#Culture. My Flesh | My Identity

Identity is the glue that bonds the mind to beliefs. Beliefs are a confession of identity, or what the individual identifies as fuel to existing behavior - righteous or otherwise.

THE FLESH AND HUMAN IDENTITY.

This is a real God send. I just had a so-called professional get out of control in front of our business team, yelling. As I was praying to God for some peace and calmness within, I got a really loud notification, and low and behold, it was this video. 🎉 God is good all the time, and I wish this channel the very best. -Jennifer, UK

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? (Galatians 3:3-5)

The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak amid the illusion of a strong self-image. Satan is very desirous of having the indwelt believers miss the most important step in resisting the flesh – prayer & releasing the Spirit. Secondly, the enemy is quick to focus the human mind on the desires of the flesh to affirm his plot to develop a personal identity that matches their fleshly deeds.

Identity is the glue that bonds the mind to beliefs.

Beliefs are a confession of identity, or what the individual identifies as fuel to existing behavior. From a worldly perspective, the term "identity" is most commonly used to describe oneself as to who or what they most identify as the distinctive qualities or traits that make them unique. Identities are strongly associated with self-concept, self-image (one's mental picture of oneself), self-value, and individuality. Most importantly, identity confesses the image of their god. The challenge is that identity is shifty – it restructures and re-contextualizes by adapting to the desires of the flesh, which can change frequently. We counselors call it fluid character. The deception is in the perception that stability can be found in shifting waves of interests or passions. The phrase I have used in counseling for many years is – Your identity is what makes the biggest impact/dent in your daily living.  

Sociologically, people emphasize an unknown fact; identity is congruently collective in nature. Meaning an individual's identity is strongly associated with role behavior connected to multiple sources of influences. For example, they may identify as a white male who self-identifies as a transvestite. Or they may identify as a transgender who is Christian. When people use a collection or group identifications to define them, they slip into collecting additional identity markers frequently – ultimately causing identity confusion. Since identity guides our behavior, the erratic actions that come with collective identity roots themselves according to the desires of their flesh.

Self-identity consists of two main features:

First, one's personal manifestations of assumed characteristics and development and the culmination of spiritual, social, and cultural factors that the individual allows to impact their self-perception. While people advocate a singular identity, the reality is that this is not obtainable, even for authentic Christians. All indwelt believers tend with multiple identities – their identity in Christ and those that come with their deeds of the flesh. Each deed demands an identity, both in Christ and in the deeds of the flesh. 

All humans, saved or not, have a conflict between the inner, personal world, and outer world, which includes the social world of an individual. This is what Biblical Paul classifies as the Spirit wages war with the flesh, and the flesh wages war with the Spirit. Within all born-again believers, there is a conflict of identity. As a counselor, we determine the extent of one’s identity by the potential outcomes of how each individual deals with conflict. Identity diffusion is the resulting behavior. Diffusion is a person’s failure to separate higher concentration (who you are in Christ) from the lower concentration (who you are according to your passions.) Those who do not separate these two sources successfully end up merging the Life of Christ in with their deeds of the flesh. As an example, a male identified as a Christian homosexual. The sad news is that they foreclose on the absolutes of God’s markers of Biblical identity in Christ.

Most believers fall back on their physical attributes regarding their identity – their weight, stature, how attractive or not, strong, or anything else that the sin of comparison might cause. A smaller group forms their identity around behavior – how feminine, masculine, kind, mean, or generous. The smallest group self-identify according to their spiritual preferences. In all cases, each is wrong.

Identity results from what all humans believe about their spirit, soul, and body. Since input for the belief system comes from the flesh, the five senses, it takes most of the childhood of humans to cement an identity confession. Once cemented, it is next to impossible to reverse the self-justified label without a miracle. Anytime you wake up with bouts of self-punishment, you know the gig – I am stupid, ugly, homely, or any other kind of self-depreciation; the mind is confessing to a cemented self-view that was formed over many years. In this, we discover the “why” born-again indwelt believers can hear or read the truest things about them in Christ but yet their continuous behaviors won’t match what their new identity in Christ reveals. What do they do? They force themselves to “act” as if they are transformed, which typically does not last. Two days later, they are back to parroting the behaviors of the cemented identity. This is the best way to describe what Paul said to the Galatians.

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Galatians 5:17)

Biblical Paul’s reference to the flesh compiles two distinct problems. First is the person’s condition of a fallen nature, which comes from birth. Secondly, it references the behaviors that come from choices made through that condition before indwelling salvation. Both form strongholds that bind the mind. Any bound mind suffers under the deception of a belief of -  I am what I do.  Paul’s solution was not “doing” what you want to do. Thus, blocking what you want to do, opens the door to doing what the Spirit wants to do through the believer. Paul was well aware of the fact that the seed of corruption that came through birth is what produces demonic identities which remain in the flesh even after authentic salvation.  

Humanity’s flesh can never be trusted, no matter how groomed you are in knowledge of the Word or the Spirit within you. As long as your flesh is alive, the object of lust and its works are fleshly – even under the condition of believers acting perfectly, replicating the works and character of Jesus. Where behavior originates is the key. If believers replicate Christ’s behaviors, they sin. If they release Christ from within to use their Spirit, soul, and body to carry out the works of Christ, they are functioning in the behaviors of the originator, Jesus. The bottom line is that the authentic believer becomes an instrument of sorts to deliver the righteous behaviors of Jesus to a confused and lost world. This requires believers to yield their lives to an inward Person to use us as nothing more than a tool, an instrument for Christ’s righteousness. Problem! Few, and I mean few, want to disregard their passions, wants, and actions to be a puppet of sorts for the Creator of the universe.

But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. (Acts 9:15)

It requires our self-life to be reduced to nothing to accept the humble reality that we are mere instruments to bear the name of Christ and manifest His behaviors versus ours. If believers don’t yield their lives as vessels, the flesh will attempt to create a balancing act between Spirit and flesh. The method that Jesus uses to combat this problem is by releasing sufferings onto the “believer.”

“For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of My name.” (Acts 9:16)

God’s methods of suffering erupt from and through the five senses, the flesh. He uses the same method that our enemy uses to bind the person to the deeds of the flesh. However, with the Spirit of Christ pressing in from within while the sufferings creep up through the flesh, an amazing thing happens. The Spirit not only wins this battle, but it cements a new identity, which includes the sufferings of Christ. How ironic is that?

God wants us to be billboards! Billboards that advance the identity of Jesus Christ. When others look upon our identity, they should see Jesus, want to connect with Him and accept who He is while denying themselves. Agreed. This is not popular in a culture that relentlessly pursues self as front and center – Christian or otherwise.    

The deeds of the flesh are joy killers, particularly the joy of the Lord. The deeds of the flesh thrive on legalism – amping us to look, sound, and deceive others in a graven image and identity of our well-manicured self-life. Meanwhile, being ignorant that these deeds are bringing on daily death.

For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:5-6)

Serving in a new way is the way of releasing the One who fulfilled the Law for us so that He can offer His identity through the Spirit directly from the new nature He placed within the believer. While deeds deliver death, the Spirit brings life and Godliness to all who master the art of being nothing.

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