Today's guest blogger is Stacie Gibson. Stacie is a wife and mom to four children in upstate New York. She serves alongside her husband Matt at Grace Baptist Church, Dansville NY where they both are certified biblical counselors. Stacie is certified with ACBC and IABC and loves sharing God’s Word with women. In her “free time” you will find her homeschooling her children, reading, and spending time with her family and church family.
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are
above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on
things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and
your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears,
then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-5
I took some time one afternoon to research the internet to
find out what women are searching for to find the meaning and purpose in
life. We live in a society that has a
quest for meaning with the question “Who am I? So, in
my internet search I found that women
get their identity and find meaning in life through their success , education,
careers, money, and status; whether they are married, single, divorced,
widowed, their family, children, good health, fitness, body image, the good
deeds they do, religion, ethnicity, and what region of the world they are from.
I think Christian women can fall into the same trap by looking for their
purpose in life elsewhere. They say with their lips that they are first and
foremost a child of God, but their actions speak differently.
As some of you older ladies know there was a radical feminist
movement in the 60’s and 70’s that revolutionized how women viewed themselves,
their roles, how they viewed men, their families and how they functioned in the
culture. They were seeking to find the
meaning of life and find out just who they were. Well, I am here to tell you that this problem didn’t start
in the 60’s. I do think it was intensified then, but the Colossian Christians
were being confronted with that very thing: questions of their identity (who
they were), where to set their minds, and how to change.
Ladies, how we see ourselves
shapes the way we think and where we go to seek out advice. Paul says that we
are to seek the things above and set our minds on Christ because He is our
life.
I wished I had known this as a new believer. When I first
became a Christian and for a few years after, I found myself obsessed thinking
that my highest calling in life was to be a mom. I felt sorry for the women
that didn’t have kids or had the gift of singleness because they somehow must
have “missed” their high calling in life.
I thought this was OK because I was a new Christian and before Christ I
was obsessed with getting drunk and partying. So, finding my identity in my
kids sounded like a pretty good trade-off considering where I was before. Now,
I didn’t come up with this new identity on my own. I was getting it from other
well meaning women and Christian books that told me this was who I was. The topic of parenting and how to be a “good
mom” is all I thought of. I read lots of
parenting books, some good, some not so good. But that is all I read. After a
while, I started to get discouraged because my home and kids did not line up
with some of the authors and conference speakers that seemed to have it all
together. I started to have a lot of guilt and condemnation that I was a
failure and somehow I was missing the mark. It wasn’t until a few years later while
sitting at a conference under the teaching of Eileen Scipione that I was
challenged to really think about who I was. That day, the Lord began to change my
heart and I was confronted with the truth that I was first and foremost a child of God,
created in His image. My purpose in life was to reflect God and to make Him
known through my life. This
was very Good News for me! It was very
freeing for me to hear because I wasn’t setting my mind on Christ. I was setting it on my other identity or my
idol (which were my kids). God also opened
my eyes to show me that I was neglecting my marriage and local church because
all my time and energy went into my kids and their happiness. This is not to
say that being a mom is not important, because it is a wonderful privilege and
blessing from the Lord that should not be taken lightly. My husband and children
are my first priority. However the more I found my identity in Christ, the more
I began to find joy in my life. In return, the joy of the Lord tricked down
into my marriage, children and others All those ideas of being the “perfect
parent” went out the window, thankfully!
Friends, please don’t find your life
in:
·
Marriage – that man that you married will let
you down and will never fully satisfy you. I am very blessed with an amazing,
godly husband. But if I am not careful, He will become someone I worship. If you find identity in marriage, you are
going to be one angry, disappointed woman!
·
Your kids – finding identity in your kids will
cause you to be child centered in your thinking and actions. What will happen to you when your “identity”
leaves the home to pursue collage, marriage, or the military? I have personally watched marriages
disintegrate because of this problem. People married for 25+ years suddenly
divorce or are on the verge of it because they prioritized the kids rather than
Christ (and their hubby!).
·
Your success in your job - God calls us to learn, work, and be
productive by earning a living, but finding identity in your job will cause you
to love your job so much that it will take you away from the Lord and your
family.
Writer and Speaker Paul
Tripp says “Finding identity in Jesus leads to life. Finding identity in other things never leads to anything
good.” If you are a believer, you have
died and your life is now hidden with Christ. He is your life!
Labels: Guest Blogger- Gibson