talks about this saying, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (5:14a). This is our call.

There are many kinds of life: vegetable life, animal life, mental life, moral life, and spiritual life. A being might be alive in one sense but dead in another. To be spiritually dead does not mean that we are physically dead, socially dead, or psychologically dead. Yet it is a real death, a dead death nonetheless.

This is a crucial part of salvation. We were dead, but no longer. We were despicable and unworthy, but God gave us grace. We were unlovable, but God loved us. “We love because HE first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).

We see that we lived a life glorifying ourselves and indulging “passions of our flesh” and “desires of the body.” (vs 2-3). We once walked in darkness (5:8).

In regards the term trespass and sin:

In trespasses and sins, the idea behind the word trespasses is that we have crossed a line, challenging God's boundaries. The idea behind the word sins is that we have missed a mark, the perfect standards of God.

“Trespasses” speaks of man as a rebel, “sins” speak of man as a failure. "Before God we are both rebels and failures. (Slott)

These first verses show what we were, who we were, and what we did. Why we must read these and take them to heart is because it is important to know that ALL of that was in the past. It is who we were, not who we are. We can find peace in knowing that God saw us in our sin but did not leave us there.

We move into the beauty of the gospel: salvation. We see two words that may not stand out right away: “But God.” (vs 4). Anytime within the Bible that we see these words, beauty follows, love follows, grace follows, salvation follows. God did not need to save us, He didn’t need to do anything, but He chose to because He loves us! Below are a few verses that show just how amazing the phrase “but God” really is:

- Genesis 31:7

- Genesis 48:21

- Genesis 50:20

- 1 Samuel 28:3

- Psalm 73:26

- 1 Corinthians 10:13

- Philippians 2:27

God delivered us from the domain of darkness we once walked (Colossians 1:13), so now we need to walk as children of the light. (Ephesians 5:8)

Next: “Being rich in mercy…” (vs. 4) This is a crucial thing to note because it is showing that God is over flowing in His grace, His mercy, and His love. He has all we need and more, because that is who he is. Spurgeon says this: "So is it with the grace of God: he has as much grace as you want, and he has a great deal more than that. The Lord has as much grace as a whole universe will require, but he has vastly more. He overflows: all the demands that can ever be made on the grace of' God will never impoverish him, or even diminish his store of mercy; there will remain an incalculably precious mine of mercy as fall as when he first began to bless the sons of men."

“Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” (vs.5). Do not miss this: it says, “Even when.” This says that God did not wait for us to get out of our sin or to come to Him. He came searching for us. “God did not wait for us to be loveable to love us.”

We move into the well-known verse that says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” (vs 8a). This should hit us to the core, seeing that it is never anything that we can EVER do to earn salvation, but that it is the “gift of God.” (vs 8b).

Now, here we stand, seeing the gospel lived out in just a few verses. And we get to the beauty of the gospel, of salvation, and we can see who we are. Here, I see who I am in The Great I Am: “For we are His workmanship…” That is who we are, that is what we are, and that is our identity. Once, we were dead, but now we are alive. Not by anything we have done, but by everything God has done.

Something to realize through all of this: a masterpiece is not a masterpiece until the master takes the piece and makes it a masterpiece! We can’t find our identity in God until we realize that He took our dirt, our brokenness, and our death, and made it a masterpiece! This is our identity: a masterpiece. Let’s not forget it.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9)

So, the looming question may still exist: how does this help me in finding who I am in the Great I Am? Well, the above verse states that while we were DEAD, God was rich in mercy and love, sending His son to die on the cross for our sins. It is through this love that we can confidently say we are Children of the one, true, living God! Now if that doesn’t get someone excited, I don’t know what will.

This post may not answer that question for you. I pray it does. But if it does not, I pray it at least sparked an inquiry you may not have realized you had. Maybe it is time you sat down and found out for yourself who you really are. As I said above, the past year has been absolutely insane with switching majors and many other things. All of this has really furthered my reliance on God and my faith in Him.

What does this mean for us? – well, if we are children of God, recipients of His loving mercy, why is there any reason we shouldn’t proclaim and share?

I can now fully embrace who I am in the Great I Am once and for all. No question, no doubt, and all certainty. I can embrace this and never fear that I will lose it. I am a masterpiece, a child of God, I was lost but now am found, blind but now I see. This is the amazing grace of God! The important thing to realize is that it is all because of what He has done and nothing of what I have done. My question is this: Can you confidently say you have found your true identity in Christ? If you can, GREAT! But if you have even the smallest doubt, I pray you wait no longer to talk to someone and find it!

“My identity and my security are not in my spiritual progress. My identity and my security are in God’s acceptance of me given as a gift in Christ.” - J.D. Greear