The issue of identity seems to be more relevant than ever. Society struggles with it.  The Church struggles with it. Our social media-addicted kids get lost in its complexities. Gender identity is getting fuzzier and more complex by the day. According to mental health professionals, much of the depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and body dysmorphia that are epidemic among children and young adults is related to identity confusion.

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Why is that? Why is it happening now at such an alarming rate? And how do we as Christians, created in the image of God, redeemed by Christ, with 24/7 access to the Throne of Grace through prayer, respond?

Identity Defined

For us to understand the battle over human identity, we must first know what identity is and where it came from. Merriam Webster’s online dictionary defines identity as “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual.” It is what makes you you. That individuality is the visible expression of God’s creation. Psalm 139: 13, 15 says it well: For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb… my frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. (ESV).  In other words: God forms people in their mothers’ wombs and gives them their identity even before birth.

It is important to note that human identity is rooted in gender. Genesis 1:27 says: So God created man in his own image, in the image of man, he created him; male and female (ish and isha) he created them. That is important to note because it helps us understand why gender identity is under so much attack. People are created to reflect God’s image. They are divided into two genders: male and female, with complementary physical and emotional make-up so that they may work together as a unit to portray the image of God. That gender division is consistent with how all living things are created. Just about every species of mammal, bird, fish, insect, and even vegetation, is divided into male and female with complementary anatomy and roles that work together to procreate.

“Ish” and “Isha” would have lived happily ever after in their true identity as God’s image-bearers, stewards of his creation, and procreators of more divine image-bearers if it wasn’t for God’s enemy, Satan. His goal is to usurp the reign of God and so he directed his attack on the only creatures that were made in God’s image. In John 8:44 Jesus calls Satan “the father of lies,” and that’s exactly how he started his attack on human identity. He approaches Eve with the lie that eating the forbidden fruit is a good thing because it will make them wise and be like God (Genesis 3:5). Adam and Eve’s acceptance of this lie and disobedience to God infects them with a sinful nature that has been passed on to all mankind. It has as its core the desire to be our own God, determine our own lives, fulfill the desires of the body and the mind (Ephesians 2:3), and, you guessed it, form our own identity.

Identity Under Attack

Mistaken identity began in the Garden of Eden and has permeated our human nature ever since.  Satan has continued to confuse and attack it throughout history, knowing that by confusing our sense of identity as man and women created in the image of God he could destroy us.

His relentless attacks have mostly come in four arenas: our created identity, our cultural identity, our emotional identity, and our spiritual identity.

Satan has been attacking our created identity as male and female, i.e. our gender identity for several thousand years. Not much is known about same-sex attraction in antiquity, but it was certainly present in the decadent culture of Rome at the time the Church was born. Paul describes it vividly in Romans 1:24-27, where he draws the link between same-sex passion and exchanging the truth about God for a lie, leading to worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator.  Two thousand years later, and much further along in the End Times, we see how that lie has been unfolding.  In the name of individual liberty and tolerance, our increasingly godless society has turned defined gender identity into whatever you want it to be (because you are god, after all). Not just that, but it is forcing acceptance of all kinds of gender identities and alternative lifestyles through “anti-discrimination laws” and even indoctrination of children as early as elementary age. Activist groups are pursuing the dismantling of a cis-gender society to create a new order where you can be anything you want to be: heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, bi-sexual, a-sexual, pan-sexual, and everything in between. I have seen articles online that list anywhere from 64-112 different gender identities.  We must realize that this goes much deeper than the normalization of immorality. It is an outright attack on human identity as ordained by God.

Attacks on our cultural identity come in different forms. Unrealistic role models held out by media, the fashion industry, the sports industry, and the marketing industry all try to define for us what the ideal man and woman should be, what they should look like, wear, smell like, and how they should act. We are bombarded with imagery that little by little, from an early age on, starts to lodge into our minds as ideals to strive for or to be frustrated by because they are unattainable ideals. On top of that, social media allows us to pretend to be what we are not and present ourselves to online “friends” how we want them to see us. When children learn to do that at an early age, it confuses their sense of who they really are. It is not uncommon that children and young adults maintain profiles on as many as 10-20 social media platforms. And just like the attacks on our created identity, the attacks on our cultural identity are coming at an earlier age than ever before.

In addition to media saturation, our cultural identity has come under attack through the use of two insidious lies. First, the lie of tolerance. Everyone should have the right to be whatever they want to be, and everyone else just has to accept it. By cause and effect, tolerance turns into intolerance towards anyone who opposes what someone wants to be. The second lie is the lie of love. An ungodly society believes that to love someone means to agree with all they say and do, and that disagreement equals hatred. The idea that you can love someone despite disagreeing with their lifestyle choices is becoming more and more foreign.

