MiDentity 5:17: Recovering Your Identity, Re-defining Your Purpose, Living All Things New

By DaRon Maughon

In Christ, our identity is changed. Our lives can now be experienced as an all-things-new reality.

As Christ followers, understanding what it means to live the entirety of our lives in Him is foundational to experiencing what the abundant life that Christ gave us looks like, practically and supernaturally. Once we are in Christ, every area

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Aug 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647732547

Book preview

MiDen†ity 5:17

Recovering Your Identity, Re-defining Your Purpose, Living All Things New

DaRon Maughon

Dedication

To Tina, my heart, my inspiration, my coffee mate, and my groovy kind of love! You’ve been with me every step of this identity recovery journey. I adore everything about you!

To Ryan and Zoe, the greatest gifts a father could ever receive! You have taught me so much about loyalty, faith, and unconditional love. I love you both so much!

The words on these pages have been breathing and developing, waiting for their birth for the last decade. Few can understand this process—the painful, frustrating, beautiful, exciting process—like my amazing wife of thirty years, Tina, and my incredible kiddos, Ryan and Zoe. They have walked with me, tolerated me, celebrated me, loved me, and supported me every step of the way. They have been my collective muse, and my sounding boards even when they would have rather been doing something less boring and monotonous like watching paint dry or counting cars on a remote country road. Their unwavering belief in me and more importantly in God’s purpose through me has kept me moving forward during the seasons where it was a chore to simply breathe. I am forever grateful for these three gifts and overwhelming evidence of God’s unconditional love for me and His steadfast grace in my life. This book is dedicated to my three treasures.

Introduction

Welcome to a journey of recovery—the recovery of an identity. This process of recovery is what I’m sharing with you on these pages. This book is by no means a blueprint, a recipe for guaranteed success, or a pompous how-to manual for living. It isn’t written by an enlightened sage, who has discovered the answers to most of life’s conundrums. This book carries no guarantee that if you’ll follow in lockstep with the brilliance that’s sprinkled on the pages, you’ll figure it all out too, and maybe you can write a really cool book like this, or perhaps even star in your own motivational infomercial. No, that’s not at all what this is. No doubt you, like me, have read countless books filled with principles, steps, and formulas, which after you read them, you’re able, albeit for a short time, to use the various suggestions and advice to modify your behavior, and even see short term results. Sooner or later though, you’re left frustrated, disillusioned, and feeling hopeless to change your situation or your perspective.

Merely treating symptoms while never addressing the root issues of life, or correcting our vision and perspective, will always leave you at this point. What I am sharing on these pages is simply a collage of experiences, ongoing stories, observations, and transformative revelations that I have been invited to engage in through my transition from fear to freedom, from rejection to relationship, from insecurity to identity, and from living to perform to living in grace.

This is a collection of corrections, and foundational repairs in my own life that will perhaps encourage someone on a similar journey. My hope is that it will simply serve as a road sign—a reflection—that reveals and points you to the One in whose image you were created, whose life can become your identity, and whose DNA can determine your destiny. What I have discovered is this, to live according to the truth of who I was created in Christ to be requires that I live by the very life of the One from in whom my identity was established as a Christ follower. It’s impossible to try and emulate this John 10:10 life by my own performance, self-discipline, or principle-following efforts. This is a lesson that you learn in process. It would be beautiful if there were a pill or a shot that could instantaneously produce practical results from these freeing revelations, but it is a process of faith, grace, and trust—an amazing journey of discovery, recovery, healing, and rest. And from that rest is where we experience the reality of Christ in us, living through us, as us, by His Spirit empowering us.

Don’t become so preoccupied with a destination, but enjoy this journey. God has so many delightful surprises and gifts for you along the way. Don’t resist the questions that may resonate in your own heart and mind. Allow Abba Father to reframe those questions from new perspectives and form the foundation of your identity in Christ. Love’s journey of discovery and identity recovery isn’t a journey without pain, loneliness, frustration, and frequent states of desperation. But the beauty, joy, and security found in learning to rest in the reality of who, and more importantly whose I am somehow makes the angst of growing and becoming whole worth the arduous, patience-developing process that usually awaits those on the journey.  The process can feel like hell, but as my favorite football coach of my favorite football team once said, I’ll put you through hell, but at the end of it all we’ll be champions. 

Well, I don’t know if champion is the most fitting word to describe the hopeful culmination of this present ongoing saga of my journey, but I do believe I’ll be closer to understanding how the heart of love Himself feels about me, how He sees me, and how I can live and relate from the reality of that love and my true identity, in Him.  Come to think of it, that does sound rather champion-esque, don’t you think? 

Table of Contents

Prologue 13

Capes and Hidden Identities 15

The Prayer That Changed Everything 19

When God Died 23

No Fixer Upper 31

He-Men and The Universe We Build 37

Weird Way, Faithful Guide 45

The Hulk Within, or the Hope In Him? 51

Shame: The Last Stronghold 59

My Journey To Freedom Through My Fight To Forgive 65

What Round Is It? 71

The Frustrations and Facades of Following In Faith 77

After All, It’s All Him 83

Images, Power Struggles, and Creative Gifts 91

God’s Sovereignty or Man’s Stubbornness 97

Wishes and Ways 107

When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be 113

Were We Meant To Fail? 117

Giving Up 121

The Disappointing Illusion of the Familiar 125

The Navigator is Not A Lincoln 133

Senseless 137

The Journey, The Frustration, The Exhausted, The Desperate, The Surrendered, The Prepared, The Next 141

