In order to show God how sorry I am for my sins, I regularly reflect on them, and some of them I confess to you.  So here’s one…maybe this will help you…it’s rooted in one of the ways Satan seduces souls…with power.

I worked in big business and years ago I got a promotion that put me in charge of a team of people responsible for commercializing a new technology solution.  With the promotion came a title, “Senior Director”…Hmm…I liked it.  I was moving up the career ladder and I now had a title that said “I’m important”… “I am powerful”…

I say this with a bit of jest, but truth be told in this environment, your title had a lot of influence on what you could accomplish.  With the right title you could negotiate with other important people.  With the wrong title you did not make it to the important meetings.

My next job was in an even bigger global corporation.  They were offering me more money, but I didn’t like the title…it was “Senior Manager”…it sounded like a step down.  In fact I was about to be a smaller fish in a bigger pond…Hmmm…I had to think about it.

As I think back about it today, I realize I had no idea who I really was.  Eventually I decided to sacrifice all the money I was earning because I heard Jesus calling me.  Now we don’t have to quit our jobs when we hear Jesus calling, but in my case the Lord knew I needed some quiet time with Him to figure out who I really was.

My true identity is not that I am a manager or a director.  My true identity is that I am His…I belong to Jesus!  I am His disciple and I need to be serving Him.

The Scriptures speak about the Bride of Christ.  Isaiah says, “As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” Isaiah 62:5 “For your Maker is your husband– the LORD Almighty is his name– the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.” Isaiah 54:5

I feel that over the last ten years, Jesus has remade me.  I went from thinking I was a business woman, to wanting to take care of His business.  I have reflected on the path this transformation took, because I think this path is not really unique.

The journey commenced with me realizing I had a problem.  I felt lost; I was unhappy.  My work did not satisfy me.  I wanted to find God.  I was not going to Church. I needed to discover the meaning of my life.

I am convinced that if any of us desires God, He will find us…and God found me.  I repented of my sins and He received me with compassion and kindness.  I gave Him my time; in fact in my case I did something rather drastic, I quit my job and then surrounded by silence I began to panic a bit.  Transformations are often turbulent…and storms began to rage all around me.

I needed to begin to recognize Jesus in the world, so He brought me to meet many disadvantaged people.  Some of those people were very distressed, some suicidal, some physically ill, some homeless, some addicts. I told God I wanted to understand His pain and He showed it to me.

What changed me the most was meeting my suffering Bridegroom at the foot of His Cross as I began to meditate on His Passion daily at the time He died for us.  “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” Isaiah 53:3  I began to understand things I never understood before. It was as though God had turned off all the noise in my life and I began to see the world seduced, deceived, walking towards a cliff.  But at the edge of the cliff I saw Jesus with His arms outstretched as they were on the Cross and with Him are His disciples helping to ensure that souls do not fall into the abyss called Hell.

Perhaps you have found your true identity and you know that you belong to Christ.  You know that life is a journey to an eternal home with God and that carrying our Cross is part of God’s plan.  You see Jesus in the world and you are doing whatever He tells you to do.

Thank You Jesus for loving me so much.  Thank You for saving me!  I will always be Yours!   I know I am so unworthy of the many graces you have given me, please help me to honor You today and always!