God S Identity Quotes & Sayings

This is the mission of God: to restore the creation and the life of humanity from the ravages of sin.[45] The church's function in this story is to participate in God's mission; we are to be caught up in God's own work of restoration and healing. This defines the identity and role of the church. — Michael W. Goheen

The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth. — Anne Lamott

Some theorists believe that polyphasic functioning can, over time, affect a person's sense of identity by making it harder to distinguish central concerns from peripheral ones. When life is made up of decisions, decisions, decisions, all requiring attention at the same time, where to eat lunch on a particular day may seem as important a question as, Do I believe in God? We can get to a point where the dailiness of life matters as much as the core elements of identity: one's fundamental beliefs, moral convictions, or close relationships. — Marlene Steinberg

We know God by cultivating a relationship, not by understanding a concept.
The relation constitutes the very subjectivity of of our existence. We participate in existence consciously and rationally, with subjective self-knowledge and identity, because the erotic drive of our nature is transformed into a personal relation when there arises in the space of the Other the first signifier of desire: the maternal presence. The subject is born with love's first leap of joy. — Christos Yannaras

When the light of God's truth begins to find its way through the mists of illusion and self-deception with which we have unconsciously surrounded ourselves, and when the image of God within us begins to return to itself, the false self which we inherited from Adam begins to experience the strange panic that Adam felt when, after his sin, he hid in the trees of the garden because he heard the voice of the Lord God in the afternoon.
If we are to recover our own identity, and return to God by the way Adam came in his fall, we must learn to stop saying: "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked. And I hid." [Genesis 2:10] We must cast away the "aprons of leaves" and the "garments of skins" which the Fathers of the Church variously interpret as passions, and attachments to earthly things, and fixation in our own rigid determination to be someone other than our true selves. — Thomas Merton

The overriding reason why we should take other people's cultures seriously is because God has taken ours seriously. — John R.W. Stott

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity. — Ralph Ellison

Sin comes from not realizing God's love. Sin comes from thinking ourselves only as sinners, while overcoming sin comes from thinking ourselves as overcomers. We act our our perceived identities. — Peter Kreeft

there has to be somebody whom you adore who adores you. Someone whom you cannot but praise who praises and loves you - that is the foundation of identity. The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.3 However, if we put this power in the hands of a fallible, changeable person, it can be devastating. And if this person's regard is based on your fallible and changeable life efforts, your self-regard will be just as fleeting and fragile. Nor can this person be someone you can lose, because then you will have lost your very self. Obviously, no human love can meet these standards. Only love of the immutable can bring tranquillity. Only the unconditional love of God will do. — Timothy J. Keller

What does it mean to not be hidden from the eyes of God even in the womb? What does it say about God that He "beheld [David's] unformed substance"? Alone in the field, far removed in both space and time from the overwhelming voices we contend with every day, David came to a remarkable revelation: He was loved simply because he existed. — Jonathan Martin

After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God. — Thomas Merton

Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are. And maybe, just moments after Jesus' baptism, when the devil says to him, "If you are the Son of God ... " he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God. So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is to throw that identity into question. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Taking on the identity of Christ is a significant concept that helps define who we are as God's people. Out of many, we become one! — Ross Parsley

Like slavery, other human rights crimes have resulted in the loss of millions of lives. But only slavery, with its sadistic patience, asphyxiated memory, and smothered cultures, has hulled empty a whole race of people with inter-generational efficiency. Every artifact of the victims' past cultures, every custom, every ritual, every god, every language, every trace element of a people's whole hereditary identity, wrenched from them and ground into a sharp choking dust. It is a human rights crime without parallel in the modern world. For it produces its victims ad infinitum, long after the active stage of the crime has ended. — Randall Robinson

We want to live a simple life, ... I want to emphasize I'm not an environmentalist who goes to church. I want my principal identity as a Christian to be someone who follows Jesus. I want to work for peace and justice, care for God's environment, be a good neighbor and friend and live the right life. — Allen Johnson

Certain mystical philosophers have personified Destiny, and from this point of view each man's personal destiny is his archetype or "other self"
his "angel"
with whom he must be reunited if he is to rise above his fragmentary identity as a worldling and become whole, as he is (and always has been) in the mind of God. — Charles Le Gai Eaton

Resentment is often a woman's inner signal that she has been ignoring an important God-given responsibility - that of making choices. — Brenda Waggoner

