The Crisis Of Christian Identity Theft

I have always been a 'car guy.' I have had a serious interest in them for as long as I can remember. I also worked in the Automobile Industry and wrenched on so many vehicles I owned over the years that I have lost count.

Countless years ago, when I was a teenager, I had a car that was stolen and stripped of the things I had added to it to make it unique. Periodically, after that, I would have a dream about the theft of that car. I would find myself getting really disturbed and upset as if it had just happened.

After having one of those dreams again the umpteenth time, I decided to look into the contents of the dream. I discovered dreaming that your car has been stolen could indicate that a person is being stripped of their identity due to a failed relationship, or losing a job, or something that was causing a change in their identity.

As I considered the information I read, I started to understand what my dream meant. I realized that each time I had this dream, I was feeling like an outsider in my own life who had become trapped and entangled in circumstances that were controlling me rather than me controlling them. I would feel as if my identity had been stolen. Those times when I felt this way were during huge challenges in my personal and spiritual life.

After years of just shrugging off the dreams and the impact they had on me, I decided to do some honest evaluation of myself and try to understand my feelings and emotions to overcome their effect.

After researching this subject, I would define the term "identity theft" as when a person feels their life is slowly dissolving away due do circumstances outside of their control, or they are beginning to question who they are and what they stand for, losing their sense of self.

People who feel a deep emptiness or a great deal of self-doubt can also feel as if their identity is being stolen. This can lead to conflicts in relationships and unhealthy emotional expressions. For the Christian, this can occur most often when the Holy Spirit is working diligently to replace parts of the old sinful habits and thought patterns with new sanctified habits.

In today's world, many people are spending a great deal of time trying to figure out just who they are, and then, when they do "discover" who they are, they have a hard time dealing with the reality of what they find! The Bible says that the human "heart is deceitful and desperately wicked" (Jer 17:9). The Bible also tells us that it is the Holy Spirit who begins a new transforming work within a person at the moment there is a commitment to follow Jesus and they become Born-Again (John 3:3; 2 Cor 3:18). It is the application of that work that becomes the real challenge.

So many Christians are content to just get forgiven and go to Heaven when they die! And that's great, except for the fact that because they are going to Heaven, they often think that they can ignore and avoid dealing with life's many problems in the here and now! When they find themselves challenged by life's stresses and pressures, they think they can emotionally and psychologically avoid dealing with those problems by just "hoping for the day of the Lord's appearing" when they are 'raptured' out of the nightmare of their life. This makes it really easy to avoid having to confront their present reality.

Identity Crisis

Identity, or psychological identity, is a person's capacity for self-reflection and awareness. Some people acquire their identities through the tasks they do and the objects they identify themselves with. Others may find their identity in what they wear, what they own, how they look, where they live, or what kind of car they drive.

Men often find their identity in the job they have or the work they do. Women often find it through personal and family relationships. Ultimately, the Born-Again Christian must identify themselves with Jesus alone and what He has done for them, not in what they have done for Him because salvation is about what He already did, and not what we could ever do.

Identity Crisis is a psychological term that describes someone who is in a state of searching for their identity. It can have a significant effect on their self-esteem. A Christian can have an Identity Crisis as they struggle to worship the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, while still worshiping the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I.

That can cause a spiritual, emotional, and even a physical nervous breakdown. When the Holy Spirit begins His supernatural surgery to remove the old nature, the conflict between it and the new nature found in Jesus intensifies as He transforms the Born-Again Christian into the image and likeness of Jesus. The Apostle Paul spoke of this happening to him;