34: Identity: Part 4, Community (Compilation Series)

[00:00] Stephanie: Welcome to the On the Trail podcast. In this week’s compilation episode, we are revisiting the identity series with part four, a look at community.Today’s icebreaker is from one of our listeners Bonnie, who wants us to “play GAMES”, as in your acrostic. We’re talking about community today and I love playing games, whether it’s the acrostic or not. But I love games in a community context. You know, it’s something you can do for yourself as an individual, but it’s really fun to do in community. So do you want to give us a brief presentation of your acrostic GAMES, and then maybe we can play it a little?

[00:38] Marcus: Sure. I actually created the acrostic GAMES when somebody asked me to do a Thanksgiving presentation. As I always do, there’s a past, present, and future element to this. But they’re also like, what am I grateful for from the past? What am I grateful for in my present? What am I grateful for in anticipation? Just like you’re anticipating Scotland. But then there’s things that you can do, that’s the E, experiences.

They’re experiences you can create intentionally because you know it’ll increase the likelihood of there being joy. It gives you something to anticipate. Like, you can plan a game night, or you can say, I’m going to go take a walk. I’m going to go do something I know I like. That’s an experience. And then there is singing. So I took the past, present, and future and turned it into GAM. So M is memories, the past. A is anticipation, the future, and G is gratitude, the present.

[01:33] Stephanie: And this is joy building.

[01:34] Marcus: This is how we grow our joy, it’s through appreciation exercise. So we start with G, gratitude. What am I grateful for in the present right now? So for me, honestly, I generally start with the weather and I look at the sky. I love the clouds, I’m grateful for that. But I can also look around and say, I really am enjoying the setup of our studio. There’s cool new equipment that I know Ben got that I’m admiring and enjoying. And it’s fun just to see the studio taking shape.

[02:12] Stephanie:  It is fun to exist in this space. It is in development. So then A would be anticipation. Me! I am anticipating! I’m going to Scotland! I’m going to see people and I’ve never been to Scotland. I’m going to get to explore and adventure, and I’m going with one of my very best friends in the whole world. We’re going to do it together. And it’s going to be a time of writing whatever I want to write, and it’s great. Okay, I’m gonna wind it down. I can just keep going with my anticipation.

[02:45] Marcus: It will be today’s podcast.

[02:46] Stephanie: Yeah.

[02:47] Marcus: Yeah. That’s pretty good. M is memories. It makes me remember when we got to go to Ireland with you. You were already in Ireland for a semester and Mom, Ben and I got to go and spend a little bit of time with you. To see where you had been. And I had never been to the British Isles ever, it is still the only time I’ve ever been to the British Isles. I’ve never been to Scotland either. That was a great memory. I remember especially taking day trips and driving on the left side of the road instead of the right side of the road. I only hit a few curbs, it was not too bad. Yeah, that was a fun memory.

[03:29] Stephanie: Yes. And then E, experiences.

[03:33] Marcus: Like last night, we played a game.

[03:35] Stephanie: Cards Christians Like.

[03:37] Marcus: Cards Christians Like. It’s kind of like Apples to Apples for Christians. That was pretty fun. We laughed a lot last night, that was good.

[03:44] Stephanie: Mom was just sweeping.

[03:45] Marcus: Oh, I know. She cleaned house!

[03:48] Stephanie:  I think she won twelve in a row. Anyway, that was great. Out of that experience we were talking about hey, we used to do more game nights. We should do this more often. And then singing.

[04:01] Marcus: Singing, yeah. It’s like at the end of the night last night, I pulled up a Pandora station of old 1990s Christian music. Just to listen to the music and sing along. And there’s something about it that brings up memories and connects. And so singing is a great way to build some joy.

[04:23] Stephanie: And you never know when it might summon community, because the other night you had Brian Duncan on and I appeared.

[04:31] Marcus: You appeared dancing and singing. I was like, it was a joyful moment.

[04:36] Stephanie: That’s amazing. All right, well, I thank you for asking us to “play GAMES”, Bonnie. I love this acrostic, and I specifically love it for doing in community. I think it’s a wonderful way to get people laughing and talking and joy building together. So there you go, as we continue into the rest of the episode about community. Gosh, at some point we should just do a whole series focused on community. There’s obviously lots to cover, but for now, we’re going to cover some basics from the identity formation angle. So Father, talk to us about identity and community.

