WHAT IS MY IDENTITY?

“So God created man in His own image….” Genesis 1:27

This week, I decided to take my Sons of Issachar readers on the start of a journey that I have realized is a key to how we live our lives in the middle of a crazy world.

For most of the weekly issues of these Sons of Issachar Newsletters, I have focused on the signs of the times and their meaning in relation to a biblical worldview. At the big picture level, it is clear that we are experiencing a series of moves that seek to herd us into a global corral, where we have no rights or freedoms but only those that the State is prepared to give us. The forces of global dictatorship have extraordinary power and seem to be acquiring more. There are efforts to:

• control finance through central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) – see

Would You Accept $2,000 A Month In Exchange For A CBDC Microchip Implanted In Your Hand?

• control your movement, enforce lockdowns and vaccinations, through the World Health Organization (WHO) – see this post by James Roguski and his other many writings.

THE WHO TIMELINE OF EVENTS

• destroy national borders and national sovereignty – see this 2006 article from Berit Kjos

• destroy the family – see this link

• reduce the population – see this link

• and ultimately bring about the “great reset” – where ultimately we will “own nothing and be happy”!

With all these sinister forces (and more) aligned against us, it is easy to feel as though things are hopeless, and we can feel helpless. I often feel like this as I traverse the metaverse and read what is happening in various parts of the world.

Now, Western governments are conspiring to introduce legislation that in outlawing “misinformation and disinformation” will ensure that the truth will be even more difficult to find. Various “Ministries of Truth” will seek to impose only government-approved viewpoints. The Australian Labor socialist government is leading the way with legislation that would impose multi-million dollar penalties on social media companies for promoting “misinformation and disinformation” – see this link

Is it just a matter of consuming more anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs so that we can live in the modern world?

Of course, the answer is “no”. Jesus spoke about the coming challenges in His private briefing to his disciples on the Mount of Olives (read Matthew 24). In summary, Jesus forecast much trouble ahead prior to his return (He calls Himself “the Son of Man” in this section of the Bible), which He linked to what had been spoken of around 500 years earlier by the prophet Daniel (see this link).

We live in the hope of a day to come when Jesus will return and put everything right. This is an actual day and a real time and may be closer than we suspect. However, Jesus did predict much trouble before He returned: love growing cold, deception, hatred, betrayal and death (see Matthew 24:9-12 ). His admonition, given to His followers more than 2,000 years ago on the Mount of Olives, is just as true today:

“But he who endures to the end shall be saved.” (Matthew 24:13).

Reading between the lines, as I have thought about the coming troubles, which seem to be increasing daily, it will need faith and character to endure “to the end”. How can we grow in faith and character in the difficult days ahead? Well - we need to be grounded in the blessed hope of the reality of Jesus’ return to put wrong things right, and we need to be prepared to examine our own characters and areas of our lives  that can result in blind spots and weaknesses in our personality that rob us of true life and also often lead  us to make  bad decisions. This is often difficult for us because we all suffer from unconscious incompetence. We don’t know what we don’t know!

Fortunately, there is help for us on our personal journeys, and one of the organizations that is doing remarkable work in this area is Ellel Ministries

Ellel Ministries

Last weekend, I attended a short course called: “Living in my God-Given Identity” run by Ellel Ministries. This international organization was started in the United Kingdom in 1986 and now operates in more than 20 countries - see this link. The short course was an extraordinary and encouraging experience, and I thought that my Sons of Issachar readers would be interested in learning a little more about Ellel. I also will attempt to impart some of the key ideas covered in the course.

On their international website, Ellel Ministries write:

“Ellel Ministries is a non-denominational Christian ministry that began in England in 1986 and is now established in over 20 countries around the world. We look to serve the Body of Christ in two main ways - by offering personal prayer ministry to those in need and by training and equipping people so that they can help others more effectively.

The sad truth is that many Christians feel that there is no real answer to the problems they face daily – problems such as fear and anxiety, addictions and anger outbursts, long-term consequences of trauma or abuse and relationship dysfunction... to name but a few. The list is endless! The wonderful fact, however, is that God is willing, able and longing to restore His people and equip them to fulfill all the plans He has for them! No man or woman is excluded and we have seen thousands of lives healed and transformed since the work began.”

Since the course on the weekend, I have been reading the remarkable story of Ellel by its founder, Peter Horrobin. The book is titled Strands of Destiny. The book provides great insights into the providential work of God and hearing His voice. It is hard to do justice to Peter’s story in a short space, but I will have a go! The book is encouraging to those who want to understand that God is at work in many amazing and mysterious ways today.

