The last night of training camp Savannah talked and prayed for us all individually.  When Savannah had her talk with me, she told me I needed to focus on my identity. Before this trip I would have said that I am chosen, predestined, adopted, blessed, redeemed, and forgiven (all of which come from Ephesians 1:3-10). Now my answer is much different, because I decided to listen.

Thursday night, two days ago, we all went into the sanctuary for a team meeting. Andrew told us to take some time asking God to give us words of who we are in Christ. So the entire team found various places in the room and I sat down and actually listened. After the 10 minutes was up, Andrew had us all stand on the chairs around the room and declare who God said we were. Some of the words we declared are as followed,

I am…. found, beloved, more precious than rubies, the bride, an alien, His flower, patient, clean, rescued, made new, free, worth it all, a woman of joy for no reason other than that is how He made me to live, begotten, His.

When it was my turn to shout and declare who God said I was, I said a set of four words in the form of two clauses, not a list of words. It confused everyone, but it made sense to me.

Let me explain.  When I decided to listen to what God said I got the words daughter, sinner, devoted, broken. I kept getting other words like free and begotten, but those four words kept sticking out and I had no idea why. I wrote down the last two words I had gotten in my journal like this:

                               DEVOTED                                                       BROKEN

I kept thinking and mediating on those words and then I wrote the first two words God gave me like this:

                               DEVOTED                                                       BROKEN

                               DAUGHTER                                                    SINNER

That is when everything clicked. I had been living my life as a broken sinner and not as a devoted daughter of Christ. My identity was based on my actions and who others said I was, the Christian girl who was a student leader at her church and acted like she had it together. That night I had to decide whether I wanted to live life for the good of myself or the good of God. Standing on that chair I declared this statement, “I was a broken sinner and now I am a devoted daughter.” That night I made truth reign in my life; I re-committed/re-focused myself on Christ and decided to really live my life for Him and not for me. It doesn’t matter if I am second or third or even last, as long as He is first in my life.

                                                                                               - Caroline Noble