[05:14] Marcus: All right. So several episodes ago, we were talking about the role of attachment informing our identity, and how the brain needs relational interaction in order to form its identity. This brings us back around to the role of church and the role of Christian community. It isn’t enough for the church just to tell me in a left brain sort of way, you are a saint, you are a child of God. That’s good, but I also have to have that reinforced by the activities. And my community needs to be reminding me when I’m not living that way. It’s like, hey, you know what? You’re a saint. That’s not really what we do around here.

Or, you know what? You’re a child of God. Don’t get so down on yourself. You know, that’s okay. It’s part of the role of a community to remind us of who we are and to reinforce who we are in that way. And again, it goes both directions. As part of the community one of my jobs is making sure that we’re acting like ourselves. So I’ll give you an example. Like, I’m an elder at a church. So to be an elder at church means you deal with problems.

And when you’re dealing with problems you’re usually dealing with people. And so when you’re dealing with people’s problems, a large part of what I often do in my role is to kind of remind people that we are a people who keep relationships bigger than problems. What’s the most relational way we can approach this and still solve the problem? We don’t want to just avoid the problem, but we want to make sure that we handle this problem relationally. So what would be a good way to do this that honors the relationship that we’ve had with this person for so long, still addresses the problem, and keeps the relationship intact moving forward?

So that would be something that we want our community to do. Every community has core values, and those core values sometimes are statements that we write up and forget about. But when they’re really living out of those core values, they guide how we encourage each other and how we correct each other in community life. And so every community has its own identity. Every community, especially every Christian community, is supposed to be reinforcing and encouraging our true identity in Christ. And so there’s a lot there.

[07:46] Stephanie: That’s a wonderful segue to my next question.

[07:49] Marcus: All right, good.

[07:50] Stephanie:  In Jim Wilder’s book, The Pandora Problem, then also in his book with Michel Hendrix, The Other Half of Church, Jim talks about identity statements that are used in both community formation and individual formation. They are also helpful for correcting narcissism which is the core topic of The Pandora Problem. And so I wanted us to talk a little bit about community identity statements, which you just gave in your example there. So a community identity statement would be like, who are we? How is it like us to be? I love the chapter in The Other Half of Church about this, and I just pulled a few examples that Jim and Michel gave that I thought would be instructive. “We are a people who take God’s commands seriously.” “We are a people who reconcile as quickly as possible.” “We are a people who love our enemies and pray for them.” “We are a people who always give thanks to God for everything.” “We are a people who avoid and expose the works of darkness.” And you can go on and on. There are so many different core things. I wanted you to talk about that and then maybe what’s a strategic way that people can develop their group identity statements.

[09:10] Marcus: Yeah. So there’s several things that go into this. Part of our group identity will always be our mission. What is the mission that brings us together? Why are we even together? It’s like we’re gathering together because we want to do something about a problem. So whenever you’re talking about vision and you’re talking about mission, you’re talking about problem solving. If I’m going to help somebody who says, I’m not very visionary and I’m like, okay, so how do you figure out what you’re really passionate about? The question comes down to, if you could solve one problem, what would it be?

Our group usually exists as a group partly because there’s a problem we’re trying to solve, that would be our mission. Now, sometimes the problem we’re trying to solve is our own immaturity. We’re all trying to grow up a little bit. Sometimes the problem we’re trying to solve is that we want to do something about a justice issue, or we want to do something about evangelism. There’s a mission that is usually a part of our identity statement. Let me just give another way of illustrating it that can help. Let’s say that I am the manager of a restaurant. We could have a core identity that says we’ll do whatever it takes to get the customers money.

Or we can have an identity that says we want to give people the best dining experience on this side of town. So if my identity is that we are the sort of people who give our customers an outstanding dining experience, that’s an identity statement, and that’s also our mission. So there’s something to that. And if I lose that identity, it’s going to change the whole culture. So there’s that. It also gets down to our values and what’s important to us. At Deeper Walk for example, we have four core values that can be turned into mission statements and it shockingly spells something.