Peter starts his story with his own coming to faith in Jesus in the UK in 1952. Peter’s father met and married a South African girl (who was descended from a 17th-century French Huguenot family) in 1938. Interestingly, they met in Switzerland just a few years prior to World War 2, at  a Christian holiday group led by the then Lord Mayor of London, Sir Kynaston Studd. (His brother C.T. Studd was a famous English cricketer who gave up his career to become a missionary to China, India and Africa). Peter’s parents settled in Lancashire and he was born during World War 2. Peter’s biography infuses stories demonstrating God’s hand in daily life.

Peter has had a fascinating journey, commencing after school with a chemistry degree in Oxford, then an unexpected opportunity to become a Lecturer in Building Science at Oxford Polytechnic. From this role, he intended to undertake a PhD. Instead, he received a surprise offer to become a Lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), teaching Building Science. However, what is clear from Peter’s book is that at heart, he is an entrepreneur gifted by God to take quite radical business chances.

With his brother (a famous academic doctor in Kenya and later Canada) and another friend, they started a publishing company called The Medical and Technical Publishing Company. The book outlines how God opened various doors to enable the company to publish successful books. Eventually, Peter sold what had become a separate company, to establish a second-hand bookshop in the small village of Carnforth, Lancashire, in response to a dream that he realized was God-given. The idea in the dream seemed to have no commercial merit but involved Peter starting a second-hand bookshop in the village. He then acquired thousands of books, some very valuable, and remarkably, the bookshop grew to become the largest second-hand and antiquarian bookshop in the north of England. The bookshop also dealt in stamps, and in a fascinating section of the book, Peter writes about the fantastic events that led to him acquiring precious and rare Libyan stamps from World War 2. With the stamp sales and investments, there was provision of the subsequent financial underpinning for Ellel Ministries.

An essential part of Peter’s story is the remarkable way that God spoke to him on 19^th June 1970. He is a car enthusiast and acquired a wrecked Alvis Speed 20 Tourer built in 1933 - see this link.

Figure 1. Alvis Speed 20 Tourer 1933

The Alvis Company was prominent in the UK pre-war, and the Alvis Speed 20 was acknowledged as one of the best British sports cars of the 1930s. Peter acquired the wreck of the car that had been vandalised, set on fire and dumped into the River Mersey, for £50.  On 19^th June, he was working on the chassis in the early morning hours when at 4 am, he suddenly realized that one of the steel chassis members had been bent out of shape, making the restoration almost impossible. He was distraught after all his effort to acquire his dream car. However, suddenly Peter realized that God was speaking to him deep in his spirit, and He said:

“You could restore this broken car, but I can restore broken lives.” And then God asked me a very simple question, “Which is more important – a broken car or a broken life?”

In the book, Peter writes:

“As I looked at the remains of the broken car, I realised that the world is full of hurting and broken people, and the embryonic vision for what would become my life’s work was birthed in my spirit.”

Interestingly, it was another 16 years and many ups and downs in Peter’s life before Ellel Ministries was started. It is clear from the book that God is looking for maturity and absolute dependence upon Him in His people. If we are seeking to walk with Him then undoubtedly He is working to grow these characteristics in our lives, but it is a life journey with many opportunities where each  one of us will be required  to wait upon God in faith. Nonetheless, the vision that was birthed over the wreck of the Alvis car remained with Peter and guided him along a challenging road that seemed to present many obstacles to achieving his dream. Eventually, in a miraculous series of events, he and his supporters raised almost £500,000 to acquire Ellel Grange, Lancashire in late 1986, a stately home previously used as an up-market health spa.

Figure 2. Ellel Grange in Lancashire, UK

Peter writes about having had a vision for people being healed. He was convinced that God wanted him to establish a healing centre, so he sat down with his Bible to find out what Jesus taught about healing. To his shock, he writes that he discovered that there wasn’t any such teaching! However, one passage from Luke stood out:

“Jesus welcomed the people, he spoke to them about the Kingdom of God and healed those in need of healing.” Luke 9:11 (ESV).

He realized that the core components of healing were:

1.     Welcoming people with love – Peter writes: “in essence a welcome is a practical expression of love. If people are loved and welcomed, they are a hundred times more likely to listen to what you have to say, than if they get the message from how you speak, and what you do, that they’re not wanted. Jesus didn’t just want us to teach words, He wanted people to learn by receiving love.”

