A person’s identity is the way they see themselves and feel that others perceive about them. Our identity is formed by our most basic beliefs and worldview.

The world places a large emphasis for young adults on finding your identity. While the theme isn’t always explicitly expressed, finding identity is an underlying tone in every television show, song lyric or television commercial.

For young women, identity in the world is often found in the number size of the dress you wear, whether or not you have a ring on your left hand, or the name brand items in your closet.

For young men, the pressure is on to find identity in their sports ability, the perfect job, perfect wife, or perfect car.

If we aren’t at the point of life that the world tells us we should be, we feel like failures. The message that we need more to be satisfied in who we are seems to be plastered everywhere we turn.

But as Christians, we know that the Bible tells us that our identity is found not in ourselves, but in something —some One — else.

Isaiah 43:1 says, “But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.”

A Christian’s identity is found in God, not themselves. The minute that we start believing what the world says about our identities we become vulnerable to swaying opinion and insecurity.

As a believer in Christ, we know that we do not have to rely on how the world defines us. Before we can truly believe  what God tells us about ourselves, we have to leave behind how the world labels us and put on the man (2 Cor. 5:17).

Instead, we can know what God says about us in the Bible: we are loved, we were chosen before the foundation of the world, God created each one of us special, and that we are His children.

Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.”

God specifically chose those He calls His before we were even born. Each one of us was handmade and handpicked by the Creator of the universe; that fact alone gives us a much more important fact to find our identity in than anything the world has to offer.

Furthermore, your worth in the world’s eyes varies from day-to-day, minute-by-minute. With constantly changing trends, those who find identity in the world will constantly be left yearning for more.

But as Christians, we can be secure in our never-changing identity as children of a caring Heavenly Father.

John 10:29 says, “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”

Don’t identify with what the world says about you; trust instead in your precious, sure identity as a child of God which can never change.