[11:13] Stephanie: Would it be Deeper Walk core values if it didn’t?

[11:15] Marcus: Yeah. So it spells GROW.  We are a generous people. And our statement is that we are a generous people who want to find win-win solutions, and we will err on the side of generosity in finding those solutions. So that gives us guidance on how we go about interacting with people. And I can tell you many email conversations that I’ve had where people are like, well, you know what? It’s like us to be generous, so let’s go ahead and do this for that person. So that’s a guiding principle of who we are.

We are relational and we will deal with relationships before problems. We will always make the relationship bigger than the problem. And this means we deal with problems, but we’re going to try to do it in the most relational way possible.

And then O is that we own what we do and we don’t try to avoid responsibility. This is sort of our anti-narcissist statement. It’s like we’re going to own our mistakes and not throw other people under the bus, in order to try to avoid shame. And we will not self-justify, we won’t throw other people under the bus, we’re going to own it. So that’s our “we are people who own our mistakes” statement.

And then W is wisdom. We are people who seek wisdom both from God and from other sources. We want to get good advice, we want to surround ourselves with wise counselors, we want to get good input, and we want to seek God. And so we practice corporate prayer. We practice listening prayer as a group on regular occasions. So understanding that this is our identity, this is who we are is our core value statement. And if it’s really driving what you do. We frequently reference those core values in making decisions that need to be made as a group. So there’s actually little difference between a values statement document and an identity statement document. It’s just taking those core values and turning it into a “we are a people who”, kind of thing.

[13:20] Stephanie: Yeah, that’s really good. So let’s look at how we frequently see people forming their group identity. A lot of people mistake our malfunctions as our identity. We don’t want our group identities to form around our pain, our addictions, and our trauma. Let’s camp out on this a little bit.

[13:42] Marcus: So again, just taking this from a brain perspective. I don’t want to reinforce that my identity is who I am when my brain is misfiring. Let’s review the joy elevator concept. I have attachment, I have assessment, which is good, bad or scary, my amygdala. And that functions like a joy switch. When that switch is on the elevator can continue up to where I can attune to other people. I can read them correctly and we can share experiences together. And then I get up to the action center, the fourth floor, where I act like myself. I remember who I am and I’m acting like myself.

So what we’re talking about here is if my behavior is coming out of a place of stuckness, and the elevator isn’t getting all the way up to the top floor, I don’t want to then define myself by who I am when I’m stuck. I don’t want to define myself by who I am when I’m triggered. I want to define myself by who I am when my brain is functioning at the proper level. So we start there. Now, when you take that and realize that our malfunctions tend to be related to what we have talked about in past episodes as our sad, sad emotions. I don’t want to take my identity from shame. I don’t want to take my identity from anger, that I’m just an angry person and you just need to get used to it.

In fact, I met with somebody at lunch today and they made a great point. If somebody says to you, well, that’s just the way I am. And they are defending the fact that they don’t deal with shame, they’re an angry person, or they’re a depressed person, that’s actually a narcissistic statement. Because what they’re trying to do is avoid the shame of owning what’s going on here. And so, just to review the sad, sad, it’s shame, anger and disgust. Sadness, anxiety, fear and despair. And so, again, despair would be I’m just a depressed person. That’s who I am. I’m just an anxious person. That’s just who I am. We want to avoid taking our identity from the malfunctions that are going on. So you can take that down to the addiction level. I’m just an addict. That’s who I am.

It’s like, no, that’s actually me malfunctioning. So the good news is that I can develop and grow beyond that to where I’m not controlled by those things. And  we want to remember who we are. So one of the jobs of the community around us is to not define us by our malfunctions. And we need to not define others in our community by their malfunctions.

[16:25] Stephanie: And now that does not mean to ignore the malfunctions. That does not mean to ignore those things that are going on, but we are not defining ourselves by those things.

[16:32] Marcus: Exactly. Now, I can say I am feeling despair. I am feeling this way and I feel that way a lot. That’s all true. And we’re not saying to be in denial, but we’re saying, I don’t want to take my identity from those things. And we don’t want the community reinforcing this idea that you at your worst is who you are. That’s not a good thing. We need to make sure that we’re encouraging people to combine this brain’s desire to live from the top level with the covenant. What the covenant says is true about us and call that out of people and say, hey, I see in you this.

