00:17 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Welcome to Out of the Darkness with Ruth Hovsepian, where we explore the depths of faith and the light of God's Word to bring hope and transformation to your life. I'm your Ruth Hovsepian, and today we embark on a journey to answer one of the most profound questions we all face who am I? In a world filled with noise and confusion, it's easy to lose sight of our true identity. Confusion, it's easy to lose sight of our true identity, but the Bible offers very clear, powerful truths about who we are in Christ. And joining me today, the most beautiful one of my favorite people is Donna Scott, a licensed marriage and family therapist. We are going to help who Not we, not me she is. Who's going to help us unpack these truths and explore how understanding our identity in Christ can most definitely transform our lives, deepen our prayer lives and bring us back lasting joy and peace.
01:22
So stay with us and we're going to dive into scripture, share some stories and discuss practical steps, because that's what we like to do here. Give you practical steps and tools to embrace our God given identity. Whether you're struggling with self doubt, seeking a closer relationship with Jesus or simply wanting to find more joy in your faith journey, this episode is for you. My folks, let's discover together what it truly means to be a new creation in Christ. So, donna, let's start by delving into one of the most asked questions who am I and, most specifically, who am I in Christ? How does understanding our identity in Christ transform the way we see ourselves and our purpose in life?
02:20 - Donna Scott (Guest)
Okay, let's just answer the mysteries of life in a few minutes.
02:27 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
That's it. No, no challenges, Come on. No challenges whatsoever.
02:33 - Donna Scott (Guest)
No, no, no no, I like I. Growing up, I we used to play this game who am I? Which were Bible cards, and you would have all these clues about events in the person's life to see if you discover who they are. And I think the thing with identity we tend to let our identity be defined by what we do versus who we are, and that's how people get into an identity crisis. An identity crisis can be caused by getting married or getting divorced. It could be empty nest, it could be financial loss, it could be a physical or a mental illness. There's all these events that happen to us, that kind of rock our world. I know when my parents died, nine months apart from each other, I remember feeling and asking myself the question who am I? And the answer was I'm an orphan. How can I be an orphan? I'm in my 60s, why, what? And it just triggered this whole identity crisis for me.
03:51
But we have to really understand what identity means and how do we get our identity? Actually, there's three ways. There is our core identity and that is how God hardwired us. You know, if you look at Enneagram in the different personality types, there's so many different personality type discs. Right, it's hardwired, you know, are you an introvert? Are you an extrovert? Do you meaning, do you get energy by being alone or energy by being with other people? That is hardwired. It's the way you are as an individual. It's the way your personality is. It's also based on that how you behave, how you act. I know with my youngest daughter. She is very much an introvert and she loves being with people, but I literally can watch this glaze come over her face when she's had enough and she will try to force herself, but then she literally pays for it physically. So that way you're hardwired.
05:03
The other thing that forms our identity is what is called given. Id. Given is things that you really have no choice in. Right. Your racial identity, skin tone that's given to you. Where you were born you didn't have a say in that. Right. Your birthplace we still say gender. Many people will disagree with that, but you were born, but we won't go there. That's another topic, right?
05:35 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Whole other topic that won't even take one episode, that'll be several. Yes, Characteristics right.
05:44 - Donna Scott (Guest)
And the third portion of our identity is chosen ID. That is, the social skills you develop, that is the choice of career where you want to live, and many. Do you want to get married, do you want to have kids? Those are things that you get to choose.
06:04
And I want to land there for a moment because when we talk about the book of Ephesians and actually, if you don't mind, I want to read that passage for you I'm in the first chapter and I'm reading from the Amplified Version for people who like to know, and I'm starting at verse.
