Priscilla Shirer - What Your Name Is
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In this powerful message drawing from Judges 6:11–12, the preacher emphasizes that our true identity comes solely from God, not from our past mistakes, current circumstances, feelings, or what others call us—illustrated vividly through her teenage experiment of changing her name to «DK» and the story of Gideon hiding in fear yet being called a «valiant warrior» by the angel of the Lord. She passionately reminds the congregation that God Himself shows up to declare who we really are: chosen, redeemed, royal, overcome, and deeply loved. The core takeaway is life-changing: when we live aligned with God’s truth about our identity rather than our struggles or the culture’s lies, we break generational curses, walk in victory, and experience the abundance He intended.
Opening Worship and Gratitude
He’s worthy. He’s worthy. Don’t, don’t move too fast from this right here. Just take a minute for a second to just say thank you for everything you’ve done, that we’re still in our right minds on this 2024. We thank you, Lord, that our bodies could walk us into this room. We thank you, Lord, for our children and our grandchildren. We thank you, Lord. You are worthy. Woo! In Jesus' name, the name that is above every name, the name at which demons tremble, the name at which every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, either now voluntarily or later mandatorily. Everybody will confess that Jesus is who He said He is and that He has accomplished for us what He said He would accomplish. We thank you, Father. You’re worthy. In Jesus' name, everybody said amen.
You may take your seats if you’re able. He’s worthy. Babe, can you get me some Kleenex out of my purse? Because I’m not going to do well up here without some Kleenex. You know we always know that God is present with us, but then there are those times where He is so present that it’s almost tangible—like where the skin prickles, where the hair on the back of your neck stands up, where your physical body responds to the fact that God’s presence is hanging so heavy. This is one of those moments. God is here, and when He comes, He comes to speak, and when He speaks, He does not just speak to be heard. He speaks to be obeyed.
Honoring Leadership and Family
And so I’m ready to hear the voice of God. I want to do a couple of things this morning before I briefly pray and share something with you that I hope will be a blessing to you in this sacred, holy moment that God has given us the privilege to be a part of today. The first thing is, of course, to honor your First Lady, and I will tell you why. I told her this yesterday, but I’m going to say it again: the older I get, the less impressed I am with the flashy and the famous, and the more impressed I am with people who are just plain old flat-out faithful. They just keep showing up and doing what God has called them to do. Would you thank the Lord that God has given 50 years to this woman who has kept showing up for her family and for this family at Concord Church? I honor you. I honor you.
I also can never be in this church without thanking Pastor Brian for inviting me. My husband Jerry, Jackson, and Jude are here. Jackson, y’all just stand up. My boys are here! Y’all stand up! These are my young men. Jerry, my husband of 25 years. Jackson, you’re not standing up, babe. You too, babe. Jackson is 21 years old; Jude is 15 years old. We’re missing our middle son; he’s on the basketball team in college. It is basketball season, so he’s there still, but it’s always a pleasure for my family to be able to serve alongside your family. We honor you, girls, and Carson, and just your entire family. We’re so grateful! We consider Concord to be our family, and so it is a pleasure and a privilege on this special day to be here.
I can never be here without honoring Dr. Sheila Bailey. I don’t even know if she’s in the room, but I can’t be here without honoring the living legend that is Dr. Sheila Bailey. Would you help me honor her? You have such great women among you, and I’m grateful to be a part of this day.
Prayer
Lord, we pray that you will open our spiritual ears now to hear from you. Thank you that your word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. Speak, Lord; your sons and your daughters are in the house to hear you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen. Thank you.
Personal Story: Changing My Name
My siblings and I went to Duncanville High School right down the road. We graduated in the '90s. Before we went to Duncanville, which was about our freshman year when we transferred there, the four of us went to a little private school that used to be right around the corner here in Dotto. It was called Brook Hollow Christian School, kindergarten through 8th grade. We all went through Brook Hollow Christian School and then transferred to Duncanville for our freshman year.
