IDENTITY CRISIS

"Sow a thought, reap an act; Sow an act, reap an action;
Sow an action, reap a habit;
Sow a habit, reap a character;
Sow a character, reap a destiny."

—Emerson Ralph Waldo

The abuse in which you find yourself today all began with a thought! That thought started either with you or with someone else; and as the thought is given expression, an act or action is effected. From that singular thought, a whole character and destiny is built. It is all in a thought.

Have you wondered why pet names and nicknames stick longer than original names of musicians, wrestlers, celebrities? Names are important in making us.

What is in a Name?

A name is a reputation that somebody has or the opinion that people have about somebody or something, especially one that is known by a lot of people. Names are made from words. Words are formed through creative imaginations. The name you bear—either arbitrary or real—is your distinctive appellation or descriptive designation or title. From these definitions, a name can be

• given to a person (i.e, original names);

• earned (i.e., professionally, occupationally, behaviorally);

• positive or negative, depending on the type of character displayed by the individual;

• consciously or unconsciously assumed;

• used as identification or representation; and

• used to classify people or groups of people.

Life originates from God. The whole essence of man is from God. But as society began to increase, man started deviating from his ultimate source. With more cultures, races, tongues, tribes, people, and societies, man began to form a character different from God's own principle of true character formation.

When you accidentally dispel ants from a cube of sugar, they scatter in different directions. So have men formed a variety of ideologies about themselves, forgetting or deliberately ignoring their maker—by postulations and philosophies that have not even helped them.

Any character formed outside God's principles and established as rules for living is an abuse. Many live their whole lives without truly discovering who they really are. They take on the characters, feelings, and beliefs of people other than themselves. They do not even know who they are. They live by the dictates of friends, parents and society. They say, "I want to be free, I want to be myself, leave me alone," while in the real sense, they passionately desire to be a photocopy of another. They are bound by an abuse in their quest for freedom! The freedom to taste a glass of liquor has produced the world's finest alcoholics who litter our streets as men who are living dead. The freedom to experiment with sex has also produced and will yet produce the world's best sellers of prostitution, harlotry, whoredom, and professional womanizing.

Some people even face more severe identity crisis. They say, "I have tried to live a straight life, but perhaps this is who I am or what I am meant to be. This is who I am, and there's nothing you can do or say about it!"

There is a difference between your real identity and your arbitrary identity. The margin is thin. People form an opinion of themselves through their past—what they felt, what they read, what people said to them about who those people thought they were or what they watched others do.

An arbitrary identity is one based on mere opinion and not on a definite statute, while your true identity is based on who God says you are.

When you choose a path of life based on your past life of abuse and misuse and decide to perpetuate that, without an apparent rationale for your choice, you are living contrary to the divine plan for your life. You are created in the image of God and after his likeness to live a life of dominion over everything (negative thoughts, emotions, and habits). You are a unique creation. You are the crown of divine nomination, the pride of God's heart, adorned by angels, feared by the devil and the demons, and the apple of God's eye. You cannot afford to live less because you are too blessed.

The truth is the cure for any form of abuse. The truth has always stood right in front of you, as plain as anything could ever be. Knowing the truth and applying the truth is the key to your freedom. To deliberately reject the truth is to choose death when you have been offered life abundantly.

Agents of Abuse

If you have been abused, you need spiritual conviction as the foundation for a balanced life. Conviction is certainty, assurance, passion, and confidence about something. Convictions must be based on established truth—not error, assumptions, or abusive predispositions.

Convictions can be eroded by agents of abuse, which include doubts, duplicity, deception, deduction from the truth, departure from faith, etc.

Doubt is a feeling of uncertainty or disbelief of the truth. An abuse results from a hesitation to wholeheartedly accept the truth about yourself in relation to established statutes. This can result from a lack of knowledge of the truth or from uncertainty regarding the truth or the reality of it. Assumptions or inconclusive researches create doubts in the hearts of people about themselves.

Duplicity is a change of character or behavior to suit occasions or a standard of conduct that permits greater liberty to abuse another person. A life lived outside the standard of God's word is a permissive life, allowing all forms of corruption into the heart. Such a life is like being caught like a leaf in the wind looking for a place to turn. And when trapped in an abuse, it is pursued passionately.

Deception is a lie, a trick, or a dishonest action. One can be misled by falsehood. This could be a false thought, an act, information, a theory, or a postulation outside God's word. Deception is cheap, stressless, timely, and passionate. It is color coated to attract the love of the natural mind. When the heart begins to fall madly in love with error, an abuse is sure to be effected. Some things are pleasant to the flesh but deadly to the soul.

