Nora Armstrong, the heroine of Scandals and Mercies, is going through a bit of an identity crisis. She longs to teach children while her Aunt Gert would prefer that she acts as her personal servant and prepare to marry a rich husband.
When tragedy strikes their family, Nora has to give up her desires for a time and decide if she’s going to trust God with her life.
The hero of the book, James Cooper, doesn’t believe in the God his aunt taught him about but instead seeks for truth through journalism. When a revelation about his true origins rocks his life, he isn’t sure about where his life is going.
While my characters dealt with issues of who they were, I was thinking about what identity in Christ means to me. I’m not sure why that concept was so difficult or seemed like an ethereal term I couldn’t quite define. But since identity has to do with who we are, who does God’s word say that we are?
A child of God:
Galatians 3:26 – For you are all children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.
1 John 3:1 – See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him…
Ephesians 1:5 – having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire…
Because of our faith in Christ, our repentance and trust in Him to take our sins away, the Father adopts us into His family! We are so blessed!
A new creation in Christ:
2 Corinthians 5:17 – Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
The past is the past! We are someone totally new in Him! And as Romans 12:2 says:
Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.
We can become renewed when we focus on His word and the truth in it.
His temple:
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
He dwells within us, in our yet imperfect bodies and in our spirits.
And His workmanship:
Ephesians 2:10 -For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
This one is my favorite as a writer, because “workmanship” comes from the Greek word poiēma, where we get our word poem! We are created especially to walk in the works He has given us to do.
While this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg concerning who we are in Christ and the benefits our relationship with Him entails, it gives you an idea: His child, new creation in Christ, His temple, and His poiēma.
Simple, yet deep. Beautiful. So many gifts within our identity in Him.
You’ll have to read Scandals and Mercies to find out how Nora and James resolve their identity concerns, but I hope that this little devotional and their story will be a blessing to you.