Finding Your Identity: You Were Born for This

Tayden Warren: Amen. Thank you, Carter. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and dive straight in.
And I'm going to straight up ask you guys three questions that maybe you have asked yourselves
before. And the three questions are, who am I? What is my purpose? And will I ever be enough?
And as you think about those questions, I have a video that we're going to watch. And as you
watch this video, I want you to think about these questions. How to train your dragon two,
I'm sure most of us have seen it.
I'm sorry that I had to show such a sad scene.
But as you saw on the scene, it relates to the questions that I asked.
At the beginning, Hiccup is questioning his identity.
He just watched his dad die, the chief of the tribe that he is in.
And he's standing there looking at his dad, and he's questioning,
will I ever be enough and be able to take over this tribe just like you could?
Then his mom comes over and reassures him, which we're going to come back to her later.
But later after that, he's now saying these very important words,
and he's looking at the dad, and he's saying, how can someone be that great?
How can someone be that selfless, be that brave?
Then he says two very important words.
I guess all it takes is to just try.
Which I guess is more than two words, but I was thinking about the just try part.
I'm going to change the scenery just a little bit.
And I want you to imagine yourself.
Yourself on a very dark day.
And you're looking up at a hill.
And on that hill there are three crosses.
Obviously the one in particular is the one in the middle and it's Jesus Christ.
And you're looking up at that hill and you just watch the Savior of the world
die right in front of your very own eyes, and you're asking the same questions. How can someone
be that great, be that humble, be that selfless? How can someone be like that?
Well, Paul answers this question as he's writing a letter to the Ephesians.
He's writing to the churches in Ephesus, and he says in chapter 4, verse 20, starting in verse 20,
But to give context before this, he's telling the Galatians, don't be like the Gentiles.
Don't be like them.
Don't be like the people around you.
Or in our case, don't be like the world.
He says in verse 20, that, however, is not the way of life you learned.
When you heard about Christ, you were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.
You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitfulness and its desires.
I'm going to stop right there for just a second.
And I'm sure some of you are asking, like, how can I just put off my old self?
Maybe you're in that old self right now.
Maybe you're still trying to figure that out.
But an example that I have is I used to be the exact same way.
I was in high school.
I blended in.
I cared about what people thought about me.
I wanted to be liked by so many people.
and then one day at a church camp I went and my camp counselor asked us the very common question
what is something that I can be praying for you guys and mine was well I'm I feel a little I feel
a little broken feel a little lost I feel like I haven't really found Jesus don't really have a
relationship with him um I'm kind of just hanging out with my friends and just blending into the
crowd. Well, later he comes up and he asked me, he says, Tayden, why does that matter? And I said,
well, it's because I want to be liked. That's why I want people to care about me. And he looked at
me and he said, okay, well, Tayden, my question for you is, do you want to be liked by the world?
Sorry, let me rephrase that. Do you want to be like the world or do you want to be like God?
And that's what Paul says here in verse 23, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Finding your identity is hard.
Trying to put off that former self and pick up a new one to be like God.
It's hard.
And simply, you can't do it alone.
That's where I'm going to come back to the mom in the movie scene.
Hiccup was asking and questioning himself.
Wasn't sure if he was enough.
And his mom comes up and says, Hiccup, you were born for this.
You were created for this.
And I'm going to tell you guys the same thing.
God created you in his image.
You were created to be who you are supposed to be.
And that is what God calls you to be.
And if you don't know who that is and you can't do that alone, I want you to look around the room.
Look right next to the person next to you.
I guarantee you they may not say it, but they are sitting there with open arms.
waiting for you to ask them saying, hey, I'm lost.
I need Jesus.
And they can lead you that way.
It's just like Proverbs 27, 17 says,
as iron sharpens iron, a person sharpens another person.
Finding your identity is hard.
Someone once told me a really great quote.
If you're not following Jesus, or sorry, I said it wrong again.
If the hardest thing for you is to not, if following Jesus isn't the hardest thing for you, then you're not following Jesus.
If you didn't get anything I said for today, I just have one sentence to wrap it all up.
And that is Jesus paid much too high of a price for you to just not try.
just one chapter of the Bible
is all it takes, one prayer
is all it takes to find your identity
and to build a relationship with him
you're dismissed
applause