Delayed obedience is another agent of abuse. When people rationalize the truth, they only prove to disobey it. Partial obedience to God's word is not permitted. If you claim to do church and still believe you can live an abusive lifestyle, no matter how good it feels, you are as good as disobeying God's word flagrantly. Do not harden your heart.

Deduction from the truth—this comes in two ways (i.e., removing from the ultimate truth or adding to it). The ultimate truth is God's law. It is rather unfortunate that men choose to believe a lie that comes from ungodly academics, celebrities, philosophers, and psychologists who are struggling to be free from the errors they have propounded and are perpetuating and entangled in. It takes somebody deceived to become a deceiver.

The younger generation has clearly adopted/defined many of the assumptions, theories, and inconclusive studies by ungodly men and women as a basis for making them reject the word of God, removing from it and adding to it.

Departure from faith can lead to abuse. If you are thinking of quitting your godly spiritual heritage for the abuse, you will only be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Never give your faith up for a morsel of bread or a fleshly act. Whatever has happened in the past is past. You have today to make it right. Tomorrow may never be yours.

There is nothing out there to satisfy your heart. No new friend, new abusive experience, new brand of wine, or new stuff will give you what your heart longs for. Only God can fill that vacuum and give your life a whole new lease and meaning as you take the right steps toward your true liberty.

Deliberate Inhibition

One theory of memory is deliberate inhibition. This happens when one chooses to forget an incident by deliberately choosing to ignore it and remembering what one deliberately chooses to remember; you can choose to repress truth and accept error until error becomes a part of you as the truth and truth becomes a part of you as an error. This means that your sense of perception or recognition of the truth about what God says about you can become dulled and deadened by your inhibition of the truth.

Through unfounded philosophies, men have created many inventions that are not in consonance with the original plan of God and the creation. If right now you live below God's standard for your life, it is not because that is who you are but because that is who you choose to be.

The theory of deliberate inhibition is a mental process of selecting what to remember and what to forget. When the truth about an issue does not go down well with you, you choose to forget it by suppressing it in the mind. Invariably, one can choose to remember an error until that error becomes the truth to you, and you go on perpetuating that error as the truth.

In our selfishness as humans, we can personalize anything, even negative emotions. Have you heard someone say, "I have a headache," or "This is my headache or weakness"? People personalize negative thoughts, pains, and feelings about themselves. They forget God's promises to the weak that they can be strong. They deliberately choose weakness and helplessness in their error until the weaknesses become a lifestyle, and they are bound by the fetters of their own doing.

You may trade the truth about yourself with the excuse that other people or countries are doing it. It is only a general menace that is getting out of control. Half the truth is not truth. "Others may, I cannot" should be your principle. You are not perpetuating an abuse just because someone introduced it to you or because someone did it to you or because others are doing it. Let all men be liars and God be true.

Deception wears the most passionate perfume and the best-colored dress on the streets, and the strongest form of deception is self-deception. The truth is, every error you have consciously or unconsciously walked into can be corrected. It is a matter of choice. You wouldn't want to die in your error. Allow God to intervene so that you can be truly free. Another truth is that an erring soul can be converted. There is a spirit of error from which you need to be delivered by the spirit of truth.

As you read this book, you are being prayed for, but you will also need to pray and overcome every form of self-deception, particularly where you have accepted an error as a way of life and you are now perpetuating that in a circle of abuse.

Emotions are strong. Emotions can be overwhelming when you are tempted to do things that do not glorify God. But you must understand that as strong as emotions are, they are not reliable when analyzing the truth. Emotion is the least trusted when the truth is being debated. Here, it is not what you feel but what the truth says. It is not even what you think or what you want. Finite minds will always want things contrary to God's will. But it is time to shout it loud from the rooftops that you are who God says you are.

What you meditate on regularly eventually becomes you as you are the product of your thoughts. You actually release your identity to what you passionately think about and pursue. Think wholesome thoughts about yourself. The word of God is the basis for developing wholesome, positive thoughts.

An abusive lifestyle is like a treasure chest filled with beautiful nothings, protected for years in the mind of the abused and the abuser. They never want it touched by anyone, not even by a sermon. It is all pent up and sealed. They don't want to talk about it. They try so hard but have fallen, more often than not. To them now, failure feels good this way!