I remember when this happened. I thought it would be a great time for a little experiment. Now, you need to know that of the four of us, I have an older sister named Crystal, then it’s me, and then two brothers, Anthony and Jonathan. You need to know that of the four of us, I was the one that gave my parents a run for their money. You know how there’s always one child you’re wondering if that one is going to turn out okay? I was that one for my parents. I was always just mischievous and just doing things, coming up with stuff. This was one of those occasions.
I decided that when I transferred out of Brook Hollow Christian School and went to Duncanville High School, I would change my name. I’d give myself a new name just as an experiment to see if it would catch on at this new school. At Brook Hollow Christian School, there were 13 kids in my class. I was transferring to Duncanville High School. Y’all know Duncanville is like a whole university. In my freshman class, the year I transferred, there were 753 students in the freshman class, not the high school, just my class. So I knew that I’d be amongst hundreds of people I had never seen before and never met before. It would be a great opportunity to introduce myself by an entirely different name and just see if it would catch on.
My friend Nicole, a lifelong friend who grew up at youth group right over here at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church, had been in the Duncanville school district her entire life. So I knew she would probably be my major point of contact between me and everybody else that I’d be meeting. So I told Nicole about my plan. I said, «Nicole, the first week of school, when you’re introducing me around to new friends and people that I’m going to get to know, do not introduce me as Priscilla. Introduce me here with my little nickname: DK.» I picked two initials, put them together, and made my nickname DK. I said, «I want you to introduce me as DK to everybody that you introduce me to at school.»
She said, «Girl, what?» I said, «It’s just an experiment. I want to see if it’s going to catch on.» So that first week of school, that is exactly what she did. I met everyone; they were told my name was DK. To make a long story short, for the next four years of my life, everybody called me DK—all the students, the teachers, the counselors, the principals, the athletic directors, the coaches; everybody called me DK. DK was monogrammed on all my athletic uniforms. To this day, if I’m in the grocery store or the mall or even in comments online and I run into somebody and someone says, «Hey, DK,» I know that it’s someone I knew during that season of my life because everybody called me DK. Most people didn’t even know my real name was Priscilla; they just called me DK.
The Day Mom Set It Straight
Now, my parents didn’t say much about this until one occasion when, during my senior year, I got sick at school. I remember Mom had to come up to the school to pick me up. I had a fever; I was laying on that cot behind the little curtain that was drawn in the nurse’s station. Mom showed up. I remember hearing her come in, and I remember her saying to the nurse, «I’m here to pick up Priscilla.» The nurse said, «I’m sorry, what?» «I’m here to pick up Priscilla.» They talked just a little bit and then figured out that, yes, DK is who she’s there to pick up. Mom rolled her eyes, went in there, picked me up, took me home, nursed me back to health, and when I felt good enough, it was the first time my mom made any statement about this four-year experiment I had going on. She looked at me and said, «Now, Priscilla, you’re a senior, which means that in just a few short months, there’s going to be an important ceremony, and at that ceremony, they’re going to hand you a very important document.»
She said, «Now, I want you to know your father and I haven’t bothered you about this little name thing you’ve had going on, but I want to be clear: when they hand you that piece of paper, there better not be a D or a K anywhere on that piece of paper.» She said, «Because, Priscilla, I don’t care what other people have called you, and I don’t even care what you call yourself. There are only one or two of us—me and your father—there’s only a set of parents who have the right and the authority to give you your name. Only the one who gave you life has the power to define you.»
Your True Identity in God
For just a few moments on this Sunday morning, I came to remind you what your name is, that it doesn’t matter what everybody else has called you, and it doesn’t even matter what you’ve looked in the mirror and called yourself. There’s only one who has the right and the authority to give you your name. You need to know that you are not qualified and named by your past. You are not defined by your behavior. You are not defined by your failures. You are not defined by your struggles. You are not defined by your feelings. You are not defined by your circumstances. You are not defined by the here-today-gone-tomorrow false ideologies and watered-down philosophies of the craziness and confusion of our current culture. You are who God says you are. He has given you a name, and He says that you are a chosen race; that you are a royal priesthood; that you’re a person who has been redeemed and chosen, adopted, and qualified. You are not a mistake. You are not a liability. You are not an afterthought. You have been made in the very image of an almighty God, which means every unique aspect of your physicality and every unique aspect of your personality, both the strengths and the weaknesses—all of it—is a reflection of the creative genius of an almighty God.