06:24
I can honestly go home and read the whole chapter, but I'm going to start at four and it says just as in his love he chose us. See, we're talking about chosen identity. Right, he chose us in Christ. Right, he chose us in Christ, actually selected us for himself as his own, before the foundation of the world, so that we would be holy, that is, consecrated, set apart for him, purpose-driven, purpose-driven, blameless in his sight, in love. In love, he predestined and lovingly planned for us to be adopted to himself as his own children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the kind intention and good pleasure of his will. So when we think about our chosen identity. Focus on the fact that it's not even about who or what we chose, but the one who chose us, that when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and personal Savior, we respond to his invitation to be his child. We accept that and that moment he adopts us into his family from that choice him choosing us, us choosing him, and we are then sons and daughters of the Most High King, the Most High.
08:11 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
King, I think society is the total opposite of what you have just explained, where, you know, we create a persona of who?
08:23 - Donna Scott (Guest)
we are.
08:24 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
And I have really big mixed feelings about the fake it till you make it ideology, yeah, theology, yeah. Um, in some ways I've understood where that comes from, but in other ways I think it does a disservice, especially especially as believers, and a child of god. Yes, that we are so perfectly made first of all in his image. Yes, and as his child, we are first of all in his image and as his child we are.
09:01 - Donna Scott (Guest)
I look at it this way who am I If I look into the Bible, which is my?
09:03 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
mirror. I will see myself, I will see myself in the scriptures. And that is, I think, where it differentiates from the world. I don't have to remake myself multiple times, which I have, so I'm preaching to the choir Every decade or so. I've had to remake myself for different reasons, but I believe that at this point in my life I am the most comfortable in who I am and it is, I would say, also the most joyous time in my life is, I would say, also the most joyous time in my life.
09:44
It may be in some ways in my mind when I step away and not when I'm not under the Lord's umbrella, when I'm not with him. I get scared because I have financial insecurity. You know when you're in ministry and your ministry is, you know it is what it is. You know, it becomes scary, and yet I am so sure. I am so sure that this is what the Lord wants me to be doing.
10:11
What I am doing he created you to do yes, and it gives me such a different. I don't worry about how the world is looking at me. I want to speak up and speak out for what I believe. I want others to experience this.
10:33
Yes, this and yes, and and this is, I think, as christians, and we are speaking now to christians, yes, where? And the children of the god saying don't question who I mean we. We do question that's, we do that. That's part of who we are, but have the confidence not to have to ask the question.
10:56 - Donna Scott (Guest)
I'm getting all tongue-tied. I'm so excited here.
10:59 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
And I really want all of us, including me, to get in and look at that mirror, to take a look at the Bible, the scriptures, and see who we are and how wonderfully we are made and how each one of us you, Donna Scott, me, Ruth, Hoff, SEPTEN and whoever is listening- and watching to say this is so amazing. We are different, and yet we all have the same same Christ DNA.
11:39
You know like the children of God, dna were all the same. So, yeah, it's really interesting, you know, because when we look at it as the perspective of a believer, as opposed to what the world tells us. It's a little bit. It's very different, right.
11:59 - Donna Scott (Guest)
Well, it is because you know, we can have the head knowledge that we are sons and daughters of the Most High King. We can know that that's in the mirror Even when we walk away from the mirror. Do we carry that truth? Do we live like that? I have a picture of my youngest daughter when she was about three and my dad was a pastor and we can relate right and she is sitting in the pulpit Now. Culturally, you weren't supposed to sit in the pulpit unless you were a minister or the pastor who was speaking. And when my daughter left my side to go up to see her grandfather who was in the pulpit, I tried to stop her and my dad signaled and said let her come up. And she went up with all confidence and sat in that position. You gave me chills, right, you?
13:00 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
gave me chills.
13:02 - Donna Scott (Guest)
Based on understanding who she is and who she was drawing close to. She didn't care that the whole congregation was looking at her, because she knew who her grandfather was and she knew who she was in her power and authority as his granddaughter. I love that. That is when the information that's in the mirror becomes incorporated in our hearts, and that's the transformational power of understanding who you are, because, with our other core identities or given identities or the way the world tells us how we should be, think or feel, when we don't match up to criteria, it's hard to feel I'm being real. When I'm sinning all the time, I don't feel worthy of being God's daughter. That's when I want to hide. I want to hide because my behavior doesn't line up with who I know God's daughters to be, and that's the power of God's word is. My identity is not based on what I do.