Being "ordinary" means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren't digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren't serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves. — Michael S. Horton

In a sense we're all children of God - Jesus is called the one and only Son. Monogeneo is the word, God's only "genetic" child. He bears the very essence of God. What we say about God we say about Jesus. So the promise rises and falls on the identity of Jesus. — Max Lucado

Shame is deeply rooted in identity. And the "self-ideal" we create for ourselves can often incorporate a lot of expectations that simply aren't included in God's ideal for us. — Matt Chandler

Identity. It's always God's first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God's own. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

[It] could be argued that the favorite sin of Satan would not be vanity, as described in 'Devil's Advocate', or even unbelief in the existence of the devil, as described in 'The Usual Suspects,' but the imagining of a generic, Christless God. The very essence of the Christian faith centers on the identity of Jesus Christ as God's only begotten Son, who alone is the source of salvation and author of faith (Acts 4:12). So it stands to reason that Satan's favorite sin is the belief in a God without Jesus, because that is a god without atonement or redemption and that is what populates hell in the name of heaven. — Brian Godawa

Our attitude toward abortion ... is fixed by our knowledge that according to an eternal plan all of the spirit children of God must come to this earth for a glorious purpose, and that individual identity began long before conception and will continue for all the eternities to come. We rely on the prophets of God who have told us that while there may be 'rare' exceptions, 'the practice of elective abortion is fundamentally contrary to the Lord's injunction, 'Thou shalt not ... kill, nor do anything like unto it' — Dallin H. Oaks

(God's) nature, identity, and overarching purposes are no doubt unchanging. But his intentions with regard to many particular matters that concern individual human beings are not. This does not diminish him. Far from it. He would be a lesser God if he could not change his intentions when he thinks it is appropriate. — Dallas Willard

When we live life centered around what others like, feel, and say, we lose touch with our own identity. I am an eternal being, created by God. I am an individual with purpose. It's not what I get from life, but who I am, that makes the difference. — Neva Coyle

How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some one, or to some other who remains someone. It's perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret? — Jacques Derrida

Part of our skittishness about Christian perfection is linguistic confusion. The English word "perfect" has absorbed the Greek notion of "teleos". When the Greeks looked at a building's blueprint, they pictured the building whole and complete. They envisioned the blueprint finished down to the bathroom tile and announced, "Ah, this is perfect." The problem is that "teleos" suggests that perfection is something we can build or achieve. The Hebrews looked at the same blueprint more practically. They envisioned the process of building from hard hats to hammers, from scaffolding to skylights. "Ah," the Hebrews said. "This is perfect." The Hebrews and the early Christians understood perfection as a process, not a product. Our identity as Christians depends upon life lived in relationship with God, not upon the quality of our achievements. — Kenda Creasy Dean

The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic. — Cormac McCarthy

Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable. — Neil Gaiman

Real comfort is found when I understand that I am held in the hollow of the hand of the One who created and rules all things. The most valuable thing in my life is God's love, a love that no one can take away. When my identity is rooted in him, the storms of trouble will not blow me away.

This is the comfort we offer people. We don't comfort them by saying things will work out. They may not. The people around them may change, but they may not. The Bible tells us again and again that everything around us is in the process of being taken away. God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall. Comfort is found by sinking our roots into the unseen reality of God's ever-faithful love. — Paul David Tripp

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

Now do you understand why it's so important for you to grasp your belovedness? God won't change the world through angels or through ideas; He will change the world through His sons and daughters. If you don't know who you are, if you don't know your true identity, you won't touch others on His behalf. — Jonathan Martin

The source of their confident certainty was simply God alone. God Himself. As long as they were in fellowship with Him, they could forever expect His blessings to just roll downhill and right into their lives. He was their righteousness, He was their innocence, He was their sense of identity, He was their dignity and honor. He was their peace. And He was their prosperity. He was the reason they felt no fear. So even though we're confined today to a much different time zone than the one Adam and Eve set their clocks to - back before the Fall struck thirteen and threw everything out of whack - the winning response to fear and anxiety remains completely one-dimensional. It's Him - not the favorable resolution of our problems. It's Him - not the removal of every worst-case scenario. It's Him - not an easy, breezy, adversity-free lifestyle. It's Him. It has always been and will always be Him. — Matt Chandler