And so one of the things that community does is it often calls out of us things that we don’t even see in ourselves. Like, I see in you a very compassionate heart for people who are in this kind of pain. Or I see in you a desire to bring order where there’s disorder, or this tenacity that won’t quit until things are the way they’re supposed to be. So you look at all those things, or I see a strong mercy thing in you. It takes a community to see those things and call them out of people and help them, and encourage them. Live out of your true heart and out of the heart Jesus gave you. And not just out of your malfunctions.

[17:56] Stephanie: Yeah. So what does it look like to be a healthy member of this community? What does it look like to not only receive people giving you goodness, but to be somebody who does that.

[18:09] Marcus: Let me introduce it this way. One of the ways that you can tell what a community actually values is by what the peer pressure is around. Like, you go to some places and you can tell that there is peer pressure around wearing a mask and pretending that everything is okay. And the community does not want you bringing up your problems. They want you to bury them. They want you to hide them. They want you to put on a false front because they want everything to be just so, so. So you can tell what a community truly values by what there’s peer pressure around.

On the other hand, there are places where there is some peer pressure around, no, you need to be authentic. You need to be honest about what’s going on. You need to be vulnerable about this, but there are places where it can go too far. And that is we only want you in your brokenness. We don’t want you to desire health. We don’t want you to desire maturity. We want you to glory in your brokenness and your woundedness. So a healthy community is one that brings together vulnerability and empathy. So vulnerability says, this is what is authentically going on in my life, I’m not hiding it.

And empathy is saying, wow, thank you for sharing. I can treat that with gentleness and meet you where you are. Now that doesn’t mean that we’re going to leave it there and do nothing about it. The fact that I’ve been gentle with it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to try to find a way to help you to take another step of maturity. Take another step of growth to do something, to go further with this. And I think that’s where we get stuck sometimes. We think that oh, an empathetic response means I have to just accept what is.

[20:08] Stephanie: Well, it goes back to validate, like VCR. And validation doesn’t mean affirmation.

[20:13] Marcus: Validation just means this is in fact how you’re feeling. It doesn’t mean it’s how you should be feeling. I can start with validation, but ultimately I don’t want you to be stuck in that emotion. I would like to help you get back to a place of joy. So healthy communities are places that are characterized by true vulnerability met with empathy. So when I am vulnerable and I am shamed for being vulnerable, now the core value being communicated to me is that in our community, we don’t value authenticity. We value looking good. It’s a real thing.

If you notice – different churches dress in different ways. And it’s interesting, because as subtle as that is it’s like people quickly learn what their community wants in terms of dress. Should I wear blue jeans? Should I wear a suit? You know, am I wearing pearls? Am I wearing shorts? What am I wearing to this church? Do we raise our hands, do we not? Do we clap, do we not? What are we doing here?

And even like, what kind of Christian language do I use most commonly with this group? Are there a lot of hallelujahs and praise the Lord, and brothers and sisters? A group identity is formed by all of these things that says, this is the sort of people we are and this is how we do things around here. And what we want to do is make sure that the values that are molding our community are truly Biblical, and they are really calling out the true identity of who we are in Christ. There is in a sense, peer pressure, if you will, around making sure that we are who we say we are.

[22:10] Stephanie: So as you’re talking, I can already just sense the despair from how many people I have talked to over the years, and even just this year. People who are like, yeah, I’m all in, but my community wants nothing to do with this. Kind of like, how do I affect my community? What do I do? And whether that’s somebody who’s looking for a community that will do this for them, or somebody who’s like, I want to build community, but the people around me don’t seem to be open to it. Can you speak to some hope there?

[22:40] Marcus: Yeah. So there are community building skills that we can develop. And one of the things I tell people is that you can’t always find a community that does all these things already. I haven’t always been able to find those things throughout life, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have people in my life who filled that role.

