My Identity
Background Story: Isaiah was a prophet of God who spoke about the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.
Read Isaiah 53: 1-6
Who has believed our message? To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm? 2 My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.
4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
Big Idea: Our identity must come from God alone and not man.
Jesus… fully God and fully man experienced rejection and loneliness like us. He came to the world to save it, yet the world did not recognize Him. Time and time again, He was questioned by the “teachers” who tried to instruct and correct Him not realizing who He was.
In Luke 5:12-16, we read an intimate account of Jesus meeting a man with leprosy. This man had been rejected by society, unable to live in community with others or worship at the temple because of His illness. Yet when Jesus met him, He, “reached out his hand and touched the man.” Risking ridicule and being called unclean, Jesus restored the man physically, emotionally, and spiritually to wholeness.
And after Jesus healed the man and many others, verse 16 says that Jesus, “withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” There is the presence of His Father, He was known… known by His identity, known in His suffering, known in His purpose. As Christ followers, we too will face times of loneliness and rejection in our pursuit of following His steps. In those times, we must seek solitude with our Father where we are known, loved, and seen. In His presence, He will remind us of our identity and our purpose in Him.
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Similar Devotions: So Much Pressure, Heard, Not A Typo, My Reflection in the Mirror, Leave the Pigs, A New Name, A Friend, Swimming Upstream