Within their chests are lies, lies, lies, and lies about who they are and their real desires. It is a hidden life full of depraved appetites and perverted thoughts and lifestyles that people don't see. How long will you protect this chest you carry like a load in your mind? You don't even want anyone to know about it because of your strong spiritual heritage. Your parents, wife, husband, or siblings know there is a part of you that cannot be reached because you are protecting something.

You have been promised that all your burdens and heavy load will be borne and you will be given rest. But you have often wondered why the yoke is so heavy. You must have gone flagrant with your lifestyle and no longer show any form of piety. You don't even care about what you do or what people think about you. Your curiosity and long exposure to an abuse have made you develop a complex contrary to your divine life-plan, and you hurry along with the pleasure-mad throng on your way to destruction.

This is the time to acknowledge the truth about you and to return to God. Let God discover the best way for your life. Only God can show the way. He can hasten or control your situation, if you only let him and that right early.

THE ABUSE

"There is an ache in my heart for the imagined beauty of a life I haven't had, from which I had been locked out, and it never goes away."

—Robert Goolrick

"You don't have to wait for someone to treat you bad repeatedly. All it takes is once, and if they get away with it that once, if they know they can treat you like that, then it sets the pattern for the future."

—Jane Green

"One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered."

—Michael J. Fox

Sexual perversions begin with an abuse. To pervert is to deviate from the normal in structure and function. To abuse is to use improperly or injuriously; it means to misuse. It also means to hurt by treating wrongly. An abuse can be spoken of as deception.

The abuser causes damage to innocence, defames personalities, and defiles purity. The abuser ill-treats the helpless, misuse the silly, injures the carefree, and maligns the favored. The abuser molests, oppresses, persecutes, perverts, pollutes, and ravishes the victim. Abuse covers all unreasonable or improper use or treatment by word or act. It means to pollute, to make impure, unclean, dirty, to violate and defile.

The sex drive created by God was put in man for his ultimate satisfaction within the confines of holy matrimony—an institution established by God from the beginning. Hence, any sexual activity outside marriage is an abomination before God and man, and particularly for same-sex orientation, it is a perversion of sex. It all begins with an abuse!

Today, many people find grounds to justify their abuse. They say they were never abused. They were not raped. But they willingly collaborated with the abuser because it felt good. Whichever way your mind processed the data fed in by your abuser, it was and still is an abuse.

Types of Abuse

The word abuse has been given so much publicity that people rarely apply it to themselves. They can discuss abuse in relation to the environment and other inanimate objects but not to the self. The lists on the types of abuse are inexhaustible, but check this out.

Self-Abuse

It may shock you to discover that you have lived almost all your life short of what your real potentials are as a result of self-abuse. Self-abuse is so subtle that you do not know you are abusing yourself. When you say, "I want to be myself," that self ends up a prototype of another personality you never intended becoming.

Self-abuse is the disparagement (the act of depreciating, casting aspersions, slighting or undervaluing, derogation) of one's own self. It is a condition of unnecessary low estimation or valuation of one's self—more or less a reproach or disgrace. It also means to dishonor by unjust classing or comparison with that which is of less worth.

Self-abuse is dishonoring one's own person and power. Your person includes your body, mind, and all characteristic appearance and condition. The abuse of that which constitutes your personality is self-abuse.

One's powers can be abused. Your power is your ability to act, your power of effecting a particular result. When your physical and moral character or potential to influence is used negatively, it is called self-abuse.

Masturbation is also self-abuse. It is the sexual gratification that results in guilt and loss of confidence. According to the New International Webster's Comprehensive Dictionary of English Language, masturbation is referred to as onanism—as in Genesis—and is self-abuse. Masturbation is a violation of the natural use of sex, and the artificial satisfaction derived is a desecration of the body and a violation of the law of God. The cells of the body are misemployed, and God places severe sanctions on such act. It is abominable to God. The truth is, you cannot retain what you do not appreciate.

All same-sex perpetuators have developed a negative complex during their formative years that has formed a foundation for the proliferation of the abuse. To think and act like a female when you are a man and to think and act like a man when you are a woman is self-abuse. Whatever the cause is of any attraction to the same sex, it is an abuse if given self-expression or any other form of expression. You will abuse and dishonor your body if you see yourself as an object and not as God sees you (i.e., a temple fit for the dwelling of the Holy Spirit). Self-abusers place no dignity on themselves, their bodies, and reproductive cells. They beautify, cosmeticize, and brand the body for perpetuation of abuses.