Speak the Truth to Your Identity

June 8, 2015

Have you ever known someone – child or adult – that seemed to become whatever they said they were?

This can happen with positive or negative results.

Psychology calls this phenomenon “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Scripture calls it “speaking to yourself in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” Christian teaching says this is the way to speak to your own soul, to reinforce your thoughts by reaching your mind more completely through the senses. (I heard it as ear gate, mouth gate, eye gate when I was younger. Thought that was a little silly, but it stuck!)

Okay, back to the personal. Someone who keeps saying they are depressed will get more depressed. Someone who has a consistently positive outlook and says so will be chipper.

But it goes deeper than emotional states. It goes clear to the level of identity.

When I give my testimony, I am careful to say that being a healed survivor is part of my history, but is not my identity. It makes me cringe to hear ladies describe themselves as victims. No, we were victims at the time of assault, but we survived the onslaught. That makes us survivors.

“Victim” conjures up pictures of helplessness, of cringing like a whipped pup, of defeat and an inability to rise above the past.

“Survivor” describes a woman who has gone through horrific stuff but who understands she is not still there. She is not stuck in her past but is rising above it. She is becoming the person God intended. Her history (though never forgotten) is a part of her past. It may influence some of her actions on occasion, but it does not control her.

If you are a survivor of any kind of severe abuse or trauma, please hear me. Never identify yourself as a victim. The soul (mind, will, emotions) will eventually make it true in your life and you will live as a victim. It can start subconsciously and then slip into the conscious mind. You will wonder why you seem stuck in the circumstances.

Several years ago, a visiting preacher led the congregation in this chant:

If you’re catching hell, don’t hold it. If you’re going through hell, don’t stop.

I have no idea who coined this statement, but it’s absolutely true. If you are under attack from outside forces or inner thoughts of your past, don’t hold onto it. Don’t stop going forward.