When people discuss his plays, he says that he feels like he's standing at customs watching an official ransack his luggage. He cheerfully declares responsibility for a play about two people, and suddenly the officer is finding all manner of exotic contraband like the nature of God and identity, and while he can't deny that they're there, he can't for the life of him remember putting them there. In the end, a play is not the product of an idea; an idea is the product of a play. — Tom Stoppard

This important theme of Abraham's deep trust in God's promise and faithfulness helped shape Israel's own self-understanding and identity. So it's not surprising to hear Moses's words to Israel at Sinai: "Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test [the Hebrew verb is nasah] you, and in order that the fear [yir'ah] of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin" (Exod. 20:20). These two key verbs link back to Genesis 22. Abraham was tested by God (Gen. 22:1) and through this ordeal demonstrated his fear of God (v. 12). Abraham's obedience is intended to serve as a model for Israel and to inspire Israel's obedience and solidify their relationship with ("fear of") God.5 — Paul Copan

The creation of man whom God in his foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God's omnipotence. For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection. To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension. Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself, and to be separate from God is to be sinful. The creation of evil is therefore the index of God's glory and His power. That had to be so that the creation of good might be the index of man's glory and power. But by God's help. By His help and in His wisdom. — Robert Penn Warren

We are identified and known by the sort of fruit, the quantity of fruit, and the quality of fruit borne out in our daily conversation, conduct, and character. There is no greater criterion for Christians. It is the paramount gauge of God's people. — W. Phillip Keller

I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking. — George MacDonald

It's important to understand that at every point of opposition to who we are or to what God has called us to do, we are presented with the options of either conforming and giving in, or standing our ground and becoming stronger in who God has made us to be — Gabriel Wilson

Having God as an identity marker is nothing but a label, a language, and a lifestyle. I'm a Christian. I talk like one. I act like one.
But having God as an identity changer is so much more. It's lavish abandon to who God is and who He's made me to be. Holding nothing back! — Lysa TerKeurst

To our three levels of complicating alienation we must add the fundamental distinction or break between God and humankind, between Creator and creature. That "division" is no tragedy, but part and parcel of our identity and God's grandeur. It must be accounted for in the mystery of God, who reveals himself to us as we can bear it: revelation invariably involves concealment, since God is God and we are not. The communion that he forges with us remains a tantalizing "mystery" that leads us to know more and more of him, but never in completion - and at this, we wonder! As Kallistos Ware puts it, where knowledge of God is concerned, "The eyes are closed - but they are also opened" (The Orthodox Way, p. 15). — Edith M. Humphrey

So you actually need spectacles," Leo finally said.
"Of course I do," Marks said crossly. "Why would I wear spectacles if I didn't need them?"
"I thought they might be part of your disguise."
"My disguise?"
"Yes, Marks, disguise. A noun describing a means of concealing someone's identity. Often used by clowns and spies. And now apparently governesses. Good God, can anything be ordinary for my family? — Lisa Kleypas

Because sometimes I find myself talking about God so much He becomes more of an identity marker than an identity changer in my life. Having God as an identity marker reduces Him to nothing more than a label, a lingo, & a lifestyle
I'm a Christian so I talk like one & act like one. But having God as an identity changer is much, much more. It means I am no longer the person I was before, someone who comes unglued at minor things. I am making imperfect progress. Shifting, breaking away, & being chiseled. I am a woman whose identity has been changed by coming face to face with the One who has the power to completely transform me. — Lysa TerKeurst

[Christians] must become, must be known as, the people who don't hold grudges, who don't sulk. We must be the people who know how to say "Sorry," and who know how to respond when other people say it to us. It is remarkable, once more, how difficult this still seems, considering how much time the Christian church has had to think about it and how much energy has been spent on expounding the New Testament, where the advice is all so clear. Perhaps it's because we have tried, if at all, to do it as though it were just a matter of obeying an artificial command
and then, finding it difficult, have stopped trying because nobody else seems to be very good at it either. Perhaps it might be different if we reminded ourselves frequently that we are preparing for life in God's new world, and that the death and resurrection of Jesus, which by baptism constitute our own new identity, offer us both the motivation and the energy to try again in a new way. — N. T. Wright

Jesus did not use hell to try and compel "heathens" and "pagans" to believe in God, so they wouldn't burn when they die. He talked about hell to very religious people to warn them about the consequences of straying from their God-given calling and identity to show the world God's love. — Rob Bell

