Who Do You Believe About Who You Are? Part 2

Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” I think this is the key question of humanity. How you answer this question determines the course of your life and of your eternity.

And I think the second-most important question is like it: “Who do you say that you are?” What is my identity? What is it based on? Do I have a purpose? What am I here for?

Saint Francis prayed: “God, who are you? And who am I?” In other words, he got it. His intimacy with and devotion to God led him to these two central questions.

In part 1 of this post, I wrote about who you believe about who you are. You either believe what God says about you personally or you believe your personality’s Inner Critic. We looked at the beliefs King Saul held about himself, how they didn’t align with what God said about him and how Saul’s beliefs lost him his destiny. To fail to understand who you are means that you will live a diminished life, that you will not walk in the fullness of your destiny. You will not live out the dream God dreamed for you.

Nobody wants that for themselves. So, an important step in not ending up like King Saul is to begin to distinguish between your Inner Critic’s voice and that of God. Believe it or not, they can seem really similar to the untrained ear. I take my clients through a more detailed process, but one of the steps in that process is learning how God’s word addresses the central lie you believe about yourself. This lie is not related to your conscious experience as an adult; it’s a lie that sits at the core of your being and formed one of the nine human personality types in you very early on. I call them the Core Wounding Beliefs.

Each Enneagram type has its own Belief, which fuels the Inner Critic’s chatter about you. Let’s look at the Core Wounding Beliefs for a few of the Types, along with Scripture that combats the lie by revealing the truth:

Type One: I have been kicked out of the Garden and now have to earn my way back. I must be good and right all the time, about everything.

Titus 3:5 – “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”

Type Two: I am not worthy of love in and of myself; I must make myself indispensable to others in order to be loved.

1 John 3:1 – “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God”

Type Five: I lack the knowledge I need to survive in the world. I must study intensely to become an expert.

Eph. 3:19 – “…and to know this love that surpasses [head] knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

You may not resonate with these particular verses, and that’s okay. They are given as examples of what I’m getting at: it’s time to believe what God says about you and stop believing what your Inner Critic says. There are many, many verses that address our personalities’ wounds and can help us overcome them. My hope is that you will find key Type-specific verses for yourself that speak the truth you need to hear. Write them down. Tape them to your bathroom mirror and your steering wheel and everywhere else you can. Memorize them. Let them take root in you and do the work of setting you free from your Inner Critic and into your destiny.

PLEASE SHARE