Our Identity In Christ, What an Abundant Life! 147

Exchanging F-Words 151

The Caveman Who Forgot Who He Was 155

Friendship and Identity Lost 161

Compared to What? 167

Competition—Rivals, Rights, Identity Crisis 175

The Proof Process 185

You’re Doing What? 191

The Relationship, The Rest, and The Reflection 195

Puzzled By Parts 201

Faith: Close Your Eyes, Open Your Hands 205

Free At Last 209

Whose Wings? 213

A Reminder About Bitterness and Rejection 215

Sin-Conscious or Christ-Conscious 219

The Gospel of Grace: A Segmented Perspective or A Holistic Life? 223

Lesson Learned, Freedom Found 227

Distracted and In A Ditch 231

How Will It Look? 235

Is Your Life More Than Theory? 239

What To Do When You Can’t Be You? 243

Grace, Fearful Risk, or Secure Reality? 247

The Reality of Truth Is Greater Than The Evidence of Facts 251

The Frustration of Finding Purpose, Community, and Opportunity 253

A Twenty-Five Year Reflection On This MiDentity 259

Special Thanks 265

About the Author 269

Prologue

One of my passions is to encourage Christ followers and Christian leaders who have mistakenly found their identity in what they do in ministry, or how well they do it, instead of resting in their identity as people who are passionately loved by and incredibly pleasing to the One who called and chose them. In His eyes, our success is measured by who we are in Him. It’s in our being not our doing.

Identity is everything. When you don’t know who you are, or from where you derive your significance in life, you won’t know how to genuinely live. Your life will be inconsistent and out of alignment, your existence will play out in a perpetual proving mode, and you’ll spend most of your time doing instead of being. The substance of a life is directly connected to the source of that life. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17 KJV). This was declared over Jesus at His baptism, before His earthly ministry began. Even before He had performed any miracles, His identity was established and declared. What you do: your talents, gifts, abilities, or even your calling does not define you.

Once you are in Christ, your identity is sealed, and the Holy Spirit guarantees your inheritance as a son or daughter of God. When every aspect of your life and ministry is lived from this reality by His Spirit in you, it is indeed the abundant life that Jesus came to give. What you do or are gifted at doing, is simply an overflow from your true identity, in Christ!

Capes and Hidden Identities

Scouring the hall closet with hopeful eyes, I searched for that one pillowcase. It needed to be red, but with my imagination, any color would suffice. It had to have the right amount of impressive flow and flutter to catch the maximum windblown effect when I would run down the hall at light speed in my Superman underoos to my next superhero mission. The cape was the central piece of my Superman persona. Other super heroes might have uniqueness about them, but that cape was indicative of strength, power of flight, and supreme awesomeness among the other heroic figures within the mythical Halls of Justice. Superman was the ultimate.

Now don’t get me wrong; Batman, Spiderman, and the incredible Hulk were all epic, but Superman, with that cape, and that confident, sprawling S across his chest—that was what a superhero looked like. The thing about Superman is how completely opposite his alter ego was to his superhero existence. Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter, complete with nerdy glasses, wimpy mannerisms, and even comedically klutzy at times, was an unexpected and disappointing character. Just to think that hidden behind the persona of a meek, milquetoast of a man was an identity of such an amazing, larger-than-life figure was almost unfathomable to my five-year-old mind.

Why didn’t Clark Kent just go away for good? Why did Superman have to carry on this double life stuff? Surely it would be so much more fulfilling of an existence for him to live out the entirety of his life as Superman! No more nerd glasses. No more geek fashion sense. No more clumsiness. He could be the amazing captain of cool, vanquisher of evil, bastion of manhood, and winner of the heart of Lois Lane forever! Why did he feel like he had to maintain that other existence—that cartoonish, underachieving, underwhelming Clark Kent? Why the divided identity, or divi-dentity? (A word that I made up) And why in the world did Superman only show up in times of need, crisis, or pending disaster? Why did he waste a majority of his time living below his abilities and powers as Superman, while primarily squandering away his existence living as Clark Kent? That seemed like such a waste of awesomeness!

Through the years, I’ve come to realize that I’ve spent much of my existence in the same duplicitous persona as Superman-Clark Kent. As a Christian, I lived as a religiously schizophrenic victim of identity fraud. The Christian version of me—albeit a pretty anemic form—would usually only show up in times of crisis, fear, or utter helplessness. At other more mundane and routine times—which constituted the majority of my living—you couldn’t tell me from the rest of the world. The inconsistency of my dual presence created incredible frustration and insecurity in my life.  A proper perspective of life begins with a proper perspective of identity. Identity is the foundation on which your life house is built. If the foundation is faulty, the quality, substance, and structure of your life will be as well. In the books of Matthew and Luke, the story of the wise and foolish builders are a spot-on contrast of people who build their lives on the truth of Jesus, His word and those who don’t. (Matthew 7:24–27, Luke 6:46–49)

Maybe you’re experiencing that sort of identity crisis in your own life. The best place to start that beautiful process of recovery and discovery is back at the foundation. Now I warn you, the demolition job on your house can be messy, painful, and can even make you feel momentarily displaced at times, but don’t worry, you’re not alone. You are in the hands of the master builder. His heart is for you to find your validation, your worth, and your identity in Him. You simply need to be willing to allow Him to do His work of revelation, reconnection, and restoration. And in the process, you’ll see His heart, His purpose, and His grace reflected in your identity. And a life lived in union with Him is greater than any superhero experience you’ll ever have, even with a cape. That’s what I’m discovering, and I trust that as you get a glimpse into my journey, you’ll be able to lay your own Clark Kent aside for good, and live the life you were created for, in the image of the of the One who created you, by the very Spirit of the One you were created in.

MiDentity Meditation: In Christ, we live a life like no other: in the world, but not of it! In Him, we lack no good