“I have noticed,” said my friend, “that no matter what we have done through life, whether praiseworthy or despicable, in the end we all finish the same: standing naked before God.”

My friend, a young woman, was talking about her job and what she had learned from it. She works with the elderly, people nearing the end of their lives. Many are near death. They come from varying backgrounds, bringing with them a myriad of past life choices and experiences. She often sits late into the night with them, keeping them company, helping fend off their terrible aloneness. This results in some deeply moving conversations, as these old people tell her of their lives, their disappointments and their deepest fears. One man, who had been a Nazi soldier in Hitler’s Germany, wept and cried out in German for forgiveness for things he had done a half-century earlier. He was consumed with guilt for his actions, and terrified of facing God.

There is profound wisdom in her observation, and too few of us see it while there is time to do something about it. Whether we have run major organizations and made millions, or have lived in the streets with nothing to our name, in the end it is true: We stand naked before God.

The old German man is a tragic case, living a life of 80 or more years, and having nothing to show at the end of it but fear and regret. But he is certainly not unique, or even unusual. His past is perhaps more egregiously evil, but many other people, more “respectable” than an old Nazi, are no more prepared for death than he was. Or for life, since the preparations are the same.

The comments we hear at the death of some young person, someone whom we consider to have died prematurely, are telling. “What a tragedy,” we say. “She was so young,” we say. And that’s understandable, certainly, but it shows that we aren’t seeing life as it really is. It is not the length of life that is important, but the depth. It is how that life is lived. A life that ends after 15 years is jarring, certainly, but it is no tragedy if that life was lived serving God. And a life that ends after 80 or more years, while perhaps expected, is a great tragedy indeed, if it is lived in pursuit of one’s empty whims, with no regard for anything but “getting my own way.”

We don’t live lives of random events in isolation. We live in a story. It is important that we see and understand that. But it is not a story that is already written, printed, and unchangeable. It is not one in which we are merely reading someone else’s script. We are co-authors. We help write the action, and we help determine the ending.

In his book Wild at Heart, John Eldredge quotes Daniel Taylor:

Freedom is useless if we don’t exercise it…making choices…. We are free to change the stories by which we live. Because we are genuine characters, and not mere puppets, we can choose our defining stories. We are co-authors as well as characters. Few things are as encouraging as the realization that things can be different and that we have a role in making them so.

Much of what happened in the early chapters of our story was the result of choices made by others, things done to us and not by us. Too often, the results left us with damage and pain. And too often, we have added our own poor choices to theirs, and we look back at our lives and see little that brings satisfaction. That’s cause for profound sadness.

However, there are two facts that are overlooked as we consider an unsatisfying past and wonder what the future holds. First, God is in the business of redeeming broken lives, even when the breaking is self-inflicted. And second, God expects us to work in cooperation with him, making choices and exercising control over our lives, coming to live as sons and daughters of the True and Living God. He is not raising up servants or slaves, and certainly not perpetual children, but rather mature people who understand that God is calling us to be junior partners in the “family enterprise” of redeeming a lost creation. We need to grow, to cease being perennial babes, to cease being rebellious adolescents. We need to grow up, to understand the seriousness of what God is calling us to be and to do: He wants us to enter into an amazing love relationship with him, joining with him in the task of tearing down the strongholds of evil. In this alone is there a rich, ultimately satisfying life. In this alone is there no fear of what might lie at the end of our life.

Theologians and philosophers argue ad infinitum and ad nauseum about whether we have choice or not. But the truth is, the argument is not very interesting to most people, and it does not help us live successfully, day by day, in the presence of God. We know, in our inner being, that we are not puppets. From very early on we choose to obey or disobey our parents. And from not too long after that, we choose to obey or disobey God. We are not puppets, and our decisions make a difference.

We need to say it again: Our choices matter. Decisions we make today have implications for tomorrow and beyond. And the decisions we make will be influenced by the place we put our passions.

Therefore, it is crucially important that we place our passion and our hope in something founded in truth, and not in whatever seems at the moment to light our fire. And we all pretty much know that – at least intellectually – but we still make really dumb decisions, choosing things that are guaranteed to hurt us. It’s almost like we are programmed for self-destruction. Why do we do such things? A part of the answer is that we are products of our environment, shaped by our culture.

To grow up in modern America is to grow up wounded. Our society is so destructive to people and relationships that, with very few exceptions, we wind up hurt, scarred, and without a true concept of who we are. We are born innocent, trusting and exuberant about life. It doesn’t take long for us to be stripped of our innocence, made distrustful, and to become skeptical about life. And the outcome is that we often don’t have a very good picture of ourselves, and we don’t do well in relating to others. The bottom line problem in this mess is that in the end, we simply don’t know who we are or why we are here. And if we don’t know why we are here, we certainly have not understood what God is about, because the two are intimately connected.