And so one of the community building skills that we all learn is to kind of collect people throughout our lives with whom we have this kind of relationship. And the goal is to have three people that I can be authentic with, who are empathetic, who are authentic with me, and I can be empathetic back with them. Because the depth of intimacy that I have in any relationship is directly connected with how vulnerable and how empathetic we are with each other.

And so where the vulnerability stops, intimacy stops. If I don’t feel safe being any more vulnerable than this, that’s the level of intimacy we’re ever going to have. And so if you can’t find that in your local church chances are you can find it with somebody somewhere. And so the goal is to begin collecting people and having these kinds of relationships wherever you can. And then wherever you’re at, encouraging people to take the next step of the journey and pushing that group to try going one step further. Let’s try going one step further, what if we talk about at this level? And not getting upset with them if they are not ready.

[24:22] Stephanie: It’s often going to look like baby steps. I have several metaphors in my head. How to eat a whole cow, one hamburger at a time. I had a professor who used to say that all the time. Even if you see a whole picture, you’re not usually going to just automatically get the whole picture. So having strategies and steps for the baby steps to get there and to build it a piece at a time.

[24:51] Marcus: For people who are truly isolated, I know Dr. Wilder put together an exercise something like this. If I’m truly isolated, I just don’t have anybody, and I can’t sit here right now and think of anybody in my life that I have this kind of relationship with. You have to start where you’re at and you grow it a little bit.

And the exercise was something like this, just make a list of who you see every day. Do you see the mailman every day? Do you see somebody at the checkout counter at the local Subway every day? Who do you see every day? Who do you see once a week? Like, on Thursdays, you’re going to see this person someplace. Who do you see once a month? Just start making a list of who you know you’re going to see. And then ask yourself this question, how can I add just a little bit more joy to that relationship? Not to make that person my best friend, not to become completely vulnerable with that person, but just how can I add a little bit more joy to that relationship?

And then what happens, let’s say you’ve put together ten to twelve names and you add a little bit of joy into ten to twelve people. It begins to grow, right? And that begins to increase and now I’m on my way to beginning to build community. Because what happens is people like hanging out with you when you’re the sort of person who makes their problems smaller. They tend to run away when you’re the sort of person who makes their problems bigger.

And so what we want to do is be the sort of person who adds some joy and is good at making problems smaller. And that helps us grow our relational connections. And if I’m the sort of person who’s good at making your problem smaller, it’s much easier for you to listen to me when I have a problem that I need help with to make smaller. Because now it’s mutual. It’s going back and forth. If it’s one way that’s what we call counseling. It’s like, okay, I’m paying you to listen to me and be empathetic, that’s a little different. Otherwise, in most relationships we’re looking for something mutual.

[26:58] Stephanie: Yeah, that’s great advice. Well, hey, I am going to pull a testimony from one of our listeners and then I’ll come back to you for some final thoughts. So this woman says, “I am a 77 year old believer and have been for 47 years. I have experienced in the last several months an amazing amount of growth in the Lord. Much of it has been a lot of repentance and revelation. My husband of 54 years just told me this morning that he has seen me more at peace than he ever has. I am also being called to mentor and disciple women who are struggling with the similar things I have experienced and struggled with, and am now experiencing the greatest freedom and closeness to Jesus I’ve ever had. The Lord is so good, so patient, and never ever gives up on his children because of his passionate love and care. I’m also now in training to be a certified spiritual director, and I have a spiritual director, so thank you.”

[27:56] Marcus: Wow. Yeah. You know, that actually reminds me of your grandma.

[28:00] Stephanie: Yes.

[28:01] Marcus: Yeah, my mom, I can remember after age 65 she made some huge strides in her personal growth journey. Partly because sometimes just as a mom, you have to put a lot of your personal stuff on hold while you’re dealing with everybody else’s stuff. So I think it’s not uncommon sometimes for people when they get to that elder stage of life for God to say, okay, it’s time to press into some of these things.

It’s not uncommon at all. And so there’s a lot of people who get into their sixties, seventies, and eighties who actually find them great growth decades. They finally have some of the space that’s been needed for God to do some of the work. So it’s a fantastic testimony. Really encouraging. I just want to encourage other people out there too, it’s not too late.

