DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?
In part 2 of our “Why We Exist” series we talk about finding your WHO.
In our ongoing exploration of the profound question of existence, we continue our journey into understanding our purpose and delving deeper into the concept of “finding your who.”
As individuals, we often find ourselves searching for meaning and direction in life. In this episode, we’ll explore various aspects of self-discovery and introspection to help uncover the unique purposes that drive us.
Join us as we embark on a transformative journey of self-discovery and unlock the power of knowing your identity.
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There is no source worthy of your life that can actually dictate your identity other than God who created you. We’ve talked about this in the last episode. If you create it, you get the chance to give it its purpose. If it didn’t create you, it doesn’t deserve, it doesn’t have the authority to actually dictate who you are. But we do this wrong all the time. It’s the number one thing that’s getting in your way of becoming who you were born to be is what or who you have placed on top of that triangle that is not God.
Tagline: Created on purpose. And for purpose,
Everybody, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Let’s push some buttons. Where’s the, oh, crowd’s going wild. The crowd is going wild. And I’m gonna tell you why the crowd’s going wild right now in studio. We have a huge, uh, huge amphitheater We have set up here. Uh, usually have about 400 people as a part of the live studio audience here. For the Daron, that’s a total lie. It’s just me and Darren Cooper sitting in the office. But anyway, uh, you could see it though, you thought about it, right? It would be cool if we did. Maybe someday day we will. Maybe we should do some live podcasts. Hey, if you want to come to a live podcast, you know, filming, send us some messages, reach out to us, text us emails, let us know. We’ll figure it out. That would be, that would be a blast, uh, for me.
And hopefully it’d be fun for you. Here’s why you’re going wild today, okay? Because, uh, we’re recording this, uh, episode, this part of this whole, uh, Why We Exist podcast series. It’s in the month of May in Indiana two, uh, 2023. Now, know when you listen to this one, but we are recording this in May of 2023, and I’m gonna tell you why everybody that’s in the studio on is going crazy because the sun is out today in Indiana. It’s going to, it’s gonna get over 60 degrees. Praise, uh, Yahweh, uh, Elohim, every name we can come up with, God, we’re gonna praise all, all of his names for this today. So I’m in a good mood. Hope you’re in a good mood. We’re caffeinated. We got some coffee. We’re ready to rock and roll with the week two of this Why We Exist series.
And I’m fired up, uh, about this week because I, I would say, I, I don’t have, you know, statistical information that I can pull out, but I’m just saying, I think this issue we’re gonna deal with a, this question we’re gonna deal with today is probably the single most, um, misunderstood. Uh, the question that’s answered incorrectly the most of anything I ever do in dealing with people to help them become who God created them to be. And it comes down to understanding your identity. When this one is off, all bets are off of what kind of life you’re going to produce. Okay?
Let’s do some quick review. First week of this Why We Exist series. We answer the question, why? Why do you exist? You exist to be loved and to love. Why? Because God is love and God created you. You don’t get the opportunity right as a created being to, to dictate to yourself why you exist.
You are created purpose and for a purpose by a God who is in essence love, who created you to love you. And so you created in his image, right, would become someone who loves, loves him, and loves others. That is why you exist. If right now there’s anything else lower than that, defining why you feel like you’re on this earth, you’ve gotta push, reset. You’ve gotta come back and let the truth of what God has said about you, be the number one source and authority in your life, cuz anything else is not worthy of your life. Okay, now let’s ask another question and see if we can’t answer. Okay? So why exist to be loved and loved? So then, who am I? This is huge. Who am I?
I’m gonna give you the answer right here, and then I’m gonna unpack it. If you’ve only got 30 seconds for the podcast, you can stop it after this. Be like, I got it. Got the punchline, right? Who am I? You are a loved child of God. It’s who you are. That is who you are. And so what we’re talking about here is about identity, okay? This is all about identity. And what I wanna do, I wanna use a teaching aid here. If you’re, uh, we’ve used this before, I’m gonna use it again because like I said, it’s so foundational to understanding who God created you to be. So I’m gonna ask, uh, coop to, to do a little post-production. He’s gonna pull a little triangle here, uh, floating in the air somewhere, okay? He’s gonna be, it’s gonna be magic, right? He’s gonna throw the identity or the covenant triangle, uh, here on the screen so you can see it.