You have to find a way - and thankfully for me, it's been music - to separate yourself from the racial identity. It's not easy, and I continue to work, God bless, and I'm really, truly appreciative of it. — Utkarsh Ambudkar

Today Saint Paul has told us that in Christ we have become God's adopted children, brothers and sisters in Christ. This is who we are. This is our identity. — Pope Francis

Many of our brothers and sisters are 'baptized, but insufficiently evangelized.' In a number of cases, nations once rich in faith and in vocations are losing their identity under the influence of a secularized culture. The need for a new evangelization, so deeply felt by my venerable Predecessor, must be valiantly reaffirmed, in the certainty that God's word is effective. — Pope Benedict XVI

Why then did Abraham do it ? For God's sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake. He did it for God's sake because God required this proof of his faith ; for his own sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof. — Soren Kierkegaard

What a crafty enemy we have. Can you see it? The enemy knows that if he can cause us to hide ourselves - who God made us to be - that it also causes us to lose sight of our identity in God as his image-bearers. Then, because our view of ourselves has been diminished, we shrink from stepping into the destiny God created for us. That's a very effective strategy. — Christine Caine

Todd, trust math. As in Matics, Math E. First-order predicate logic. Never fail you. Quantities and their relation. Rates of change. The vital statistics of God or equivalent. When all else fails. When the boulder's slid all the way back to the bottom. When the headless are blaming. When you do not know your way about. You can fall back and regroup around math. Whose truth is deductive truth. Independent of sense or emotionality. The syllogism. The identity. Modus Tollens. Transitivity. Heaven's theme song. The night light on life's dark wall, late at night. Heaven's recipe book. The hydrogen spiral. The methane, ammonia, H2O. Nucleic acids. A and G, T and C. The creeping inevibatility. Caius is mortal. Math is not mortal. What it is is: listen: it's true. — David Foster Wallace

If I give you and apple and ask you, "What is that?"
You reply, "An apple."
"How do you know it's an apple."
"Because it just is."
"How did it get to be an apple?"
"It came form an apple."
"Exactly. So when I ask you, 'What are you?' You can honestly say, 'I am a child of God because I came from God. — Toni Sorenson

Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ. — Brennan Manning

I think the Russian government is right to be concerned with propaganda on teenagers who are at the age of struggling through sexual identity issue and we should help to channel these urges in productive behavior. Heterosexuality is God's design. Policies that encourage young people to think this are good ideas. — Bryan Fischer

This is the first thing the Holy Spirit does in your life. He brings you God's presence, and when He does, you will no longer be in the dark. The Holy Spirit has a beautiful identity. He is called 'The Angel of God's presence.' He is the One Who brings us the presence of God and makes it real to us. — Chris Oyakhilome

Identity: smack-dab in the middle ... Neither omnipotent nor impotent. Neither God's MVP nor God's mistake. — Max Lucado

Scripture is not merely a record of divine-human history but a proclaiming of it, not merely an account of God's life with us to date but a voice in that life. When we read Scripture in the church, someone addresses us. And by the unanimous tradition of the church, this voice is the Word of God, the Logos, the second identity of the Trinity. — Ellen F. Davis

Hearing God's voice is not about something we do. Rather, hearing God is about someone we are. Hearing God is not primarily a behavior. It's a reflection of our identity. We hear God because of who we are and because of whose we are. In — Robert Morris

Either we can be victimized and become victims, or we can be victimized and rise above it. Often it is easier to play the victim than take off our masks and ask for help. We get comfortable with our victim status. It becomes our identity and is hard to give up. The Israelites often played the victim card, and I love what God finally tells them, "You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north" (Deuteronomy 2:3 [NASB]). Turn north! It's time to move on! Self-pity, fear, pride, and negativity paralyze us. Taking off our masks takes courage, but if we don't do it, we will remain in our victim status and end up stunted.6 — Lysa TerKeurst

His intercession was not only solidarity but identification with us: he bears all of us in his Body. And thus his whole life as a man and as Son is a cry to God's heart; it is forgiveness, but forgiveness that transforms and renews. I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me; he suffered and suffers for me; he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought, not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant. — Pope Benedict XVI

What he liked about the Jordan was hat no one could hinder its flow. It has a mind all its own. Other's opinions of its size or depth didn't matter. Only God possessed the power to subvert its course. Whether viewers loved it or not was inconsequential. It was a river, and it was created to flow, and that was exactly what it did. And that's all it did. That was its purpose, and no one could alter that identity regardless of what they thought. — Daniel Black