And when you surrender, when I surrender the fullness of who I am to Him, He values you and me enough that He actually takes up residence in us in the person of the Holy Spirit, which makes you a temple of the living and almighty God. Now that means that you are an overcomer. That is who you are. And it doesn’t matter what other people call you; it doesn’t matter what you have called yourself. You can only be named by the one who gave you life.
The reason why I thought about this in conjunction with this particular Sunday is because as Jerry and I have had the opportunity to walk in close friendship with Brian and Stephanie as we’ve raised kids together through elementary school, junior high, high school, and now everybody going off to college, one of the things I most remember that Stephanie would say over her children—all three of them, but particularly those sweet young women—is that she would say to them, «Remember your worth; remember your value,» because she wanted the entirety of their thinking and their perspective and mindset to line up with their value. Because, listen to me, you will either live up to or you will live down to whatever you believe to be true about yourself.
The Crisis of Identity Today
So this morning, I want to talk to you about your identity. Identity is such an important issue in this day and age, y’all, and the reason—if you aren’t clear that it is such an issue, the reason why you can know that it’s important and critical is because the enemy is attacking it left and right. He’s going over time to try to skew it and distort it to redefine what God has already very clearly defined so that everybody’s walking around confused because we do not have clarity on who God says that we are. So this theme of identity is threaded all throughout the Old Testament and all throughout the New Testament, where God continues to show up on the landscape of people’s lives just to remind them who they are in Him, who they are in their relationship with Him.
Israel’s Identity Struggle
And this is most clearly seen with the children of Israel in the Old Testament because after 400 years of bondage, after 400 years of living under the brutal thumb of Pharaoh and his taskmasters—400 years of slavery—then there are 10 miraculous plagues where they’re delivered out of Egypt. But it’s going to take 40 years in the wilderness to get Egypt out of them. Because you can come out of Egypt, but if you still think like a slave and operate like a slave and have the perspective of a slave, then you’ll still make decisions and choose relationships from a position of scarcity and lack and deficiency.
So it took 40 years in the wilderness to change their minds, to make sure they knew that before you get to this land of milk and honey, I need to make sure you’re thinking right, that you know who you are. But the children of Israel—God’s people back then—are just like God’s people today. They continue to be seduced by the idols of the culture and paralyzed by fear of foreign enemies and lulled to sleep in spiritual apathy by errant religious philosophies and institutions. They kept forgetting who they were, and because of that, God’s people kept opening themselves up to enemy attacks on all sides. They would not align their behavior to make sure it was congruent with their brand new identity because idolatry is always a threat to your identity.
So they keep living below their spiritual means. They’re supposed to be experiencing abundance, but they keep experiencing so much less just because they keep forgetting who they are. And never is this more clearly seen than in the Book of Judges.
Turning to Judges 6
If you have your copy of the scriptures with you, and you want to turn there with me—if you actually, you know, still use an old-school Bible with paper pages like I do, or your iPhone, your iPad—any manner of eyes will get you to Judges chapter 6. And let me just tell you, as you turn there, that this book of the Bible is one of the most clear indictments against the people of God’s inability to reflect and live in light of their identity. In fact, it is so critical and detrimental throughout this entire book that by the time you get to the end, the last line of this book will say, „And everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.“ Y’all, if that doesn’t sound like America in the year 2024, I don’t know what does.
And when identity is skewed, everybody just starts making up stuff to do, making up ways to behave because they’re no longer aligning themselves with the truth. And throughout this entire book, we see the people of God, they’re living now in Judges. They’re in the land of milk and honey. The wilderness wanderings are long gone. They are now living in the place that is supposed to represent abundance, but they are not experiencing the fullness of God because they will not live in alignment with their new identity.
So they’ve opened themselves up to enemy attack on all sides. And when we meet them in Judges chapter 6, they’ve been so abused by the Midianites, who have ravaged them for seven consecutive years, that they can’t even enjoy the milk and honey that they’ve been positioned there to receive. Their towns have been burned down; their homes have been pillaged and destroyed. They are now living like meager slaves on the sides of mountains, hiding out in caves for their lives because they’ve opened themselves up to enemy attack. But everything is about to change on one day when Yahweh shows up in the life of one man and reminds him who he is.
