TRANSFORMING LOVE (GOD CHANGES YOUR IDENTITY, PART 1)

CHAPTER 5

PART 1

GOD CHANGES YOUR IDENTITY

“.a new creature…” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

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NEW CREATURE

You are chosen, drawn, faith-filled, loved and changed within the new YADA relationship with God. Your YADA relationship with God also depends upon you knowing who you are right now “in” Christ.  You are God’s child and you are a NEW CREATION.  

These two facts begin the new reality of your identity and have nothing to do with how you feel about yourself or your perception of yourself or anyone else’s.  The more you see yourself through the lenses of God’s love the easier it will be to respond by faith to God’s love for you individually.

The first reality is to know your entire identity is now esteemed in God. I call it God-esteem. The second reality is to know that you immediately became brand new “in Christ.” In fact the bible says, you become “….a new creation; the old things are passed away; behold they are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). God-esteem and a new creation work together.

GOD ESTEEM

First, low or no esteem is the great enemy of the YADA relationship and deserves a little explanation. Esteem provides a way to view and define worth, value, level of respect, and perception of self.  Some, not all, people have some level of esteem, called self-esteem.

Self-esteem reveals an individual’s personal evaluation of their own worth, value, level of personal respect, and self-beliefs. Self-esteem also reveals how a person judges themselves based on their own opinion of self. Society encourages individuals towards a healthy self-esteem as a way for them to navigate and be successful in the many facets of life. 

However, self-esteem is wishy-washy and undependable. Self-esteem is not an ongoing and steady trait and therefore, personal experiences can easily shatter it. Self-esteem can have you on a mountaintop one day and in the valley the next. Therefore, healthy self-esteem, though a good characteristic to experience as often as possible, can be short-lived and sometimey.

The undependability of self-esteem also destroys a person’s trust in their evaluation of themselves and reduces healthy self-esteem to impact an individual’s worth or value in several other areas of their life. Negative experiences of all variations are usually the culprit for destroying self-esteem. We won’t talk about them all, but will briefly discuss how self-esteem develops over the lifetime.

How self-esteem develops is affected by the experiences you have as you grow and develop into an adult. When you are growing and developing into adults you are also being shaped, molded, or influenced by others to think about yourself in a specific way.

The information about self usually comes from your initial interactions with your main caregivers or according to psychology, the environment around you. The information about yourself comes into your mind and your mental system (brain) processes that information. 

Your mental system also stores, manipulates, alters, and uses that information to produce a response (behavior), or output.

In this case, the information is processed and transformed into a response (behavior) or output. Let’s call this output “perception of self.” This output of “perception of self”, can be rated “no” esteem, “low” esteem, “medium” esteem, or “high” esteem.

INFORMATION PROCESSING

Psychology calls this theory, developed by cognitive psychologists in the 50s, “information processing” and claims the mind resembles and functions similar to a computer. For instance, information goes into the computer, the internal software processes it, and an output results; just like information goes into the brain, the mental software system processes it, and an output also results.

What information goes into your mental software system - while interacting with people or your environment – and affects perception of self? Well, if you are criticized as a child and told, “You are bad” (that’s input) then, as a result, you act-out a particular behavior (that’s output). 

A specific behavior (output) causes the criticism (message) to be repeated. Your mental software system processes the criticism by storing or coding it in your brain in a “perception of self” folder.

The storing or coding of the criticism is how your mind mentally stored the words “you are bad.” However, the mental software system may evaluate your WHOLE self as ‘bad” and not just the particular behavior.  The bible informs us that “….as a man thinks, so is he…..” (Proverbs 23:7).

Your “perception of self” activates your mental software system when motivated by people you interact with regularly or something in your immediate environments. These repeated interactions (people/environment) activate the mental software system which outputs to the “perception of self” folder so frequent it becomes a fixed perception of self.

Your main people or your immediate environment are actually concreting your mental software system with - criticism, lack of affirmation, no emotional support,  no adequate attention or affection, no grace for mistakes, by ignoring you, through various abuses, by not showing any level of respect or honor, rejection, and a host of other negative experience s- by  repeatedly  contributing to the coding and storing of negative information into your “perception of self” folder.

YOU ARE BAD

Repeatedly hearing that “you are bad” eventually becomes a concrete or fixed “perception of self.” Based on this example, the “…you are bad” criticism was the input. The input, “you are bad” heavily contributes to the“perception of self” folder and the output (bad behavior) results. 

Being constantly criticized develops into a fixed perception of self. In addition, it becomes a stored, like a stored document, perception of self. Childhood caregivers or the childhood environment become major influencers in the development of esteem.

The learned “perception of self” follows a child into adulthood. This is a very basic explanation of how esteem develops. The bottom line is that “perception of self” is impacted one way or another.

 Negative “perception of self” becomes esteem and is usually revealed through dysfunctional encounters in your personal relationships with others; particularly when it comes to giving and receiving love.

 For instance, if the message “you are bad” is fixed, you may not be able to receive or give love in a healthy manner. This is the identity problem many believers come to God with. 

The identity problem of believing some past negative message like “you are bad.” This negative identity hinders your ability to receive from or give to anybody a healthy love. It also interferes with the YADA relationship between God and the believer.

Therefore, the problem of loving God in return is an serious issue. Negative perceptions of the old self are so cemented into what you think and believe about yourself that God knew the only way for you to enjoy all the benefits of the YADA relationship was for you to become a completely “…new creation in Christ Jesus...”(1 Corinthians 5:17). God completely cleaned your identity slate and now you are to start anew. GOD CHANGED YOUR YOUR IDENTITY!

 EXCERPT FROM THE CHAPTER 

"GOD CHANGES YOUR IDENTITY" FROM THE

BOOK TRANSFORMING LOVE

BY PENSACOLA H JEFFERSON
BUY IT HERE!!