So, take your time, invite a friend and soak in the amazing reality of your true identity.
—Dr. Steve A. Brown
President, Arrow Leadership
Dr. Steve A. Brown serves with Arrow Leadership as president and oversees Arrow Leadership in North America. Steve is author of Great Questions for Leading Well and Leading Me: Eight Practices for a Christian Leader’s Most Important Assignment (Castle Quay, 2015).
Introduction
When leaders participate in the Arrow Leadership program, one of the first things put into their hands is a bookmark. On one side of the bookmark there’s a question: “Who am I?” This is followed by a declaration: “As a child of God and a leader, I am…” And then there’s a list of 22 identity-in-Christ statements. On the other side of the bookmark, the identity statements are listed again with a supporting Scripture verse for each.
Arrow Leadership regularly receives feedback about the impact of this simple bookmark—how God uses the focus of these statements to bring truth, meaning and transformation to a leader’s life.
Identity in Christ is critical for every Jesus-follower. Building on the application of the Arrow bookmark, Arrow Leadership has created this devotional journey for more people to interact with these identity-in-Christ statements.
Each devotional entry in this resource focuses on one of the 22 identity-in-Christ statements. The format includes a written reflection for you to read and three ways for you to interact and respond: 1) Reading and Meditating on God’s Word, 2) Personal Reflection and 3) Journal, Sketch, Pray. You may decide to focus on one a day, one a week or one a month—whatever works best for you.
Reading and Meditating on God’s Word
You are encouraged to open up your Bible and read the suggested Scripture passages.
Personal Reflection
There are a few questions to prompt thinking and practical application.
Journal, Sketch, Pray
There’s space provided for you to creatively respond with words, doodles and written prayers.
Whether you go on this devotional journey by yourself or with others in a small group community, our prayer is for you to rediscover your true identity in Christ and for this to bring meaning, truth and transformation in your life and activities.
—The Arrow Leadership Team
Wonderfully Made
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Psalm 139:13–14, NIV
Wonderfully made is God’s declaration over his creation: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31, NIV).
I confess I am not in the practice of praising God for how wonderfully I am made. More often I’m seeking affirmation to measure my worth, comparing myself to others to benchmark my value and living preoccupied with perceived deficits in others and myself.
The psalmist’s focus is entirely different. In Psalm 139 he’s not analyzing himself or looking at others to measure his value and worth. Instead, he’s collecting evidence about God—the Creator, his Maker. And it is through this lens that his value of being wonderfully made begins to gain traction and grounding: God knows me, he is familiar with all my ways, he knows my thoughts and my words before I even speak, he surrounds me, he guides me, he is with me wherever I go, he created my inmost being—he knows me inside and out (see Ps. 139:1–13, NIV and MSG).
This knowledge generates a shift in the psalmist’s mind and spirit. Realizing that God notices him and is continuously present with him tells him something about his Creator—something he hadn’t quite understood. Where once he may have felt alone, unnoticed and uncertain about who he is, now the psalmist is bursting with enthusiasm because he knows whose he is. Intimately designed, known, loved, valued and precious—he is stamped with “wonderfully made” in God’s eyes.
Knowing our identity as wonderfully made brings a response of reverence, awe and praise: “I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation!” (Ps. 139:14, MSG).
Living in this assurance and posture is essential to our identity and well-being. Realities of a sinful, broken world can so easily damage our self-perception and threaten our praise. We are confronted with physical, mental, intellectual, relational and social barriers; and there are times when God puts his finger on our attitudes and behaviors that need his stretching, shaping and transformation. The difference is that God’s attention always brings us more to life in his design, not less.
God knows exactly who we are, how we’re designed and what we need to function most effectively today. Through Jesus, God has breathed his very life into us, drawing us into relationship with him, filling us with his Spirit. He’s the One who started this good work, and he will “carry it on to completion” (Phil. 1:6, NIV). “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28, NIV).
Our identity as wonderfully made beckons us to fully be who God has created us to be: engaged and wholehearted with people and tasks, sharing ourselves with others, stewarding our resources and abilities, praising God for being so wonderfully made.
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.”
Psalm 8:3–5, NIV
Reading and Meditating on God’s Word
Psalm 139:1–18
Psalm 8
Personal Reflection
What are some of the typical messages you hear and say about yourself?
How do these messages align with what God says about you and what he has done for you?
What would change if you more fully accepted and internalized that you are “wonderfully made” by God?
Spend a few moments right now praising and thanking God for creating, sustaining and transforming you.
Journal, Sketch, Pray
Created to Do Good Works
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand,
that we should walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:10, ESV
Created for good works. Walking through each day with attention to God’s presence and activity. Engaged in life-giving conversations. Extending compassion and care. Faithfully fulfilling responsibilities with joy.
It sounds right, and yet the idea of doing good work consistently well can add pressure to an already demanding load. Jesus knew this. In Matthew 11:28–30 he extends an invitation to those who are weary, to those of us who wonder how we will sustain this pace. Jesus says, Come to me, walk with me, work with me, learn from me—I will teach