Week 3: Identity in Everyday Life

Today’s application: Knowing I am a child of God and FREE in Christ changes how I view my body image and self-worth.

Have you ever wished you could change something (or multiple things) about the way you look? We’ve been there, too. Today Joy Summers, Betty Rock, and Bekah are unpacking the negative ways they talk to themselves, how they’re actively replacing lies with truth in day-to-day life, and how negative body image and self-worth might actually keep us from our God-given identity!

Here’s the article Bekah mentioned called “Learning to Be a Friend to My Body” by Danielle Shaub.

Bekah: “I was getting ready for bed and I made some comment about some weight I put on recently. My husband was like, “Say something nice or I’m not letting you go to bed!” But it worked! I needed that wake-up call because sometimes you get into that pattern of negative, negative, negative. Pretty soon you don’t realize you’re doing it, but that’s what you’re speaking into your life. Just as we wouldn’t want our daughters to copy our bad habits, our Heavenly Father is looking at us and He’s the one who made us fearfully and wonderfully. He doesn’t want us to talk to ourselves like that. He doesn’t want that to be our identity – these negative things that we label ourselves with.”

Joy: “It says “my works are wonderful.” The truth is if God made us exactly how we are, I could lose all the weight in the world and I’m always going to have hips because that’s the way I’m designed. I don’t like that! But I’m trying to go, “Ok, God, if you made me and I look in the mirror and I say negative things about myself, I’m saying negative things about what you’ve done. You’ve already called me wonderful! At the beginning of the World’s Biggest Small Group, we talked about who I am as a child of God. If you’re created and loved by God, that’s our identity! Our body image has nothing to do with that. We have to separate them best we can.”

In the final and 3rd week of the World’s Biggest Small Group: Identity, we’re taking the truths we’ve learned and start applying them to everyday situations we face in life and culture. Here’s where you’ll see – our identity truly changes everything. The verse we’re thinking on this week is:

¹⁰For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

(Ephesians 2:10 New Living Translation)

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