Gideon’s Encounter
Judges chapter 6, verses 11 and 12: „Then the angel of the Lord came, and he sat down under an oak tree that was in a town called Ophrah. It belonged to Joash the Abiezrite. As his son, here he is, Gideon. Gideon was beating out wheat in a wine press in order to save it from those doomed Midianites.“ Verse 12: „And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘Let me tell you who you are.’ He said, ‘The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.’“
These two little simple verses are getting ready to change the entire trajectory of one man’s life and the life of everybody attached to him. Gideon, we know his name; we know him well because he’s one of the most famed names in the Old Testament. But he’s known because he put out that fleece; he was the one that needed a sign from God to make sure that God was the one who was speaking to him. And we know him because he’s the one that will go into battle with a meager army of 300 against 140,000 Midianite soldiers, and he’s going to bring home a victory for the nation that’s going to change the entire trajectory of their culture.
But before the victory in battle and before he puts out the fleece—before the stuff he’s famous for—we find this man sitting underneath the shade of an oak tree in fear and intimidation and insecurity, hiding out in a wine press because he’s trying to make sure that the Midianites don’t take advantage of him. Here is Gideon, on this day when he’s sitting in fear and insecurity, and the angel of the Lord shows up.
The Angel of the Lord
Do not miss the power of this first line. The first line of verse 11 says, „The angel of the Lord came.“ Oh, y’all, if I had time, we could just sit right here with this line for the entire Sunday, and you know what? I think I might have time because it’s second service, which means we ain’t got nowhere to go. The angel of the Lord showed up. You need to know that whenever you see this phrase in the scriptures, „the angel of the Lord,“ that this ain’t no regular angel. This is not Gabriel or Michael or one of those angels. No, this is not just an angelic being. This is the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, meaning before He puts on flesh and shows up in the New Testament, He’s already showing up all throughout the Old Testament as the angel of the Lord.
In the original language, the phrase is Malak Yahweh. It is translated „the angel of the Lord.“ Israelite Hebrew scholars call this the great presence of Israelite history. This is God Himself stepping out of the landscape of the heavens onto the landscape of Earth because there’s something so important, so critical, so necessary that He can’t entrust it to just any old angel. He says, „I need to come down and take care of this myself.“ So whenever the angel of the Lord shows up in the Old Testament, you need to sit on the edge of your seat with your chin in your hands, leaning all the way in to see what is it that moved heaven and earth to make God show up to come say it Himself.
And whenever the angel of the Lord shows up—and this is a theophany, that is a God sighting—most of the time, y’all, He’s showing up to one individual just to remind them who they are. Because this issue of identity is so important that He Himself wants to come and bear witness to folks that you are who I say you are. You are not your circumstances. You are not your situations. You are not what other folks have called you. You are not even what you call yourself. You are not your past. You are not your behaviors. You are not your deficiencies. You are not your weaknesses. God says you are who I say you are.
God’s Pursuit of Us
And so God came. Do not let this roll off your shoulders as if this is no big deal that the God of the universe would come see about regular old folks like us. Y’all, this is God we’re talking about. This is the one who controls the thrones of the universe. This is the one who made sure on this birthday morning that the sun was positioned in the sky exactly where it was supposed to be. He is the one that will make sure it stays at its post all day long till basically it swaps places with the moon later on tonight. He is the one that will hang every single star in the sky, and when He does, He will know every single one of their names and every single one of their numbers. He is the one that is controlling neighborhoods in the galaxies that, as of yet, scientists haven’t even yet discovered exist. He’s the one taking care of all of that, and in the midst of all of that, He’s coming here on this Sunday morning to come see about you.
And listen to me: sometimes for us church folk who’ve been in church a long time, it can start to roll off our shoulders as if it’s casual that the God of the universe would make time to come see about us. But what is man that Thou art mindful of him, the son of man that you would even take note of who it is that I am? God has come to see about Gideon, and God has come to see about you.