14:20 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
It's based on who I am and the expectations of other people around you, expectations that you put on yourself and expectations that others put on you. And you know, sometimes those expectations are put on us by people close to us, our family, friends whatever it may be, and we feel obligated to make them feel a certain way, because we need to. You know we need to behave.
14:47 - Donna Scott (Guest)
The Lord wants us to reflect yeah, yes you may disappoint those around you. But and yourself to disappoint myself, yes, yes.
15:08 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I have come to understand that that is wrong. When we are, we look away. So here we are. You know, we talk about faith, right, and we say look on God, look at the. You know like, look forward, don't look back. Put your sights on the Lord and you will be led. Yet when it comes to certain things like identity, we take away that from, in a way, take it away from the Lord. Obviously, that's not what we're doing, you know, we, we turn our backs on that part and say, well, I'm going to, I'm going to fix up my identity, I'm going to create this persona, this, whatever it is that we're trying to do. And I think that is when we really fall short of what we can do and what the Lord is expecting of us.
16:05
But I have a question for you as a licensed marriage and family therapist have you seen, people's understanding of their identity in Christ affect their mental and emotional health, whether it's their relationship or their marriage or, you know, whatever type of relationship they're in.
16:28 - Donna Scott (Guest)
Well, generally speaking, when they come, there is this sense of not good enough. There is this sense of not good enough and that impacts them, that even though they have the head, knowledge that they are more than good enough, they don't know how to live good enough. And part of my job is to declutter what's messing with their mind and kind of clear the mirror up for them. And I think one of the best examples I try to share with them when the Lord opens the door comes from the Lion King. That was my son's favorite movie. You know, those were the days when you had the video and, yes, I would pop that in every day. He would watch it every day. Hey, give me a couple of minutes, but there was this one scene.
17:23 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yes, I'm that mom yeah, I was that mom too.
17:26 - Donna Scott (Guest)
No worries, no judgment here no judgment here, right, my identity makes it okay, right that and being a single mom so that.
17:38
So that moment when um Simba runs away because he believes the lies of his uncle person a poor lion, sorry when he in reality he's the king, he's the son of a king, but he's listened to the lies louder than the truth. And when he meets, I call Rafiki, the pastor. When he comes into contact with the pastor, first of all he hears his father's voice. He calls his name and says Simba, you have forgotten who you are. And then he has an encounter with the pastor and the pastor said you're not living who you are. You're letting the past defeat you and you can let it hinder you or you can learn from it and grow from it, but nonetheless you are the king, whether you live like it or not, whether you live like it or not.
18:56
And that's where I want to help them, because Satan has a plan to destroy us, and what better tool than he has than when he can make us live like poor people instead of sons and daughters of royalty? When he can shift our identity, he wins. But greater is he who is in us and who chose us and who creates our identity than the one who wants to destroy our identity. So that's my first tip on healing from your identity crisis or from a cloudy mirror is to recognize the real enemy.
19:41 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, I know I for years after my recovery I tended to to live the, to be the person that I thought people expected me to be after recovery. Now my recovery was done in secret, so I did. Maybe that was a good thing because I didn't have the pressure of how I should be behaving, so in that way it worked out for me. But then my expectations of myself were such that oh, ruth, you know you messed up for so many years, you know for over a decade, 15 years.
20:24
Now. You've got to make up time, and I really was. That wasn't healthy either. Right, so I went from one type of addiction and I've seen that in believers as well. Right so they leave behind the life of sin, they leave behind their addictions, the worldly addictions. Activity to constant conferences, constant this, with no time to sit quietly and commune with the lord, to to pray, to listen to the word of god, to heal and the healing that's what it was.
