A guest post by Janet Eriksson . . .
I am always amazed at how much God desires to remove the smallest of wounds from our hearts. I am equally amazed at how much this freedom from a minor childhood incident can change our lives today.
A guest post by Janet Eriksson . . .
I am always amazed at how much God desires to remove the smallest of wounds from our hearts. I am equally amazed at how much this freedom from a minor childhood incident can change our lives today.
My name is Kerri Johnson. For the past 20+ years, I have searched for answers to my own struggles. My lifelong passion has been in pursuit of my true identity and the healing of body, soul, and spirit. Out of those studies, Transformations was birthed. Transformations is an interactive healing process and a catalyst for helping people come out of the lies they believe and into the fullness of truth and identity.
Unfortunately, many of us spend our entire lives trying to mask who we are. That’s what we are taught. We are taught that we should hide our scars and shortcomings to survive and thrive in this perfect world. Neither of those statements is true. We shouldn’t hide our hurt, and the world is far from perfect. To be authentic, we have to identify our pain, bring it forward, and offer it on the altar of life to be able to be free. Otherwise, pain is our autopilot in everything we are, do, and say.
Continue reading “Take Off the Masks and Find Your True Self”
God created you with an amazing identity. He has awesome plans for your life. Jesus wants to give you an abundant life (John 10:10) but the enemy has tried to steal your birthright. How? By trying to weigh down your heart with wounds and dysfunction. The enemy is the ultimate identity thief, and his goal is to replace God’s truth with hurts and lies in your heart.
Do you recognize any of these fruits in your life? This is the enemy’s plan for identity theft. (The links below will take you to more articles on those topics.)
Bitterness
Unforgiveness
Trauma
Fear
Sleep struggles
Emotional upset
Masks
Shame
Performance
Weight of the world
Sick and tired
Lies
Neglect
Judgments
Dishonor
Walls around your heart
Generational sin
No matter what is weighing you down, Jesus is here to bring healing to your heart. He can help you find freedom in each of these areas. You can read that in Isaiah 61.
God provides amazing keys for your freedom. To help you discover some of those keys, here is an article on Keys to Being Real that will show you how to start living in greater freedom.
To read the next article in this series, please visit Keys to Being Real.
If you would like to read all of the articles in the Identity Quest series, you will find them by following this link.
If you are searching for your identity, here are some steps that I hope will help you. To find your true identity, you have to recognize your false identities, and you need to discover the things that keep you locked into those lies. You also need to listen to your heart, and listen to God. He knows your real identity. He created your true identity when He created you!
It is God’s desire to help you strip away all the junk that’s been piled up in your heart all these years – your junk, family junk, the world’s junk, the enemy’s junk. He wants you to let go of all that. Recognize where you’ve held onto things that block the truth. Find forgiveness for those who have dishonored your identity. And then walk with Jesus through the cross. That’s where you’ll exchange the lies for the truth of who you really are.
God wants more than anything to restore your true identity to you. Then you can be free to live as who you are meant to be; to enjoy all the desires God has put into your heart. And you can help others find the same freedom He offers.
Are you ready for freedom and true identity?
Here are some ways to start listening to God, and listening to your heart.
Exchanging Good For Bad
Take a pen and paper. Find a quiet place, preferably outside.
Be still.
Be quiet.
Take inventory of your emotions, good and bad.
Make two columns: Good. Bad.
Ask God to show you each emotion.
As He shows you, write the emotion, and ask Him where it came from. One at a time.
Forgive or release the person or the circumstance that caused each negative emotion.
Lay it at the cross.
Thank Him for the good. Offer Him the bad.
Ask God to show you what He wants you to have instead of the bad.
Write that down.
Re-check the negative emotion. Is it still there? If so, repeat the process, writing what you hear on each step.
Where Is Jesus?
Take out your creative journal.
Write your negative emotions, giving them a negative visual appearance.
Write your positive emotions, and give them a positive appearance.
Now draw what’s happening that would have put you in the places where you’re struggling.
Whatever the Lord shows you about the things you are wrestling with, draw that, and include yourself in the picture.
Now ask Jesus where He is.
Draw Him into the picture.
Ask the Lord what He wants to show you about that scene.
Thank Him for the answers.
What Are Your Passions?
Write down your passions, hobbies, ideal job(s). Now give those to the Lord and ask Him how to incorporate this into who He has called you to be. If you had a free pass to create your ideal work responsibility, what would it be? Now present it to the Lord and ask Him to open the doors.
How Do You Hear God?
As you go through this creative process, you might be asking, “How do I hear God?”
He’s not going to speak audibly. He speaks more loudly in silence. You would most likely have an unction to do something, or no sense of peace in moving. That’s how He speaks generally. If you don’t “hear” Him, you’d better not move. Or you’re going to have a whole lot of undoing.
P.S. The more you know Him, the less likely you are to feel Him, either. He will use anything. If a cardinal is symbolic for you, He will send a cardinal. That’s an example of the Lord using your environment to speak to you. A flower, an animal, a cloud, a puppy, newspaper headline, something somebody says.
If you wake up in the morning and you focus on God and read His Word, and ask Him to affirm His Word in your environment throughout the day, and then open your senses to awareness of those opportunities, you’ll start to see God affirm what He gave you in scripture that morning throughout your day.
To read the next article in this series, please visit Living out of Your Creative Self.
You can find all the Identity Quest series articles by following this link.
We often get stuck believing lies about who we really are.
What are the lies you’ve most believed about yourself? Take a moment to ponder that. Can you name them?
Did you know that when you identify those lies, they give you keys to your true identity?
The enemy always shows his hand. When he convinces you of a lie about yourself, name it, and look for the opposite. That is your true identity.
For example, if the enemy has convinced you, your whole life, that you are stupid, you are actually brilliant. If the enemy has convinced you that you have no worth, the Lord wants to teach you your worth.
Whatever the enemy has taught you about yourself, turn that around, and there is your identity.
Moses stuttered and he was called to lead nations. Do you see how the enemy attempted to kill, steal, and destroy his identity? (John 10:10)
What lies have you believed about yourself?
What is the opposite of those lies?
That is your truth.
Your identity.
Spend some time bringing those two questions to God. Let them sit a while in your heart. See what you hear.
Write your answers in your journal: What are your lies? What is the opposite of each lie?
Now pray and ask God to help you step out of each lie and into your true identity.
To read the next article in this series, please visit Art of Identity.
All articles in this series can be found by following this link.