Do You Believe?: 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life

by Paul David Tripp

We are freed from having to be something. We are freed from having to prove we are worth something. We are freed from longing for something that will give us importance, prominence, or power. We are freed from being addicted to people’s acclaim, respect, appreciation, and love. We are freed from letting accomplishments define us. We are freed from letting titles depict that we have worth. We are freed from asking cars, houses, and vacations to be markers of our identity. We are freed from the identity we get from political tribalism. We are freed from getting our identity from being in charge or in control. We are freed from needing to look strong, prepared, capable, and unafraid. We are freed from needing to hide our weaknesses and deny our failures. We are freed from putting on a public face as an attempt to hide what is actually going on inside. Because we don’t get our value from how others respond to us, we are freed from bitterness and fantasies of vengeance when we are mistreated. We are freed from the toxic identity anxieties that haunt so many of us, that get in the way of what we have been called to do, and that harm our relationships. One of the sweet blessings of God’s justifying grace is how vertical identity frees us from horizontal identity chaos.