Heard as a moralist's diatribe, the Sermon on the Mount is an impossible-to-bear judgment. Read as a series of mandates for Jesus' disciples, it is an impossible-to-attain standard. Heard as heaven's dream for the creatures made in God's own image, however, the sermon becomes an impossible-to-wait-for world of Eden restored. Read as the Heavenly Father's reality in which we participate as his children by being transformed into the likeness of the one Perfect Son, it is our new-creation identity dawning on us and forming in our daily life habits. This is a righteousness that both fulfills the Law and the Prophets and exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. — Rubel Shelly

To the degree that we embrace the truth that our identity is not rooted in our success, power, or popularity, but in God's infinite love, to that degree can we let go of our need to judge. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Egos are drawn to bigger egos. Darkness cannot recognize light. Only light can recognize light. So don't believe that the light is outside you or that it can only come through one particular form. If only your master is an incarnation of God, then who are you? Any kind of exclusivity is identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no matter how well disguised. Use the master's presence to reflect your own identity beyond name and form back to you and to become more intensely present yourself. You will soon realize that there is no "mine" or "yours" in presence. Presence is one. — Eckhart Tolle

Most of all I discovered that my change of mind was closely connected with a change of heart. As a young man, I was comfortable with teachings that supported my leadership role. The role of women was a great topic for debate because it really didn't affect me and my identity. However, as I have been able to better receive God's calling to leadership as a call to humility rather than supremacy, I have been more able to receive women in leadership as well. It is here where I believe that my mind and heart and the Scriptures are most connected. — Robert Fryling

God will never tempt you. It's not in His nature. In fact, He promises to provide an escape route for every tempting situation. But I can promise you this: God will test your faith. And those tests won't get easier. They will get progressively harder as the stakes get higher. And those tests will undoubtedly revolve around what is most important to you...

God will test you to make sure your identity and your security are found in the cross of Jesus Christ. And God will go after anything you trust in more than Him until you put it on the altar. — Mark Batterson

I think our generation has been called to apathy just as our grandparents were called to defeat fascism and the baby boomers were called to get divorced and fuck around for most of their adult lives before bankrupting the entire goddamn country when they retire. But we have the chance to do something really special here. Imagine a world where people didn't care enough to go to war over anything. Where some guy gets up in the morning and says, "I know God wants me to kill the infidels and keep gay people from marrying each other, but I just don't give a shit. I'm going back to bed." It would be paradise on earth. This is our mission. I think we can make it happen, but I really don't care either way. And that's called hope. — Paul Neilan

Repentance, rebirth, and conversion were exchanged for cheap grace, and the integrity of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus faded. People join the church in droves, but Christian disciples were hard to come by. Christianity had an identity crisis.
It's the same old story of the forbidden fruit
it's the beautiful things that get us. It's the things that seem good, but are not quite of God, that steer us off the course of holiness into destructiveness. — Shane Claiborne

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to keep promises to God, to self and to one's relationships that consistently express one's identity and values in spiritually and emotionally healthy ways. Relational congruence is about both constancy and care at the same time. It is about both character and affection, and self-knowledge and authentic self-expression. Relational congruence is the leader's ability to cultivate strong, healthy, caring relationships; maintaining healthy boundaries; and communicating clear expectations, all while staying focused on the mission. — Tod Bolsinger

If Satan can use our everyday experiences, both big and small, to cripple our true identity, then he renders God's people totally ineffective for the kingdom of Christ. — Lysa TerKeurst

For the first time I was beginning to discern a God whom I actually wanted to live for. I was beginning to discover the motivation of Paul when he proclaimed, "Christ's love compels us" (2 Cor. 5: 14). All my life I'd tried to be good to avoid hell, or the ugly-stick flogging, or my stepmother's beatings with a two-by-four. But while most people would undoubtedly be better at behaving well with these frightful motivations than I ever was, no one could ever be transformed by these sorts of motivations. Threatening motivations address behavior, but they can never transform our identity. They motivate people to change as a means of protecting themselves, but for this reason they can never move us beyond ourselves to become someone fundamentally different from who we currently are. And threatening motivations can certainly never transform us into people with an other-oriented, self-sacrificial, loving character. Only a motivation that is anchored in love can do this. — Gregory A. Boyd