[28:56] Stephanie: Yes. Amen. All right, so any closing thoughts, Father?

[29:00] Marcus: So again, community is crucial. We’re talking about identity as ABC. That is attachment based, it’s belief based, and then it’s community reinforced. So we have to be careful not to link ourselves to toxic communities that are sabotaging our true identity in Christ; that are sabotaging our ability to develop our heart level identity. If we want this to grow and strengthen then we have to have people in our lives who are reinforcing our identity, and are good at calling those things out of us. Reminding us and correcting us when we’re not being that way. A friend isn’t really a friend if they can’t correct you.

And so I’m looking for all of these and I want to be that sort of person, because I want these mutual relationships in my life. Now there’s going to be times when I’m advanced and ahead of them, and there’s going to be times when I’m behind where they’re at. I like what Jim Wilder said one time that we should have three people upstream from us and three people downstream. Three people who are pouring into me at some level and three people I can pour into. All of my relationships don’t have to be peers. They don’t all have to be at exactly the same level of maturity I am at. We just have to be able to share something and be able to bring some joy to each other at some level.

And it doesn’t mean that I am advanced and beyond them in everything. It just means there’s something where they are the one pouring into me. And with others, there’s something where I’m the one pouring into them. And if I can think of it along that spectrum, it sometimes helps me to think if I can do that, I can kind of begin building community, regardless of whether I find all of it already in place in my church or not.

[30:46] Stephanie: All right, we are talking about identity not for the last time, but for the last time in this series. And today we’re going to reconnect identity as a topic to its gospel foundations, and then we can review how it all fits together again. So, Father, take us away.

[31:09] Marcus: Sure. Often I like to tell people the gospel isn’t just like, here’s your ticket to eternal life. Sometimes it’s presented that way. It’s like the gospel message is do you want eternal life, yes or no? And I’m like, there is much more to the gospel than do you want to live forever, or do you want to go to hell?

If that’s your understanding of the gospel, then it’s completely inadequate. So what we understand is that the gospel is far more than just the gift of eternal life. It is the foundation for discipleship. And when we unpack that foundation it takes us to this baptismal image. I had a pastor friend who for years talked about our identity as our baptismal identity. I like that term because my baptismal identity brings me back to the fact that my identity is anchored in the fact that the old me died with Christ.

And because the old me died with Christ that person no longer lives. Well, that’s an identity statement, right? If I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, that means the old me died. There’s a new identity that is set there and I have been raised with Christ. That’s an identity statement. I am a risen person. I am now in Christ. I am no longer in Adam under law. I am in Christ under grace. This is the identity. And now I am born of the spirit, which is also an identity statement.

So all of these things tie together. So we summarized this gospel presentation with FISH. The F of FISH is freedom. The first thing that happens at baptism is we go under the water. And no matter how that happens, the image here is that I have died with Christ. And Paul’s very clear about this in the book of Romans, and that because we’ve died the law has no more claim on us, and sin has no more claim on us.

And he uses the word freedom. He uses the Greek word there that you have been set free. So I’ve been set free from the law and I’ve been set free from sin. Both of those things are important because my freedom from the law doesn’t mean that I now have license to do whatever I want. My freedom from the law means it can’t condemn me anymore. There’s no more measuring stick up there saying, you have fallen short, you have failed. You are guilty, guilty, guilty.

Right? There’s no more smite button. Okay, so that’s been removed and thus, I am not under law, I am under grace. There is also this idea that I’m not under sin and that sin is no longer my master. And Paul’s very clear because sin isn’t my master I shouldn’t let sin reign over me. It’s like, you have been set free from this master so don’t let it reign over you. And he also implies that we have died to death itself. Death doesn’t reign over us anymore. We now have eternal life.

So we should live as those who are living for eternity and storing up treasures in heaven and so on. So that first idea that we have died with Christ Paul clearly connects it to the idea of freedom. That it was for freedom, that God did all this for us. In fact, I think the whole gospel message can be summed up as a freedom message. We were enslaved to sin. It’s like the classic fairy tale of the princess in the castle getting guarded by the dragon and the heroic knight Jesus came and slayed the dragon to set us free.