2.     Teaching about the Kingdom of God – Peter writes: “God didn’t want us to teach about healing, but to show them love and tell them about the Kingdom of God and what it really means to live one’s life according to Kingdom principles.”

3.     Healing those in need – Peter writes: “There was a definite sequence here – show love, teach about the Kingdom and help them get their lives in order and then pray with them for healing.”

This became the foundational pattern for all the Ellel healing retreats as this remarkable ministry has grown internationally, and further  premises have been acquired in Europe, North America and Australia. Thousands of healing retreats  have been undertaken, profoundly impacting the lives of broken people (that’s all of us!) worldwide.

Toward the end of the book, Peter writes the following:

“At no time have I sat down with the leaders of the work to strategise the growth of an international ministry, with an expansionist policy – mercifully, we have never had the funds to even think of such a thing! If we had we would definitely have ‘got it wrong’ and been tempted to build an empire, instead of walk an often lonely path of obedience. We have simply sought to go where the Lord has gone before to find and feed His lost and broken lambs.”

I found the book inspirational, and it is encouraging to be reminded  that in a lost and broken world, God has not abandoned us but is strongly (and sometimes quietly) at work, searching for the lost and broken and the ones who would seek Him.

With this background, I will try to cover some foundational principles taught on the short retreat about Living in my God-given Identity. I sensed that these would be valuable for at least a few of my readers.

Living In My God-Given Identity

The foundational truth at the centre  of the course is that each of us is unique and created in the image of God. This is hard for us to take hold of in our heads, let alone our hearts and spirits,  to fully believe  that we are unique, special and precious. Each snowflake is unique and extraordinary in design, and we are far more  precious to God than a snowflake!

I was arrested by a simple question: who are you?

In trying to answer, each of us would probably say something about what we do, “I am a scientist”, or “I am a mother”, or “I am a farmer” etc. However, how would we answer if everything was  stripped away from us? We are each uniquely created by God and precious beyond price… Who then am I?

Our Identity

Our identity is ultimately tied to whatever we give our hearts to. Something or someone will have first place in our hearts and if it isn’t God, we will  find ourselves living out of a false and distorted sense of ourselves, and of the world around us, chasing after things with no eternal value. In trying to discover and embrace  our true identity, we can be waylaid by various challenges that we all can face in life. These include:

• Generational issues e.g. addictions such as, alcoholism and other false comforts to ease our pain, and other inherited problems that can distort our true identity and can be obstacles in the way to discovering who we have truly been created to be ;

• The character of our parents and our upbringing. No parenting is perfect and we  can all be left with emotional wounds and scars which impact our true identity.  We can be wounded by things done to us and things not done to us, e.g. many  people  suffer from a lack of nurture when they were children (this is often hard to recognise because it is the absence of something);

• The impact of authority – this can come from many areas, including authorities in the family or at school etc, where we may  experience trauma from those in authority over us which  can lead to us into hiding our true identity – this is most often unconscious;

• Inner vows that we make to ourselves – for example, I am not good enough, clever enough, beautiful enough etc to be  worthwhile. Most often we are  not even aware of these inner vows, which when made can derail  our lives;

• The intrusion of those who have invaded our personal boundaries – which is much more common than we would think,  with various forms of abuse that carry a long-term emotional and physical impact;

• Pain that we carry from past wounds – all of us have these, and some are more severe than others. However, all wounds – some seemingly minor – can have a major influence in preventing us from living in our true identities;

• Wrong beliefs. We all suffer from wrong beliefs, which are most often connected to the wounds we have received . We can believe that we are not worthwhile, have nothing valuable to say, are unlikeable or unlovable. These wrong beliefs are powerful because they are self-fulfilling;

• Accidents and trauma – are part of the lives of most families. These can have long-term impacts that unless addressed, and can derail our lives. Consider, for example the Biden family and the impact of the death of Joe Biden’s  first wife and baby, as he was left to raise two young sons. Hunter Biden’s current issues, which are many, can probably be traced back to his childhood traumas.

• Besetting sins and addictions  - are a problem for almost all of us. To escape pain in our lives we can turn to alcohol, drugs, inappropriate sex and other harmful activities to make us feel better. This produces an ongoing cycle of shame and then the repetition of what we are ashamed of.

