My daddy had dementia. Thankfully, his didn’t progress to its direst stages, but I knew a few people whose lives were reshaped by the disease. Lost in their minds, they forgot the children they’d named and nurtured. Dear friends became strangers. Lovers weren’t remembered. But saddest of all was the loss of their own identity. As threads of who they were tangled with threads of who they used to be, they slowly unraveled, steadily regressing into memories made long ago. Perhaps because they had been etched in their minds longer, they were harder to shake loose, but even the recollections they gripped the longest could not be held in such a feeble grasp. With a return to infantile behavior, all sense of adulthood was lost. They didn’t know who they were, and the shell they’d become made it difficult for others to know them as well. Spiritually, we sometimes have dementia.
We forget who we are. In our quest to find ourselves, we become more and more confused about the truth. And we head backward in our thinking, losing the traction we’d gained in spiritual maturity. If we aren’t careful, we move into that place of non-identity. We don’t know ourselves, and the loss bleeds into other areas of our lives. Without identity, we become unrecognizable. There’s nothing to define us but an empty shell that says we SHOULD BE something, but we are not.
God gave us the identity we need. He said that we are wonderfully made, but we confuse that truth with how we feel about our image. He said that we are more than conquerors and that we are victorious, but we step away from those promises by insisting we can’t and that we are insufficient. He said that we are whole, totally complete in Him, but we regress to inadequacy through our self-dependency.
Disqualifying what God said is a disease that destroys who we are. We lose ourselves when we substitute what God said with what we think. The replacement eats away our growth, our potential, and all that we were meant to be until we are impotent versions of ourselves. In fact, we become exactly what we believed. Empty. Disgruntled. Hopeless.
Mark 8:35 says, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.”
The inoculation against spiritual dementia is faith. Faith in what God says we are. He alone is Truth. If we look to Jesus and trust His Word, we will regain our identity. Our minds will be transformed, and our lives will be, too.
Tip/tidbit: Keep looking into the mirror of God’s Word until you see what God sees.
We forget who we are. In our quest to find ourselves, we become more and more confused about the truth. And we head backward in our thinking, losing the traction we’d gained in spiritual maturity. If we aren’t careful, we move into that place of non-identity. We don’t know ourselves, and the loss bleeds into other areas of our lives. Without identity, we become unrecognizable. There’s nothing to define us but an empty shell that says we SHOULD BE something, but we are not.
God gave us the identity we need. He said that we are wonderfully made, but we confuse that truth with how we feel about our image. He said that we are more than conquerors and that we are victorious, but we step away from those promises by insisting we can’t and that we are insufficient. He said that we are whole, totally complete in Him, but we regress to inadequacy through our self-dependency.
Disqualifying what God said is a disease that destroys who we are. We lose ourselves when we substitute what God said with what we think. The replacement eats away our growth, our potential, and all that we were meant to be until we are impotent versions of ourselves. In fact, we become exactly what we believed. Empty. Disgruntled. Hopeless.
Mark 8:35 says, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.”
The inoculation against spiritual dementia is faith. Faith in what God says we are. He alone is Truth. If we look to Jesus and trust His Word, we will regain our identity. Our minds will be transformed, and our lives will be, too.
Tip/tidbit: Keep looking into the mirror of God’s Word until you see what God sees.
To get you started, here are free, downloadable affirmations based on God's Word.
| Biblical Affirmations |
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