Years ago, when the boys were little, I remember folding clothes one day, sitting on the edge of the bed. It was morning; the Today Show was on. Campbell Brown was the roving reporter on the Today Show at the time. That week, she was doing a story on religions of the world, every day a different religion. I caught it on the day she was talking about the Buddhist faith, and I paused because I didn’t know much about Buddhism. I just wanted to see what she was going to say. I could see that behind her was one of the big Buddha statues that stands in Hong Kong. She and her camera crew had traveled from the studios in New York halfway across the world to Hong Kong so they could do the story in front of one of these statues.
She talked about how long the flight was, how long the drive was to get to the mountain where this idol stands, how they had to take all their gear up the side of the mountain—268 stairs—so that they could be in position for this story. The camera panned, and you could see people kneeling and laying prostrate in front of their God—lowercase G—because idols have hands but they can’t do anything, and idols have eyes but they can’t see, and idols have ears but they can’t hear, and heads but nothing in them to think with. And yet they travel, she explained, halfway across the world, saving up a lifetime’s worth of money if they have to, to be able to at least once in their life make the pilgrimage so that they can be on the side of this mountain and pray to their God—lowercase G. And as I watched this story, I thought a couple of things to myself, but one of them was: if I had to save up a lifetime’s worth of money and travel halfway across the world to pray, I would never pray! Ain’t nobody got time for that!
And while they are traveling across the world to climb up so that they can talk to their God, our God—capital G, the one true and living God—He comes down to talk to us. What mercy and grace and lovingkindness does He have toward us in that while we were yet sinners, He keeps on coming down to see about us! And all throughout the Old Testament, the Malak Yahweh, the angel of the Lord—God Himself—keeps coming, showing up so that He can remind people of who they are.
Biblical Examples of God Reminding Identity
Just like Hagar in Genesis chapter 16. Hagar is sitting in a wilderness, a desert. She’s crying a river of tears because she’s been discarded by the people she was supposed to be able to trust—the people that she was supposed to be able to rely on. They used her and abused her and discarded her, and in Genesis chapter 16, she has no hope for her future.
And she’s sitting in a desert that is barren and dry, and in the midst of all of that chaos, the Malak Yahweh shows up and says, „Hagar, you are not what they did to you. You are who I say you are.“ And maybe you’re not Gideon; maybe it’s not the enemies that have relegated you to the shade of an oak tree. Maybe you’re not Hagar; maybe the decisions of other people have not done this to you. Maybe you’re Moses, and you did it to yourself. Because the truth is, in Exodus chapter 3, Moses is out there tending sheep in the middle of the wilderness for 40 long years. This man’s not supposed to be a shepherd; he was raised as the Prince of Egypt. His job description, his title, is supposed to be better than this, but it’s a decision he made, an action he chose, a sin that he committed that put him in this situation.
For 40 long years, he’s wandering around on the backside of the wilderness, but even there, in the situation—the circumstances he created himself—one day a bush starts burning, and he realizes this ain’t no regular bush because the bush is burning but it’s not consumed. He takes off his shoes and realizes this is holy ground because the angel of the Lord is in the bush. And the angel of the Lord says to Moses, „Let me tell you who you are. You are not what you did; you still are who I say you are.“
Or maybe it’s the fire of trial that has put you there. You just ask the Hebrew boys. They weren’t doing anything wrong when they were put into the fiery furnace. They were put there for doing everything right, like you! You haven’t been perfect, but you’ve been purposeful and intentional in your marriage, in your parenting, on your job, in your ministry, but still the fire is raging all around you. Ask the Hebrew boys. Sometimes He doesn’t deliver you out of the fire; sometimes the angel of the Lord just joins you in it, and He makes sure that the smell of the smoke won’t even be on you.
And so I say to you today that if you’re in the fire, don’t be discouraged. Lift up your eyes to the hills from whence cometh your help; your help cometh from the Lord! Even the fire is not powerful enough to keep you out of the way of the angel of the Lord. He’s coming to remind you, „You are not what is happening to you; you are who I say you are.“
Or maybe you’re Hagar, and the people that you were supposed to be able to trust have done this to you. It’s their choices that have put you in the situation that you’re in. On this Sunday morning, it’s because of what they did. But even there, Hagar, would you be reminded on this Sunday morning that God will meet you even there? He will never leave you nor will He forsake you! Or maybe you’re Moses, and you did it to yourself.