Christianity grasped perfectly that there is an element in the apparent contingency of love that can't be reduced to that contingency. But it immediately raised it to the level of transcendence, and that is the root of the problem. This universal element I too recognize in love as immanent. But Christianity has somehow managed to elevate it and refocus it onto a transcendent power. It's an ideal that was already partly present in Plato, through the idea of the Good. It is a brilliant first manipulation of the power of love and one we must now bring back to earth. I mean we must demonstrate that love really does have universal power, but that it is simply the opportunity we are given to enjoy a positive, creative, affirmative experience of difference. The Other, no doubt, but without the "Almighty-Other", without the "Great Other" of transcendence. — Alain Badiou

Union with Christ highlights God's character as it relates to all aspects of redemption and our inclusion in the gospel story. As Colijn remarks, "For Paul, 'being in Christ' is not a transaction but a real spiritual union between Christ and the believer that determines the believer's identity and shapes all of the believer's life. — Lynn H. Cohick

We are Christians because we find our identity, life, and purpose in Christ. We are evangelical because we believe the gospel and esteem it as the great central truth of God's revelation to men. — Paul Washer

Who we truly are is who God created us to be. That's what's most important. Our true identity is seen in light of God. He determines the destiny of our life. — Louie Giglio

People are created in God's image. Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors. It's an identity disorder. — Christine O'Donnell

The new vantage from which Christian theology as a discourse on Christian identity must operate in the modern world, then, is the Christological horizon of Mary-Israel. To be Christian is to enter into this horizon. But where is the horizon concretely displayed, where is it made visible if not in despised dark (and especially dark female) flesh? Is this not the flesh of homo sacer . . .the flesh that is impoverished, "despised and rejected of men," flesh that in shame we "hide our faces from" (cf. Isa. 53:3)?
But if this is the case, it follows that the poverty of dark flesh is where one finds the wealthy God. . . In (Christ"s) taking on the form of the slave, the from of despised dark (female) flesh there is the diclsoure (sic) of divinity, a disclosure that undoes the social arrangement of the colonial-racial tyranny (tynannos,), as the seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor called it, that is the darker side of modernity — J. Kameron Carter

You must know that you are worth much to me whether you accomplish anything or not. Even if you are rejected in the world's eyes, you are valuable to me. — Stormie O'martian

To dwell in the place of God, as Evagrius puts it, is to live with a particular intense awareness of this reality, to know oneself not as a solitary, autonomous being but as one whose identity can only be conceived of as existing within an intricate web of encompassing relationships. The primary work of contemplative practice is to become more aware of this web of relationships, to learn to live within it fully and responsibly and to give expression to it in one's life. — Douglas E. Christie

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any. — Jorge Luis Borges

To the USSR on Stalin's death: Regardless of the identity of government personalities, the prayer of us Americans continues to be that the Almighty will watch over the people of that vast country and bring them in His wisdom opportunity to live their lives in a world where all men, and women, and children, dwell in peace and comradeship. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

In God's plan, our quest for personal identity is meant to drive us back to him as Creator so that we find our meaning and purpose in him.
When we live out a sense of who we are IN CHRIST we live our lives based on all we have been given by Christ. This keeps us from seeking to get those things from the people and situations around us. Much of the disappointments and heartache we experience is the result of our attempts to get something from relationships that we already have in Christ. — Timothy S. Lane

In understanding and developing your true identity, you can stand on solid ground because you are a person of God's unique creation — Sunday Adelaja

A compulsive external search only leads us to the interpretation of another's path. True identity and sustained harmony can only be achieved by turning inward, and it is there that you will find every answer that you need to step into enlightenment — Gary Hopkins

I want you to stop being subhuman and become 'yourself'. 'Yourself,' I say. Not the newspaper you read, not your vicious neighbor's opinion, but 'yourself.' I know, and you don't, what you really are deep down. Deep down, you are what a deer, your God, your poet, or your philosopher is. But you think you're a member of the VFW, your bowling club, or the Ku Klux Klan, and because you think so, you behave as you do. This too was told you long ago, by Heinrich Mann in Germany, by Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos in the United States. But you recognized neither Mann nor Sinclair. You recognize only the heavyweight champion and Al Capone. If given your choice between a library and a fight, you'll undoubtedly go to the fight. — Wilhelm Reich

Whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life
be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others ... I am alienated from my true self. My identity as Abba's child [a child of God] becomes ambiguous, tentative and confused — Brennan Manning