And then not only set us free but invited us into a marriage. And now all of a sudden, here we are, and the whole world has opened up to us. Now we get to go on an adventure with him. I think that’s core to what the gospel is all about: that God came to set us free and Christ came to destroy all the works of the evil one.

[35:15] Stephanie: That’s a fun story.

[35:16] Marcus: Yeah. So there we go, that’s the gospel. And then we are raised to a new identity. And that’s where we’ve camped out on this series is the new identity to which we have been called and to which we’ve been raised. And so we started by talking about how God designed the brain to form identity which is interesting because honestly, somewhat unfairly, a lot of us have bad childhoods. There’s a lot of people who didn’t get great parents and they got abused, and they got a whole bunch of things they missed out on. And a whole bunch of bad things that happened to them and they’re like, well, I’m not starting with the same foundation in life that you are, how is that fair? And the answer is, it’s not fair.

But part of what God is doing in bringing Jesus is he came specifically with the brokenhearted in mind, specifically with the enslaved in mind, specifically for those people for whom life has not been fair, and that’s where his heart was. It’s like God’s saying, I want to redeem all of that. I want to transform all of that and I want to give you a new identity. I want to give you a new life. I want to provide for you everything that you need. And so he gives it all to us in Christ.

So going back to the attachment ideas because some of us don’t get that. If I did not get what I needed from my mom, my dad or from my extended family growing up, I didn’t have joy in my family, and I didn’t have joy in being who I was. If I had abuse on top of that, the combination of that one two punch of not getting the good I needed, and then actually getting bad stuff does horrendous damage to my sense of self.

Now, correcting that, it is not enough just to tell somebody these things are true about you in Christ. Just telling people that if they don’t have the capacity to even live with a coherent identity, isn’t going to fix it. It’s not that it’s not true, it’s just that it isn’t the complete fix to what they need. There’s going to have to be some repair to their brain’s ability to even think about themselves because of the damage that happened growing up. So part of that repair is that there are some objective truths against which they can measure things.

Like, no matter how I feel about myself, the Bible is telling me that the truth is that I’m deeply loved. That God delights in me and that he smiles when he thinks about me. The Bible’s giving me some objective stuff so that I can look over here and say, even though I feel this way because of my childhood, and even though I feel this way because of how I was treated in school or whatever, I can know that this is true.

And so it gives me an anchor point to build around. This is one of the reasons why we stress identity so much. Because one of the devil’s core strategies in life is to take us out of the battle by lying to us about our true identity, so that we live less than what we could be. Yeah, so all those things go into it. Obviously, I could go on.

[38:33] Stephanie: Oh, obviously, very good stuff. We can circle back around to identity again. Do you want to go on to Spirit?

[38:40] Marcus: So the S of FISH. Freedom, identity, Spirit, again reinforces the first two things. I’m born of the spirit to walk in the Spirit. Well, what does the Spirit want me to do? The Spirit is going to always lead me into greater freedom. This where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. One of the ways that you can tell and you can discern, is this the work of the Holy Spirit or not? Is it leading me into greater freedom or not? And if it is not leading me into greater freedom, again, we have to be careful here because this is not freedom to sin. It is freedom from sin that we’re talking about, that’s a very different thing. It’s like the Bible never sets us free to sin. Like, okay, you’re now free to sin all that you want. It’s saying, no, sin shouldn’t be your master anymore, don’t be a slave to that anymore. You’re being set free from it.

The Holy Spirit’s always going to be moving us into freedom and the Holy Spirit’s always going to be reinforcing our biblical identity, our baptismal identity. The Holy Spirit does not say things like, when are you going to learn? You’re such a disappointment. You know you’re such an awful person. You’re just horrible. You call yourself a Christian? That’s not the Holy Spirit’s voice. So when you hear that, one of the things that helps us discern whether I am listening to a lie or to the Spirit, is the Spirit will always lead us to freedom. The Spirit will always reinforce our true identity. He’s not going to shame us in that sense. Now, he’ll give us what we might call healthy shame messages. Like, it’s beneath you to do that. That’s not who you really are, let’s act like yourself. That that isn’t what I called you to be.