Emotional identity comes primarily from what you experience as an individual. Many of our deepest lies come from what people have said to us when we were little, or traumatic experiences we encountered on our way to adulthood. Satan uses them against us when we turn to Christ as a means to keep us in bondage, and a good part of our spiritual growth comes from God disentangling those lies with the life-changing truths of His Word (see Hebrews 4:12).

Last but not least, Satan attacks our spiritual identity. He does that both inside and outside the Church. Outside the church, he leads people into believing that human beings were not created but evolved and seduces them to believe that there is no god, or that there are other gods to be worshipped. Anything to distract them from worshipping the One True God and understanding their true identity as his image-bearers.
Inside the Church, Satan has been busy blurring our true identity – who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us – by a variety of means. The seeker-sensitive church culture, which has sought to make church more accessible to non-believers, has de-emphasized repentance, the black-and-white transition from sin to holiness through the exercise of daily spiritual disciplines, as well as the importance of surrender to God and dependence on the Holy Spirit. Prayerlessness and biblical illiteracy have become epidemic which in turn has undermined the clear sense of identity Christians are supposed to have, not only in their own hearts but also in the eyes of the world. That may be one of the reasons for the growth of the Progressive movement, which seeks to restore the mystical component of a faith walk by borrowing from both church liturgy and New Age philosophy, and substitutes evangelism with social causes. It is plain to see Satan’s aims –  to destroy our prayer connection with God, our love connection with each other, and our mission connection with the world.

Our True Identity

What, then, is our true identity? It is probably best summarized in 1 Peter 2:9-11: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

In short: we are a people, chosen by God, set apart from the world in holiness, with a priestly duty to intercede in prayer and proclaim the gospel of salvation and the greatness of God, passing through the world without any emotional attachment to it, passionate only about the Kingdom of God and not our carnal desires. That is who we are – our true identity. Its spiritual underpinnings are fleshed out in Ephesians 1-3, where we see that we have been forgiven, redeemed, adopted as children of God, sealed by, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Having thus been brought from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God, we are citizens of heaven, and God’s workmanship.

Prayer for Awakening To Our True Identity

Yet so many don’t know this because they don’t know their Bible and they do not live in a vital, daily relationship with God – who works in us to live by and grow in our true identity. For that reason, urgent prayer for a re-awakening to our identity in Christ is needed. I received this as a prayer assignment for the Church across the world, and I believe we are in a crucial stage of preparation of the Bride of Christ for the return of the Bridegroom. Not only is God still gathering people from every tongue, tribe, and nation to enter His Kingdom, He is purifying, unifying, and sanctifying the “people of His own possession.”

I have been encouraged to see a growing chorus of intercessors praying into this and seeking God for awakening in the Church and revival in the land. Awakening to the need to repentantly return to the core of our faith: to give Him the preeminence in our hearts, homes, and churches; to make daily prayer and engagement with His Word a priority; to live in interdependent, harmonious, loving community in which the world sees our true identity as his disciples by our love; and to proclaim his excellencies by holding out the gospel of peace in word and deed. Revival in the land by a move of the Holy Spirit convicting people of sin and the need to be reconciled to God and enter into their true identity – life by life, soul by soul.

God has raised up an increasing number of ministries addressing the issue of true identity. One of those is True Identity Ministries, founded and directed by my wife, Jennifer Brommet. It started in 2008 as a retreat ministry and spread from the US to East Africa and Latin America. Since 2019, its transformational, ten-week, True Identity Study is available online and can be done individually and in groups. The study lays out the process of understanding and identifying the elements of mistaken identity and the lies that lie at its core, and how to replace those lies with the biblical truths of who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us. A seven-week follow-up study entitled Walking In Your True Identity is slated to be available in June. You can find out more at www.trueidentityministries.org. To go directly to the study, go to www.trueidentitystudy.com.

Let us persist and prevail in prayer for God’s people in the U.S. to return to their true identity, and out of knowing who they are in Christ and who Christ is in us, hold out a clear-cut gospel of repentance and salvation to our nation.

How were you encouraged or challenged by this article? Share in the comments below!

Remco Brommet is a pastor, chaplain, speaker, prayer mobilizer and intercessor with a passion for spiritual awakening and revival. Above all he is a Christ-follower, devoted husband to Jennifer and father to adult daughters Carina and Sophia. Remco and Jennifer reside in Cumming, GA. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)