You can look back, and some of us look back, and there are whole seasons of our life we don’t even recognize the person that was back there anymore. Can I get a witness? Is anybody grateful for the delivering power of God? Seriously! Like, you look back on certain seasons of your life, the decisions you made, the relationships you allowed, the paths you walked down, the choices that you allowed, the way your life went, and you look back on it, and you realize actually you did it to yourself.
You knew when you said that, when you did that, when you allowed that, when you commented like that, when you reacted like that, you knew when you did it this would not turn out good, but we did it anyway. And now we’re like Moses, sitting in that wilderness. Be encouraged! The arm of God is not so short that He cannot save. So if you’re Hagar or the Hebrew boys or Moses or Gideon, and you’re sitting under the shade of circumstances because the enemy has been swirling all around you, here comes, on one regular ordinary day, the angel of the Lord to a man named Gideon to remind him who he is.
Gideon in the Wine Press
The author of this passage wants to make sure that you know exactly what Gideon was doing when the angel of the Lord showed up. He says that the angel of the Lord came, and Gideon was threshing wheat, but he was in a wine press. Please don’t miss the detail of that discovery. He’s threshing wheat, but he’s not on a threshing floor, y’all. He’s in a wine press. You need to know that these two environments are completely opposed to each other. A threshing floor is on the top of a hill; it’s in an open-air setting purposely because when you’re threshing wheat, the whole purpose of the threshing process is to dislodge from the wheat a useless nutrient called chaff. They need to dislodge all the chaff from the wheat, and when it is dislodged from the wheat, you need to be in an open-air setting so that the wind can drive the chaff away. But here, the author wants you to know that Gideon is not doing this assignment where he would usually do it. No, he is in a wine press, which is the exact opposite of a threshing floor. A wine press was usually in the deep depression of the rock, down at the bottom in a little cavern that would be damp and shaded, the right environment needed for grapes to ripen and harvest.
And so he is in a completely different environment, and the reason why he’s there, the last line of verse 11, is to save it from the Midianites. He knows that if he threshes wheat on the top of that hill and the wind drives the chaff away, the scent of it will go straight to the Midianite camp, and they will know there’s something to pillage. So he’s hiding, y’all! The reason he’s in the wine press is because he’s currently operating in fear and insecurity and intimidation. He is in the wine press because he’s trying not to be found. And in the place where he’s trying not to be found, the angel of the Lord comes and finds him.
And if I can just open up a parenthesis right here for just a quick second, there’s somebody in this room—a mother, a grandmother, a father, a grandfather—you need to be encouraged because you have a son or a daughter or a grandchild, and they’re trying not to be found. You’ve been asking God and calling out to God to open up their eyes so that they can see Him and to redeem their heart and their life from the pit and to sever relationships that are driving them outside of the will of God. And these young folks of ours, or your spouse or your parent, it doesn’t matter how much you pray, it seems like they’re trying not to be found. Their heart is hardened, and their back is turned. I want you to know that even when folks are trying not to be found, the Hound of heaven will find them wherever they are! He seeks people that don’t even want to be found.
The Book of Judges is a whole description of folks who have turned their back on Him, and still He comes and sits down underneath this oak tree, and He says to Gideon, „The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.“ He calls Gideon „a valiant warrior“ while he is currently operating in fear—while he’s actually in the moment of threshing wheat in a wine press because he’s intimidated and insecure. The pre-incarnate Christ comes Himself to a man who is not behaving in a way that lines up with his identity, and He says, „You are not your behavior.“
Living According to God’s Truth
Oh my gosh! Somebody in the room needs to hear this because it’s going to free you up! You are not what you did! You are not what you did last night! You are not what has been done to you! You are not the circumstances that are swirling around you! You still are who God says you are! You can still do everything that God says you could do! Nothing that is around you or even in you is powerful enough to define you. Only the one who gave you life has the power to give you your name, and so He steps up to Gideon and He says, „Start acting like this! Start behaving like this; start having a perspective and a mindset, Gideon, that lines up with who I say you are, not with what the Midianites are making you feel. You are not your feelings.
