Tuesday June 19, 2018

 

 

IDENTITY

“the distinct characteristic of an individual by which they are recognized or known.”

 

When Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz arrived in Miami in the summer of 1980, they were recognized and known as the “Kings of Salsa Music”. One would think that having this title would be a good thing, but it wasn’t at this stage in their lives. Six years earlier when they were bestowed this title; it was a great thing, but not so in 1980. Richie and Bobby were born to poor and relatively unknown families. Yet they studied, practiced, sacrificed, and worked very hard to become the best at what they did. Then, just months after being crowned the “Kings of Salsa”, they surrendered their lives to Jesus and all their hard work came crashing down. For the next six years they were virtually rejected by the religious establishment and the salsa fans considered them to be traitors. This in effect rendered their identities as the “Kings of Salsa” a useless title.

 

When we look at Moses’ life, we can divide it into three forty-year stages. For the first forty years he was becoming a somebody while he lived in Pharaoh’s court; he became the Prince of Egypt. The next forty years he spent them in the desert becoming a nobody. He was on the run and hiding from his past. Finally, his last forty years he spent them becoming the person God wanted him to be. It was however at the end of his second forty years, when Moses was eighty years old, that God appeared to him one day in a burning bush and asked him one of the simplest yet most important question a person could ever be asked: “what is in your hand?”Moses answered “a staff”. God told Moses to throw it to the ground and the staff became alive. God then instructed Moses to pick it up, and when he did the staff returned to being a dried piece of wood.

 

The staff represented Moses’ identity; people knew and understood that he was a shepherd. Forty years earlier, he had been the Prince of Egypt, but at this stage in his life, he had been demoted to tending sheep. However, he surrendered his staff to God and over the course of the following forty years, God transformed him into a savior and a liberator of the people of Israel. Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz surrendered their identities as the “Kings of Salsa”, and some forty years later God used them to reach millions of people around the world, and to open more than seventy Christian churches worldwide.

 

Who are you? What are you known for? What is your identity? Surrender your identity to God and watch it become alive and watch God do something amazing through you. However, if you keep it in your hands, it will only become a withering, dried piece of wood.

 

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:20 NIV