And so, we become people who live lives that fall far short of the wonder and joy and richness intended for us by our Creator. The idea that God – the Creator and Sustainer of the universe – would choose us – you and me – as his own most precious possession, is mind-boggling. We can see it in writing, and we can give mental assent to the idea, but deep down, we don’t believe a word of it. We just can’t believe – in the deepest recesses of our heart – that God delights in “someone like me.”

How do we get out from under this load? How do we move into a place based in truth and reality, and not our warped perceptions, a place where we see ourselves as God sees us, and live as He would have us live? It is certain that God would not have us live in this manner, stumbling, bumbling, never really finding our purpose in life or in his plan. But how do we get out of the mess we are in?

Some years ago, a seminar group was told by the speaker that the two most commonly asked questions are “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” I watched the response of those in the audience, as I have watched people since, and I have concluded that he was right. And that conclusion has been the occasion of many hours of thought. Most people want to know – and they don’t know – who they really are and that their lives mean something. And sadly, some people spend years asking, and never approach a satisfying answer.

The reason we do the destructive things we do is very often simply because we don’t know who we are. And if we don’t know who we are, then neither do we know why we are. And so we have no good basis for our decisions.

I have noticed also that men, especially, take their identity – the who am I? – from what they do. In any social gathering, when men meet, The Question invariably pops up: “So, what do you do?” It could be restated, “So, who are you?” But that would be rude, so we talk about doing rather than being. Men define who they are by what they do, anyway. A man is a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, or any one of innumerable other occupational activities, and that’s who he is. And it’s useful to talk about what we do, since that’s a large part of who we are, and it’s also a non-threatening way to build something of a relationship. However, there is a problem.

I recently met a man whom I had heard of, and for whom I had considerable respect. It was at a birthday party for a mutual friend, and as we sat eating hot dogs, he asked what I had been doing. I told him I was thinking about self-identity, and how we get it. He said, “That’s interesting. My wife and I were talking about the same thing, and I finally told her, ‘Okay, I give up. I’m a missionary doctor.’” I laughed and told him he had just illustrated my concern: Men take their identity from their actions.

Would he be less of who he is if he could no longer go on missionary trips? He might be disappointed, but he would not be a different person. And if he could no longer practice medicine, would he become someone else? Of course not. Who we are is not the same as what we do, and it is important to know and remember that.

The first task in this quest is to stop thinking in terms of doing, and begin thinking in terms of being. After all, the question is about who I am. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. We try, but the truth is that we don’t grow up learning how to know ourselves in any meaningful sense; we know more how to think about what we do. We are judged a success or failure by what we do.

So how do we derive our identity, if it’s not by what we do? This is a hard question. Clearly, what we do tells us something about ourselves, it is not truly definitive of who we are. But what is there to replace it? Everything we consider seems either unsatisfying or incomplete.
But there is an answer, and it’s so simple you won’t believe it.

We derive much of our sense of identity from those with whom we associate, our community. And somehow our identity is connected also to our relationship with God: We are who we are based on how we are related to him. But what does that mean? It’s pretty difficult to put down in concrete terms.

As I was thinking about this, I was sitting in a class, and the discussion was about knowing God. A student suggested that the process of knowing God was like a spiral with God at the center. And we enter on the journey of coming into the knowledge of God by traveling around and around, each revolution bringing us closer to God. Suddenly it hit me: We press toward God, seeking to know him and live in his presence. And the farther we travel into the spiral, and the closer we come to God, the less important the question of our identity becomes.

The fact – simple but profound – is that the closer we are to Him and the more our focus is on Him, the more irrelevant is the question of who we are. As I come into the presence of God, it simply does not matter who I am. What matters is who He is, and that He calls me and brings me to live before him. Nothing else.

And perhaps the best part is that God not only becomes the measure and the focus of a successful life, but as He does, all the mistakes, all the wasted opportunities, all that the locusts have eaten, are redeemed, and are brought into the service of the Kingdom. Hallelujah!

The past years have been a time of trauma and turbulence, and many have struggled with their relationship with God, and with their sense of personal security. Many of us had our bubble – one we didn’t even know we had – popped on September 11, 2001.

I recently heard a pastor talking about times like these – times of testing – saying that in these times we have to tighten our grip on God. And that’s well enough to say, but sometimes not so easy to do. How do we grab hold of God when we don’t think we have the strength to grab hold of anything?

This same pastor said the key is in two words: worship and word. No matter what is happening in our lives, the key to moving closer to the One who is our strength, the One who defines our identity, is worship and the word. He is right, but only two-thirds so. We need worship and the word, and we need community. We need each other to grow and bear fruit in God’s Kingdom.

As we spend time before the throne of God – with others of like faith – simply enjoying him and praising him, He becomes the focus of our lives. From a place near to Him, the world is far less confusing and threatening. Add to that spending time reading his Word, letting the Holy Spirit work his way in us as the Scriptures soak into our inner being, and we have a guaranteed recipe for safety, for security, and for knowing who we really are and why we are here.