🙌 It's the Friday Call to Worship! 🙌

My toddler and teenager are both on hair-raising missions to establish their identities. My sons are drawing lines, testing boundaries, and discovering strengths, weaknesses, preferences and purpose within our family system. They are right on track developmentally!

People in every stage of life are on that same plight of finding themselves. Feedback from relationships, success, social media, or past experiences often draw the boundary lines of who people are or the worth they believe they behold.

Have you ever tried to run in soft sand? It's exhausting. It's even more exhausting to use the shifting sands of the world's opinions to determine your worth. You'll never win, and you'll never arrive at the finish line.

The One who stays the same yesterday, today and tomorrow has already said, "It is finished." He said it while he was up on a cross, obliterating your shame, condemnation and sin. He crucified the hurts and wounds from the old way and the old family systems to give you a fresh, clean start. The only thing Christ sees when He looks at you is that you are dearly loved, righteous and worthy.

Still, your identity is unique. We are not carbon copy Christians. We each have gifts, strengths, limitations and preferences. As you seek to find yours, do it from the right family system: the lineage of Christ. If you have received Christ, then the old bloodlines, things that happened to you, things they said, and things you did have been removed. You are free to explore and thrive as a child of God - and only a child of God. You are free to run, fall and get up and try again. You are free to laugh, cry and try something new. You are free to be pruned and re-purposed for your good. You are a child of God, and only a child of God.

This song has been playing in my head all week! Listen to Capital City Music's "Child of God" until it soaks through the "old you" and lets your soul sing truth.