• Unforgiveness – is something that we all are challenged with and will  impact our lives forever until we realize that we need to forgive in order to be free, and we need o forgive to be forgiven ourselves. I like the quote of Dr Lewis Smedes from Fuller Seminary in California who said : “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner is you”.

These are just a few of the issues that can impact our true identity, and we can, sometimes unknowingly, find ourselves captive to things that can prevent us from living in and expressing our true identity. The experience of thousands of people who have attended various Ellel healing retreats is that Jesus came to “set the captives free” (Luke 4:18). This is not a simple or one-off process but a journey to be taken. Still, undoubtedly Jesus, the great healer, is powerfully at work in the lives of many today.

False Identity

Most of us, whether we know it or not, are living out of a false identity as we seek to find our own solutions to coping in a complex world. Usually, this is because we have taken on various coping mechanisms that ultimately are destructive. These coping mechanisms or “masks” include:

• Perfectionism – everything has to be done perfectly, or we feel that things are out of control. This can result in endless striving.

• Independence – having been hurt by many, we can try to do everything ourselves and not rely on anyone else. We don’t want to make ourselves vulnerable.

• Addictions – which are more common than we realize, and new ones now include social media and even the smartphone. There was an excellent quote on the weekend from Gordon Dalbey: “An addiction is something you do consistently to avoid facing the truth about yourself”. Most often, this is unconscious.

• Denial and unreality – I have always enjoyed the saying of a good friend who says “Denial is not just a river in Egypt”. Many  of us cope with life by trying to deny the things that we don’t want to face.

• Anger – Anger either within ourselves or directed against us. I read recently about Joe Biden’s angry outbursts against his staff. We all have faced people like this, and it is particularly difficult when they are people with power over us. The White House staff need to say: “Mr President – see a counsellor!”

• Life of the Party, the Joker – I recognized this in myself as I find it easy to hide my own insecurities by making jokes and distracting people. You can easily see this in others when you are in a group.

• People pleasing – this is another area where I plead guilty. It is easy to say “yes” to everyone so that you are liked. Ultimately, your success in life and your true identity are found by what you say “no” to.

• The Tough Guy – all of us have encountered this type of person who seems harsh but is really hiding deep insecurities.

If you’ve read this far, then you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. As I sat in this short course, I realized the many challenges each of us faces in finding our true identity. In some ways, it seems easier not to get out of bed in the morning!

However, I realized that the core question of “who am I?” is something we must deal with if we are going to live successful and contented lives, and at the heart of the matter walk intimately with our Heavenly Father who created us for His pleasure and purpose. I remember a talk many years ago by Pat Murray, a well-known US leadership guru. He followed up the question: “Who am I?” with a second one: “What price am I willing to pay to be that?”.

If we are going to stand secure in the coming challenging days, we need to know how to live in our God-given identities – to be the men and women whom God created, uniquely and in His own image.

The Ellel team, having run thousands of courses like the one that I attended, believe that everything related to the distorting of our self-identity boils down to two main areas, and these are worthwhile for us to reflect upon:

1. SHAME – what are my “I’m nots” – i.e. “I’m not going to succeed ”, “I’m not going to be good enough”, etc. It is worthwhile considering what are the “I’m nots” in our own lives that will help us uncover some of the  areas of our lives we are ashamed of. It is also worthwhile reviewing some of the main coping mechanisms or “masks” that we use. Then ask God for his help in these areas.

2. FEAR – what are my “I cannots” – these are things like – “I cannot trust others”, “I cannot speak in public”, and myriad others. It is good to identify and name the things that you are afraid of and seek God’s help.

Conclusions

Despite the many difficulties that we are going to face in the days ahead, it is probably our own internal struggles, as we seek to discover and live in our unique identity, that are most likely to derail us. Unless we can live in our true identity and know that we are  special and loved by God, it will be all but impossible to “endure to the end”. This process is clearly not a quick fix but nonetheless is critical for each of us, no matter what stage of life we are at.

I hope that this newsletter has at least stimulated your interest in this critical question: what is my identity? The Ellel group has recommended a book to help on the journey, titled: Healing the Wounded Heart: Removing Obstacles to Intimacy With God – see this link. I’ve just started the book but will return to Ellel to continue my own journey. 

I recommend readers look at the Ellel Ministries website – www.ellel.org to find programs and courses in their own countries. This group has a remarkable track record of helping with obstacles in people’s lives that prevent us from finding and living out of our true God-given identities – as sons and daughters of the Most-High God.