21:15
So when I, you know, I went through my recovery, I never, allowed myself time to heal. It was like, okay, you did, you wasted, now get back to work, Whereas I believe that healing is part of the gift that the Lord has given to us. And when you are on the other side, because I'm asked all the how can you joke about that and how can you?
21:43 - Donna Scott (Guest)
laugh about that.
21:44 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Well, because I'm healed. I'm on the other side and I see my folly, I see my mistakes. I know not how not to do those. You know like to commit those behaviors. Yeah, so I had to heal and come back around and say, okay, lord, how and what, and where do I go, how do I do it?
22:12 - Donna Scott (Guest)
what am I? Doing and where am I going?
22:15 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
So it really was and it was like it was a new beginning I had, and this is why I am so excited to be out here. You know, having a podcast and speaking, telling people. Man, you have this amazing opportunity given to us Renewal, restoration, starting over and having folks like you say here are the tools, this is how we do it. And that is, I think that is such an amazing gift, Over and above the gift of salvation, which is wow.
23:01
Yes, this is another gift right, second chances with the Lord. Amazing, it is amazing.
23:10 - Donna Scott (Guest)
It is. I was thinking about how you were saying that you know once God and A I appreciate your honesty and that you needed to do recovery and healing in privacy, and I think that was a gift from God. It was Amen, because it's hard to heal in a fishbowl when there's so many voices trying to tell you A how should, how did you even get here? Or you should be done by now, or any of those things, and it's just precious that God blessed you to heal private. It reminded me.
23:47
I got two thoughts and they're kind of clashing a little bit, but because I want to address the busyness that you did, like you owe God something. But I remember my mind went back to when Elijah was running for his life and went to Mount Caramel Because he was done. There was a death warrant on him. He had handled everything else that, for whatever reason, sent him running and God in his infinite mercy and grace. I, like how my pastor said, served him Chick-fil-A in the wilderness, provided water when there was a drought and told him to sleep, sleep, get up, sleep some more, get up, eat.
24:34
That recovery. That was one-on-one and God just kept providing until he got into talk to God. So that's all part of what God he doesn't expect us to be super Christians, he knows he's dealing with humans. And part two with that sense of we got to pay God back. We got to make up for what we did when Jesus already paid the price on the cross for us. But again the world tells us we have to work hard. God does not tell us that. I love this quote. I can't remember who said it, but there's nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there's nothing you can do to make God love you less.
25:23 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
He just loves you because you're his Unconditional love.
25:27 - Donna Scott (Guest)
Yeah, just because, just because and that brings me to the other tip that I wanted to share that we have to learn to see ourselves the way God sees us. I'm sure you've seen those lists of. I am the question to who I am. Who am I? I am chosen, I am beloved. I am chosen, I am beloved, I am redeemed. All those scriptures, one of my favorites is in Isaiah 43.1. I wanted to read that for you.
26:05
But now this is what the Lord, your creator, says. Now this is in context. Isaiah is talking to Jacob, the tribes of Israel, but you, please, put your name in there and say it this way. But now this is what the Lord, your creator, says Donna, oh Ruth, and he who formed you, israel. Donna, ruth, do not fear, for I have redeemed you from captivity. I have called you by name, ruth. I have called you by name, donna, I have called. Put your name in there. And then the last words where he says I have called you by name, you are mine, and whenever that question comes up, who am I? You may not remember the list that's on purses and handouts, but never forget that he chose you and you are his. See yourself the way he sees you. Doesn't that make you sit up a little taller? Doesn't it make you want to sit in the pulpit, like my daughter did? Because you know who you belong to and you have all the rights of royalty. Who can mess with you? Your father is the creator of the universe.
27:42 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
It is such a strength, it gives me so much strength, yeah, to stand up. And I think, no, not. I think. I know that the strength that comes to me is not my own. When I speak about my addictions and my overcoming and where I am today. I truly believe that the reason I can do this and I am not ashamed to stand the way I am today- I am ashamed of.
