In our first week of our new women’s series, Becoming a Better ME, we discussed the journey women experience in trying to figure out our true identity.

There are so many things that fight to destroy our true identity. The world throws at each woman impossible standards of what it means to be beautiful, thin, successful, popular, and strong. Satan whispers lies of how far we fall short… you are weak, you are not pretty enough, you’ll never change, you’re not good enough, not worth pursuing. The issue comes when we begin to agree with Satan and instead of seeing ourselves the way God sees us, we agree with Satan and voice our agreements out loud by labeling ourselves by our sins and weakness instead of labeling ourselves with the thoughts of Christ. We start to voice things like, I am alone, I am weak, I am not good enough, pretty enough, kind enough, smart enough. I am emotional, I am insecure, I am scared.

Our identity can so easily come from these things, or from changing ourselves in an effort to please people instead of learning who God truly made us to be and allowing ourselves to grow into the things that God wants us to become.

Gen 1:27 says

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

God created us as females in his image. As women we were created to reflect something special about the image of God.

I’ve been rereading the book Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge and have loved the way they described being made in God’s image.

God put some natural desires on our hearts as women that reflect desires that he also has. As women we desire to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty…

These are the same things that God wants! God has a great desire for a deep relationship with each of us, he wants to be our great helper in the great adventure of our lives, and he wants to unveil beauty in everything we see.

The hard part is that even though we connect with God on so many levels with these desires we often have trouble trusting him with our lives and we pull back into defensive identities.

We easily become dominant or desolate women, (or some version in between) instead of being the women that God intended for us to be.

Dominant women use their defensive identity to try to control everything and everyone around them. They pretend to not need anyone and push people away by having a hard exterior that seems to “have it all together”. They lack a vulnerability and femininity that God wants them to bring into the world. Oddly enough, these women are often lifted up and recognized as successful and strong in our culture.

Desolate women are the opposite. They crave attention and acceptance from everyone around them and are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure people are happy with them. They are consumed by their desire for relationship and are far too vulnerable and emotional. Desolate women live in hiding, whether it is hiding behind being busy, frumpy clothes, not making decisions, angry silences or withdrawals from conflict, these women hide their true selves so that no one can reject who they really are.

Whether we tend to the dominant or desolate side, we all have indulgences that we go to in order to get filled up instead of going to God.

These indulgences can be anything from buying something for ourselves, eating seconds or a super-sized something, controlling our food or overexercising, fantasy worlds, masturbation, Netflix, pursuing guys in texting or flirting, drinking, partying, negative emotions and spirals…

We give our hearts away to these things instead of letting God fill us up.

God so desperately desires to be close to us, to fill us up, to have a deep relationship with us, to take us on incredible adventures and unveil so much beauty in our lives.

When we live in these defensive identities and go to these indulgences to be filled instead, we separate ourselves from the image that God created us in.

Jeremiah 2:13

“My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

1 Samuel 12:21

^” Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless.”

These defensive identities and idulgences are just broken cisterns and useless idols. They do not fill us up and make us whole because they do not connect us to our creator!

The only way to fight the desire to turn to these empty solutions is to fight to be closer to our God.

The more we know about our creator the more we will know and understand the image we were created in! By spending time reading our Bibles, journaling our thoughts, and praying through our insecurities, we can experience more of God’s identity and in turn be more secure in our own!

Jesus was a great example of knowing exactly who he was because he knew exactly who God made him to be!

In the book of John we find some incredible I AM statements from Jesus:

• John 6:51 I am the Living Bread
• John 8:12 I am the Light of the World
• John 8:23 I am From Above and Not of This World
• John 10:9 I am The Door
• John 10:11 I am the Good Shepherd
• John 10:36 I am the Son of God
• John 11:25 I am the Resurrection and the Life
• John 14:6 I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life
• John 15:1 I am the True Vine

Throughout this series we want to follow Jesus’ example and create our own list of defining I AM statements from the scriptures and themes we study out.

The first statement for our list… I AM… Created in His Image!

Whenever we are feeling insecure, doubting who we were made to be, hearing lies of Satan fill our heads, or feeling like we don’t measure up to the standards of the world… let us remember… I AM… Created in His Image! There is power and security in knowing that we were created in the image of the creator of the world!

Let’s live as women who become more of who we are because we know more about God, whose image we were created in.