How Can Men Find Their Identity and Value?

In a world that is broken and confused, how can men find their identity and value?

From the beginning of creation, the enemy has worked to deceive God’s people. He distorts God’s word. He lies and falsely accuses God’s people. He intimidates us in an effort to create doubt about our identity.

Though the enemy has been stripped of his authority by Jesus, he has a single remaining weapon to use against us: his voice.

In a noisy world, we struggle to discern the enemy’s lies from God’s truth. The destructive voices far outnumber the voice of our Creator, and we often struggle to distinguish the voice of God from the voices of the world.

When did life get so hard?

The truth is that we have everything we need to distinguish God’s voice from the others.

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world… They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God… By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”

1 John 4:1-6

When the enemy took Jesus into the wilderness to tempt Him, Jesus didn’t dispute the devil’s claims. He didn’t try to match wits with the devil, and He didn’t respond in His own strength.

Instead, Jesus quoted God’s word. He returned to His Father’s truth, as if to say, “This is the voice I listen to.”

When the world whispers lies designed to break or confuse you, how will you respond? Will the lies cause the kind of fear and insecurity that will shape who you become?

Or will you protect yourself and discern the truth? Will you respond the way Jesus did when the enemy tempted Him with lies and deception?

Begin by recognizing that your value originates from only one place: your relationship to the Father. You aren’t valuable because you’re a good father or husband. You aren’t valuable because you’re a good employee, and your value doesn’t come from your earning potential.

Likewise, your past mistakes don’t diminish your value. Your failures and shortcomings don’t chip away at your worth or your importance to the Kingdom.

Imagine it this way: if a schoolyard bully tells your child she’s worthless, does her value diminish because someone simply claimed it was true? Is she less valuable because the other student claims that she is? Or is the other student’s opinion completely irrelevant to her worth?

The enemy is nothing more than a schoolyard bully, and we must recognize him as such. His claims about our value and our worth are meaningless, unless we choose to believe them.

The men of Junto Tribe understand the struggle, and we’ve fallen victim to the enemy’s lies before. We’ve discovered along the way that we’re much stronger together, because we can remind each other who we are and whose we are.

As more men join us on this journey, our reach and our influence will increase, and we’ll be better equipped to lead the people around us on their own search for identity.

We’ll be so profoundly connected to the source of our identity that we’ll recognize the enemy’s lies and deceptions and we’ll be less inclined to entertain them.

Who does God say that you are?