28:18
You know, I, I, I, I don't want anyone to think that I am not aware of my sins, of the past. Right, we need, we are, I am, trust me, I'm a hundred percent aware of my choices, my decisions. Sometimes the ramifications of those are here to stay. That's life, that's true, that's what it is. But I think this power to stand up and say Satan, I'm done, I am no longer that Ruth of. You know then, or you know, donna, standing up and saying I am not an orphan, I am a child of.
29:03
God comes from that the power? Where's the power? The power, I think, is through knowledge, and that knowledge is given to us through what sitting quietly reading our work, given to us through what Sitting quietly reading the Bible, spending time in prayer. I want to share also a couple of verses that when I was thinking about our conversation. They came to me not came to me, obviously, the.
29:30
Holy Spirit brought them forward, and one of them was 2 Corinthiansthians 517, and I'm going to read from niv today. But it says therefore if anyone is in christ, the new creation has come. Amen amen old has gone and the new is here. Yes, I get thrills, I get goosebumps thinking about that. Another one gratitude gratitude oh yes, I yeah, yes.
30:02
Galatians 2 20 says I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live. But Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body. I live by faith in the son of God loved me and gave himself to me, and I want one more. 1 Peter 2.9. I have a whole bunch.
30:23 - Donna Scott (Guest)
I'm just going to stick to the three. 1.
30:25 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Peter, 2.9. But we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, god's special possession. God's special possession that brings tears to my eyes, donna because I have always felt in the past, I was not worthy of anything or anyone who I was nobody, but he calls me his own and a special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light, yes, you.
31:05 - Donna Scott (Guest)
Ephesians 2 10 you are his masterpiece.
31:10 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
We are his, I am his masterpiece, his masterpiece, his work of art.
31:17 - Donna Scott (Guest)
his work of art. The God who created a peacock, who created the northern lights that everyone was all gaga about, that's the same one who created you. It can be an awe of a waterfall or a perfect rose, and forget that. The same God who did that created you, Ruth, and you are his work of art that he treasures far more than the Northern Lights it is beautiful, yeah, it is, and it's simple.
32:04 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yes, beautiful, yeah it is, and it's simple, yes and it.
32:05 - Donna Scott (Guest)
There is nothing placated in understanding who I am and living it and living, living like you know who you are, that's right.
32:10 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
And walking in confidence, shoulders back, head held I exactly no shame. And I I walk with the confidence because I know that the holy spirit stands with me and when I need it I am held in the palm of my lord and savior and god is waiting for me with his hands open wide to welcome me into his kingdom.
32:40 - Donna Scott (Guest)
And when Satan throws those darts of doubt at you, expect them, yeah, which is why we're told to put on the armor of God. And when they happen and kind of take you out a little bit, go back to the mirror. Go back to the mirror and remind yourself yeah, that happened, god has forgiven me, I'm moving on, but it does not negate the fact that I am his and I can live like that, because I think, as you shine light, ruth, with these podcasts to pull us out of the darkness, satan wants to turn the light off and it's our job to recognize that he's going to do his job and God is going to empower us to keep turning the light back on, and God is going to empower us to keep turning the light back on Amen, Amen and on that note, because we can keep going.
33:43 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I want to thank you so much, donna, and to those that have been listening and watching, I thank you so much. If you have any questions or comments or want to share about your own experience of finding out who you are in Christ, please share with us. Contact Donna, contact me. All the contacts are in below in the show notes. I would love to have you follow and subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube, ring that bell so you're not missing any episodes. It just helps other people find us, find.
34:22
Donna find me. You know what, Donna? I love talking to you.
34:27 - Donna Scott (Guest)
I thank you, my sister, and.
34:30 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I look forward to our next conversation and to all of you that have joined us here. We love you. Christ loves you, yes he does. Thank you so much.