If, if you’re listening right now and you go, wow, I wanna see the covenant triangle, then this is the perfect episode to go subscribe to the YouTube channel and start watching the podcast, not just listening to it. Cuz you’re gonna miss some of these, uh, the, these takeaways. So right here we have the identity triangle, and uh, at this point, it’s just a triangle, but here’s what I wanna put at the very top of the triangle right now, I wanna put the word source, okay? I wanna put at the top of the triangle source. Now, here’s an interesting thing, right? Source is defined as this a place, person or thing from which something comes or can be obtained, right? It is a place, a person or thing from which something comes. What is your source? I love this one as well. A source is a person who provides information.
So what goes on the top of this triangle makes a huge difference. Whatever you right, put up there and say, that is my source. That’s the thing that, that, you know, where life and everything I need can be obtained. This is the thing that provides the information of who I am. Or here’s another one. I think this is huge, right? A source is this. The point of origin, and this goes back to last episode, and I think is maybe the best definition right here for source to understanding who you are, to understanding your identity, right? Because when we look at the idea of source, the only source worthy to be on the top of this triangle, right, is your point of origin.
The only source that can go on top of that identity triangle is God himself. God is your source of love, of life, of redemption, of identity. And, and we can play this out and, and, and look at this, we can put a lot of different things on top of that triangle, okay? We can put a lot of different things on top of that triangle and, and, and they will shape our sense of identity incorrectly, right? Because it’s about source, but there is no source worthy of your life that can actually dictate your identity other than God who created you. We’ve talked about this in the last episode. If you create it, you get the chance to give it its purpose. If it didn’t create you, it doesn’t deserve, it doesn’t have the authority to actually dictate who you are. But we do this wrong all the time.
It’s the number one thing that’s getting in your way of becoming who you were born to be is what or who you have placed on top of that triangle that is not God, right? Culturally right now, you know, and, and, and we could put source and we could say equals success, that’s my source. It’s success, right? I’m being driven by my successes. I’m letting all my successes define me, right? This is what I am. Who am I? Well, I’m the guy that won the state championship in high school. That’s my success. Who am I? Uh, well, you know, uh, I don’t know, kind of a big deal, right? Uh, I have, uh, I’ve got, uh, my, my office, you know, at, at, at the sky high Highrise that I, I’m the CEO and I smells of Rich Mahogany in here, and I have many, uh, leather bound books.
Um, so kind of, I’m kind of a big deal, right? And my successes defined problem with the successes is you are allowing yourself to be defined by what. And the dangerous part there is when your successes turn to failures and they are your source. Now you don’t know who you are. And that begins to put you into an identity tailspin. You say, how about this? This is something that I see a lot in life is the source is not success, it’s failures. Who am I? Um, you know, just a dropout. You know, I’m just a poor kid from the south side. Well, I’m just, I’m just, I’m just, here’s my failures and my failures. I’ve allowed them to be the source of my identity.
It’s below you. Maybe we could say this. Well, you know, I’m, I’m gonna put friends up there. What’s my source to friends? What other people say and think about me. That’s my source if I’m being honest, right? If, if, if I don’t have a lot of friends or they don’t say nice things about me, then I, then, then who am I? I’m, I’m nobody. I have no sense of identity outside of what my friends say or think about me. Then, then it get the from there, right? A lot of us have, your source is what your ex, uh, boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, right? Ex-spouse says about you. And a lot of times when they’re the ex, they don’t say a lot of great things about you. And if you begin to believe that you’re living below yourself, here’s one I that I see it in, in culture that, that concerns me right now is, is just put social media on top of that because in, in that, you’re, you’re combining the friends piece of it.
You’re combining sometimes your, your sense of success based on how many likes you get or shares or whatever. And right now, culturally, we are seeing some massively concerning trends happening globally. And I think a ton of it has to do in the past decade with us as human beings putting social media as our source. I’m gonna let my source social media tell me who I am. And this is wreaking havoc in, in our understanding of, of who we are as, as friends, as, as Christians, as students, as athletes. It, it, it’s, it’s leaking into and beginning to affect our understanding of our sexuality. In, in every realm, we are seeing massive, massive dysfunction coming from placing social media as the source of your identity. Okay? And, and, and I, I said dysfunction. I chose that word for a minute because one of the things that breaks my heart, and, and I literally mean it, it breaks my heart.