Listen to me: can you imagine how it would change the actual, practical course of our lives, me and you, if we stopped behaving in a way that lines up with the way we feel? You don’t have to feel like it to know it’s true! So instead of waiting for a feeling, we say, „No! He says I’m accepted. He says I’m approved.“ That means this decision that I’m about to make—to say this, to post that, to interject that—if I’m doing it for the approval of other people, then I’m not going to do it because I don’t need their applause; I already have the applause of Heaven.
It means, single woman or single man, it changes the way you date because you date from a posture of knowing who God says you are. It changes your everyday practical choices because you are behaving in a way that lines up with what God says, not the way you feel, because your feelings are up one day and down the next. Your feelings are too dependent on the Midianites and those external circumstances, but when you are anchored by your identity, when you remember your worth, when your value is attached not to the applause or lack thereof on social media but to the applause of Heaven, it changes the way you live your life.
And for Gideon, the Malak Yahweh shows up and says, „You’re a valiant warrior.“ And when you have time, brothers and sisters, take an opportunity to read the rest of chapter 6 and into chapter 7 because you’ll find that Gideon, the intimidated and insecure, comes out of the shade of this oak tree after having a meeting with the Malak Yahweh. He comes out from underneath the shade of this oak tree, and he starts acting like God is telling the truth.
And the very first thing he does is go right to his father’s house, and he goes home and he takes all of the idols that are indicative of his entire family line and he smashes all of the idols one by one. He changes the entire trajectory of his generational line because he starts acting like God is telling the truth. Do you know how many people are attached to your getting a hold of your identity? Do you know that there are sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters and great-grandchildren that we may not even lay our eyes on walking in victory and abundance? It is attached to whether or not we’ll get our identity in view because once we know who God says we are, we can go home and break generational curses and clear out those things that need to be cleared out so we can change the course of our family’s lives.
And then after he goes home and deals with that, then he steps into battle: 300 against 140,000 Midianite soldiers, and he brings home a victory that changes the nation! „If my people who are called by my name,“ if I can just get them to rise up and be who I’ve called them to be, „I’ll hear from heaven and I’ll heal the whole land.“ The victory and abundance, y’all, of the whole culture is tied to God’s people believing that God is telling the truth about who we are!
Who God Says You Are
And so for just a couple of minutes on this Sunday morning, I thought I would just take a second to remind you who you are. The Bible says you are a child of God; you have peace with God. The Holy Spirit lives in you; you have access to God’s wisdom. You are helped by God; you are reconciled to God. You are not condemned by God; you are justified. You have Christ’s righteousness; you are Christ’s ambassador. You are completely forgiven, and you are completely free. You are tenderly loved by God; you are the sweet fragrance of Christ to God. You are a temple in which God dwells; you are blameless and beyond reproach. You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. You are a branch on Christ’s vine; you are Christ’s friend. You are chosen by Christ to bear fruit; you are a joint heir with Christ, sharing in His inheritance. You are united to the Lord, one spirit with Him.
You are a member of the body of Christ; you are a saint. You are hidden in Christ with God; you are chosen by God. You are holy and dearly loved; you are a child of light. You are sanctified; you are one of God’s living stones being built up in Christ as a spiritual house. You are a member of a chosen race; you are a royal priesthood; you are a people for God’s own possession. You are firmly rooted and you are being built up in Christ. You have been made complete in Christ; you have not been given a spirit of fear but of power, of love, and of a sound mind.
All your needs are met by God; you are a prince or a princess in the kingdom of God. You’ve been bought with a price, and you belong to God; you’re adopted as a child of God. You have direct access to God; you cannot be separated from the love of God. You’ve been established, anointed, and sealed by God; you can be confident in this that the same God who started a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. You are a citizen of Heaven; you are a personal witness of Christ. You are God’s workmanship; you are seated with Christ in heavenly places, and you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. In Jesus' name! In Jesus' name! Amen!