Paul presents the Good News: Salvation is available to all, regardless of a person's identity, sin, or heritage. We are saved by grace (unearned, undeserved favor from God) through faith (complete trust) in Christ and his finished work. Through him we can stand before God justified, not guilty — Anonymous

As a Jew, keeping kosher was tantamount to Peter's very faith and identity, but when following Jesus led him to the homes and tables of Gentiles, Peter had a vision in which God told him not to let rules - even biblical ones - keep him from loving his neighbor. So when Peter was invited to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, he declared: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean" (Acts 10:28). Sometimes the most radical act of Christian obedience is to share a meal with someone new. — Rachel Held Evans

In the heart of every writer there lies a murderer.
Writers spend their lives struggling to conceal this murderous desire from other mortals.
Like God, they ruthlessly destroy the people of their own creation, drag them from one cruelty to another, meting out punishment, and with the callous indifference of a serial killer. And no one knows when he has taken a life from the solitude of his room. But when a writer is enraged the walls of his refuge come crumbling down, revealing his true identity. — Ahmet Altan

However, as Gordon Fee has argued, it is doubtful whether Paul ever uses the language of "spirit" without some reference to the Holy Spirit. Here, then, while the immediate reference may be, indeed, to Paul's own "spirit," it is his spirit as taken up into the Holy Spirit. His "presence" with the Colossians, then, is not a simple "you will be in my thoughts and prayers," but involves a profound corporate sense of identity, based on and mediated by the Spirit of God. — Douglas J. Moo

Knowledge of one's identity, one's self, community, nation, religion, and God, is the true meaning of resurrection, while ignorance of it signifies hell. — Elijah Muhammad

When a lot of athletes get done playing, they end up in some really tough positions. They have a hard time transitioning because their identity is wrapped up in who they are as a player and what they do rather than who they can be in Christ. We desire to help people understand the invitation that God has given each one of us as Christ followers to be a part of this global redemptive story. If you can't give your life to something with meaning and purpose of that magnitude then there's nothing there. — Aaron Kampman

So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is to throw that identity into question. Identity is like the tip of a spool of thread, which when pulled, can unwind the whole — Nadia Bolz-Weber

My husband had a very strong identity and was successful in his life. Thank God for that. There's no way I can control him. I wouldn't stay married to him if I felt I could. I can readily take my business personality into the home. But he forces me to be a partner rather than the boss. — Barbara Corcoran

Nature or Nature's God" is not a statement, but a name, internally divided by tolerated uncertainty. It has the singularity of a proper name, whilst parenthesizing a suspended decision (Pyrrhonian epoche, of which much more in a future post). It designates rigidly, but obscurely, because it points into epistemological darkness - naming a Reality that not only 'has', but epitomizes identity, whilst nevertheless, for 'the sake of argument', eluding categorical identification. Patient in the face (or facelessness) of who or what it is, 'we' emerge from a pact, with one basic term: a preliminary decision is not to be demanded. It thus synthesizes a select language community, fused by the unknown. — Nick Land

Someday in our future it may be possible for women everywhere not to be restricted to those roles society deems natural, God-given, or appropriately feminine. A woman will not need to be disguised as a man to go outside, to climb a tree, or to make money. She will not need to make an effort to resemble a man, or to think like one. Instead, she can speak a language that men will want to understand. She will be free to wear a suit or a skirt or something entirely different. She will not count as three-quarters of a man, and her testimony will not be worth half a man's. She will be recognized as someone's sister, mother, and daughter. And maybe, someday, her identity will not be confined to how she relates to a brother, a son, or a father. Instead, she will be recognized as an individual, whose life holds value only in itself. — Jenny Nordberg

When a worldview exchanges the Creator for something in creation, it will also exchange a high view of humans made in God's image for a lower view of humans made in the image of something in creation. Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine - however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation. — Nancy Pearcey

I've always been a freak and different, oddball even in my childhood and my own family, so I can relate to people who are struggling and trying to find their true identity. I do not sit in the seat of judgment.. I love people for who they are. We're all God's children. — Dolly Parton

Part of her had hoped he would say something like, "I want you, Katie. You belong to me now. I'll take care of you." He didn't say that. But his answer was the best one, really. "You belong to Christ, Katie. — Robin Jones Gunn

If God never gave me one more thing in my life, then you, right now, would be enough. You are my Dayeinu — S. Khubiar