I was just listening to a book the other day that was unpacking some of these trends in society. And I found myself getting emotional and crying in my car because of the realities of how attuned and how much power I feel like our culture right now is giving to our brokenness in our dysfunctions. It’s like we put at the source right now. Our source is our dysfunction in our brokenness. And one of the ways I, that I’m begin to see this is for how many terms we have for dysfunctions in brokenness in our culture, right? Where somebody says, well, well, well, tell me about yourself. Who are you? And, and, and if, if ever in your description of who you are, you, you’re, you’re pulling in some kind of dysfunction, oh, well, you know, I’m ADHD. Well, you know, I’m OCD, I’m a fill-in-the-blank of how many letters and diagnosis and things we, we, we we use to begin to actually identify ourselves, right? Even if we begin to use, uh, sexuality, even if we use race, even if we use, I mean anything we want to use it, it, if it’s anything less than our point of origin, God who created us, it’s going to cause brokenness and dysfunction in our life.
Uh, there was a song that, uh, my new favorite band is a band called Gable Price and Friends, I think I’ve told you about it on the podcast. Went and saw them in concert a couple weeks ago. Phenomenal. If you’re looking for like, I think like the next generation of a band that’s kind of like, maybe like switch foot, but a little bit like different, and, uh, I’m not gonna say better, I’m just saying I, I love Gable Price and friends, check ’em out. If you do, uh, you’re welcome. But one of the first songs I ever heard from Gable Gable Price and Friends, a song called Treason. And it was one of the first songs that made me think, uh, I think I’m gonna really like these guys cuz they’re saying something in their music and the music is absolutely on fire as well. But here’s the lyrics, I wanna read you the lyrics to, um, this, this song Treason that I think just so well describes the identity crisis I think we have right now in our culture, in our lives lyrics say this:
Golden youth, I’ve been there too, breaking down like all your friends do, and it hurts so good till it gets too bad, you’re flirting with another panic attack.
It’s a poke at the heart for the casual sake of the art. It’s a poke at the eyes so the tears can be weaponized.
And then he asks this question that, and then when I first listened to this song, this one wrecked me. He says,
Iis it really heroic to be broken on purpose?
Is there some kind of honor to keep living in the dark? Is it really heroic to be broken on purpose? Or is it treason to your heart?
That’s what I’m trying to, to get us to, to get our hearts and our souls and our minds around. In this episode, right? Is when we allow anything but the source of our origin, our Heavenly Father who created us, why do we exist to be loved and to love? If we allow anything to actually shape our identity other than our true source, we’ll get to the place where we feel like it’s heroic to be broken on purpose. And what we’re actually doing is committing treason to our hearts. I want you to think about that. Let it kind of sink in. We’ll be right back.
Is it time for you to take your next step towards discovering your purpose, but you’re not sure what to do?
Maybe jumping into the entire Spiritual DNA course seems just like a little too much for you right now. No problem at all. That’s why I want you to know about the Five Day Jumpstart to Purpose. It’s totally free and it’s a five-day audio course you’re gonna listen to just, it’s really short, like I know, five, six minutes a day. But it’s gonna help you just, let’s call it an appetizer, right? To help you jumpstart this process towards purpose. It’s free. All you gotta do is go to daronearlewine.com/jumpstart. It looks like this right behind me on the screen. You’re gonna go there and, uh, we’re gonna send you the course for free and I’ll help you take your next step, uh, cuz hey, we say it every week. I don’t want you to forget about it, right? God’s created you on purpose and for purpose. Let’s jumpstart that purpose. Now, let’s get back to the podcast.
And we’re back a short commercial break. Now we’re back. I know it was kind of heavy there, right? That gable price and string lyric, but I want this to hit you. I want you to get your heart around how important this is to understanding who you were created to be. We’re not gonna put up with treason into our heart anymore. It’s time for us to get back and, and know, I know why I exist and I know who I am. Here’s what our source tells us. All right? If we look back at this identity triangle, God is the source. The first thing he begins to, and declares and creates is our sense of identity. That’s where we go first in this triangle out of identity. The other side of the triangle is obedience, right?
