The Outcome Was Never Your Identity

We have a terrible habit as business owners, leaders, and frankly as humans of connecting our identity to outcomes we have achieved.

Maybe that is why we always ask other people:

“What do you do?”

But the problem with connecting our identity to our outcomes is that we rarely control the outcome.

Don’t get me wrong, we can work diligently, but we definitely think we have more control over them than we do.

The person who was the CEO of a company making well over six figures would naturally assume they could recreate that success.

It’s human to think:

“I can get another job.”
“I can build another business.”
“I know how to make money.”

Until the time comes when you do everything you know to do. You do the things that have worked in the past...and yet they don’t work this time.

Then you are left with quite a different set of questions.

“Who am I?”
“Am I even good at anything?”
“Will this season last forever?”

It’s fascinating to me that so many entrepreneurs and leaders have a story of a time in their life when things just didn’t work.

A wilderness season, if you will.

A time when the bank account ran dry.
When the titles they had grown used to disappear.
When relationships they thought were stable suddenly were not.

It’s the season of stripping.

The Bible is full of these stories.

Abraham was told to leave his home and everything he knew.
Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.
David was run out of the palace...twice.

I have wrestled with why people go through these seasons. And I have been through several of those seasons in my own life.

It is really easy during those seasons to feel like God isn’t listening to your prayers. It can feel like He doesn’t care.

But I have come to see these seasons differently because I have come to see God’s character differently.

What if He hears every prayer you pray?
What if He sees every tear?
What if the fact that He has not removed the hard thing does not mean He is absent from you in it?

If you are a parent, you have probably experienced some version of this.

Our son does Jiu Jitsu, and one of the most challenging parts of that sport for him has been going to tournaments.

I remember when he first started going to them, he would cry the night before every single tournament because he didn’t want to go.

It hurt my heart.

Everything in me wanted to say:

“You don’t have to go, buddy.”

But I also knew that if he never went through something hard, he would miss the opportunity to grow through it.

So we made him go.

Tears and all.

I promise you, sometimes it felt harder on us than it did on him.

His tears didn't mean we didn't care. And our decision not to immediately remove the hard thing didn't mean we weren't right there with him through it.

If that is our experience as human parents, how much more compassionate is our Father?

As I started to reflect on that, I still wondered:

What is the purpose?
What is the lesson?
Why do we go through these seasons?

God is a God of layers, so I believe there are often many things happening in difficult seasons. But I also believe there is one truth that sits underneath so much of it.

You are a child of God.

You may be thinking, “yeah, I realize that.”

But hear me out.

As someone who has “known” that fact for a long time, I am beginning to realize how much of my life I have spent trying to build an identity out of other things.

Work.
Business.
Money.
Status.
Relationships.
Success.
Being accepted by others.

We typically don’t notice that we have built our identity on those things until one of them is stripped away.

Then suddenly the rock we thought we were standing on moves.

And all of a sudden...we don’t know who we are anymore. 

And I am learning that the stripping reveals something we couldn't see or learn another way.

Sometimes we don't realize that we’ve built our identity on something else until we lose it.

If the rock was never moved, we might never discover that it wasn't really the Rock we thought it was.

My identity is not—and never was—an outcome.

Not the family, the job, the business, the bank account, the marriage, the degree, the status or acceptance from any person.

And your identity was never an outcome either.

Why?

Because outcomes change.

But being a child of God does not.

The business can disappear.
The title can disappear.
The money can disappear.
The relationship can change.
The acceptance you thought you needed can disappear.

But you are still His.

I think so many of us walk around like orphans trying to build an identity for ourselves while the whole time God is telling us:

You already have one.

You are already His child.
You already have His name. 

An orphan has to figure everything out alone.

Where will my provision come from?
Who will protect me?
Where do I belong?
What happens if I fail?

Everything depends on them.

They must perform for survival.

And I wonder how many of us live that way without realizing it.

As though everything depends on us. As though our value rises and falls with our performance. As though a successful business makes us more valuable and a failing one makes us less. As though we still have to earn a name God has already given us.

We have been adopted through Christ, and yet sometimes we still live like we are alone.
Like orphans who have forgotten they have a Father.

When I tie my identity to an outcome, everything depends on me again.

The responsibility. The direction. The provision. The outcome. All the pressure comes rushing back.

But maybe that is part of what these stripping seasons reveal.

Not that God has abandoned us. But that we were standing on something that could never hold the weight of our identity in the first place.

Because the job was never supposed to tell me who I am.
The business was never supposed to tell me who I am.
The bank account was never supposed to tell me who I am.
Success was never supposed to tell me who I am.
And “failure” doesn’t get to either.

I am a child of God.

I can't achieve that, and I can't earn that.

And I can't make myself more His by producing a better outcome.

The outcome can change without my identity changing.

A good month doesn't make me more His.
A bad month doesn't make me less His.

Success can't give me my identity.
Failure can't take it away.

I am His child.
I already have His name.

And maybe there is a freedom in finally realizing…
the outcome was never my identity.