That’s the what, but the identity is the who. It starts with. God comes down, he shapes, he declares who we are Out of that from who we are. We then step out and, and, and, and, and look at the what’s we’re gonna look at that in the next episode. But it’s God identity, obedience. It has to be run that direction. If it’s not, if we run it backwards, I’ve talked about this on the podcast before. If we run it backwards, if the source is wrong, here’s where we get really whacked out. If the source is wrong and we run the triangle backwards, and we move from a, a, an, an incorrect source to focusing on the obedience or the what’s right, the performance, our identity is shot. We’ve got no chance. That’s why we have to go from our source being God, the God who created us, who loved us, right?
Not only that, we go down, we start bringing some pieces from the scriptures to understand who we are, right? The Bible says that we are a child, a dearly loved child of God. Who are you? Okay? I I exist because God is love. I am loved, and I, I I exist to love and be loved. Who am I? I’m a dearly loved child of God. I am forgiven, right? If, if you guys want some extra reading to really begin to get some, uh, some handles and some biblical handles around this understanding of identity, I want you to spend some times reading, okay? The first four chapters of the book of Ephesians, specifically, the first three chapters are an absolute masterpiece of understanding who we are in Christ, who he declares us to be, right? And we have to allow our sins of identity to be formed and shaped, uh, and, and made by who, our source, right? Our Father, however, heavenly Father says we are, he says, we’re, we’re, we’re saved, we’re blessed, we’re redeemed, we’re chosen. Uh, I love the passage description that talks about the fact that we become ambassadors of God as if he was making his appeal through our life. Loved to be loved, right? We’re sons, we’re daughters, we’re ambassadors. Um, this is who you are.
And, and if this is not how you define yourself by allowing the God who created you on purpose and for a purpose to give you your core understanding of who you are, you may waste your life. Now, understand this doesn’t mean that life is perfect and it’s just all, all, you know, sunshine and rainbows and no, like life is hard. There’s full of a lot of disappointments. But if you’re not moving through life, understanding your why and understanding your who, you’re not gonna make it. Or if you do, you’re going to barely exist. You’re not gonna have, what Jesus says is, I wanna give you life and I wanna give it to, to you to the full. Right? I wanna give you a life that’s full of faith and hope and love and all these things. And he does, and he will. But you have to know who he says that you are, who he created you to be.
Okay? Now, one of the reasons I’m so passionate, and I talk a lot about the spiritual d n a course that I’ve created is because it helps you begin to, to put some actual handles around this, who we’re gonna talk about that next, right? What you actually do to live out your why, to step into who you are. We’re gonna talk about what, that’s the next episode. But, but one of the, the, the assessments you go through when you go through spiritual d n a is you go through the Enneagram. And one of the reasons I love the Enneagram, and it’s been such a, a great aid to me and knowing who I am, right? How God’s created me and, and where I need to grow most, is understanding my type. There’s nine types in the Enneagram, that’s where the name a comes from, meaning nine, right is, and I’m a type seven on the Enneagram, and understanding, you know, you know, the, the specificity of that.
Like I am a child of God. Okay, well then who else am I? Well, understanding some of the, the, the, the, the insight that the angiogram gave me, uh, gave me, uh, not just an understanding and a sense of peace, of like, no, I’m not crazy. No, I’m not messed up. Like, like I make sense. But it also helped me figure out, okay, from who I am and how God’s created me, what are some places of growth and ways that, that he has created me to connect most with him so I can accomplish my why, right? So I can be loved and I can love other people. If you don’t know that about yourself, that’s why I wanna encourage you to go to spiritualdna.me. Or you can just head over to daronearlewine.com, both of them work and, and, and get a, uh, buy the spiritual d n a course.
Invest in yourself so you can have some of these understandings of knowing why, knowing who and knowing what. And that’s gonna be our next episode. Can’t wait to jump into it. Um, love, love, love to hear from you, some questions, some insights as we took a look at, of who you are in, in the difference that makes. So hang around with you guys in the next episode. I can’t wait to dig into what you were created to do, uh, until we talk again, my good friends, remember God’s for you. He’s not against you, right? He’s near you. He’s not far away, and he has created you on purpose and for purpose. Talk to you guys next time.