Now, that’s a whole totally different message to say, you’re not acting like yourself, you’re not being who I called you to be, than to say you’re just a loser right now. That’s one of the ways we tell the difference between the voice of the devil and the voice of the Spirit. So they reinforce each other.

And then we come to the H of heart-focused community. And that in the gospel, I am set free, I’m given a new identity, I am given the Holy Spirit, and I’m brought into community. What does a heart focused community do? Why do we call it a heart focused community? Because if I just say community we get all kinds of images in our head. But a heart-focused community says, we want to help you grow in freedom, we want to reinforce your identity in Christ, and we are going to help you grow your ability to walk in the Spirit.

So my heart-focused community is going to catch me walking in the flesh and saying, that’s not what we do around here. We don’t do things in the flesh, we do it in the Spirit. The heart-focused community is going to catch me not living out of my true identity and help me remind me of who I am. And a heart-focused community is going to say, yeah, we don’t want to continue to be slaves to things like bitterness and whatever. We want to live in freedom and help me with that.

[41:43] Stephanie: And there are so many things that we learn through modeling. And so when we’re in community, if there are skills that we have missed and there are things that we are needing to grow into, and be encouraged, and to develop within ourselves, that’s going to happen in community.

[42:01] Marcus: Exactly. And that’s why I love the image from Michel Hendricks and Jim Wilder of the idea that community is soil. If you have toxic soil it will literally kill your development. If you’re not planted at all and you’re not in soil, it’s going to be really hard to grow. You’re not getting nutrients. If you’re in a soil that’s nutrient light, shall we say, it’s going to be hard to grow. But if you’re in a really healthy community it’s hard not to grow.

If I’m around a whole bunch of Christians who are joyful about their relationship with God and who are actively growing in their walk with God, they are my people, I feel connected to them, it’s going to be hard for me not to grow as well. And that’s the power of community.

[42:42] Stephanie: Huzzah! And then we FISH and Go FISH.

[42:46] Marcus: Yes, we FISH and Go FISH. There is a mission that grows out of all of these things. And so in my book, A Deeper Walk, we talk about this in two directions: that mission is meant to flow out of these things. For example, your grandfather, my dad was the director of the School of World Missions at Trinity. He met with a lot of missionaries, and he would say there were a lot of missionaries who were not free. They were going off into ministry, but they weren’t free themselves.

In fact, Neil Anderson, when he created The Steps to Freedom, it was because he was tired of seeing people go into full time Christian ministry who were still in bondage. And he said, why are we not helping these people get free before they go into ministry? Freedom helps us as we were going into ministry. Identity, there’s too many people going into ministry to get an identity. Like my identity is being a pastor. My identity is being in ministry or something like that. He said, no, we have to have a clear identity in Christ that flows into that ministry, not get our identity out of it.

And then Spirit. Of course we can do ministry in the flesh and we can do mission in the flesh, or we can do it in the Spirit. Community, it’s like, I can do this in a toxic community and isolated, or I can do it in a healthy community. So it all flows in that direction.

The other direction is that each of these things is an invitation out of which mission flows. Freedom is something we offer to the world. It’s like you are in bondage, do you want freedom? There is freedom in Christ. Come see what we have here. Identity, are you happy with the identity you currently have, or do you feel like there’s a hole in your heart that isn’t filled because you’re missing out on your true identity? Well, guess what? The gospel understands who God made you to be and you can discover your true identity here.

Then the Spirit. We have a world fascinated with spirituality; but there is a spirituality that creates bondage, and there is a spirituality that sets you free. It’s like Christianity can offer you an authentic spirituality.

Then community – and this idea of “come be a part of us.” And I think Paul talks about this in Colossians. He says this gospel has been spreading and bearing fruit all over the known world. And there was a sense of a movement like, I’m a part of something that is changing the world. It’s changing things for the better. It’s making a difference. And the idea that I can be a part of that is a powerful draw to the gospel.

So you look at FISH, and it’s this two way street when it comes to mission. We want to do mission out of freedom and identity, Spirit and community. And we want to invite people into those things, and that’s why it all connects together. So we call it FISH and Go FISH. Yep.

[45:41] Stephanie:  I am tour guide Barbie right now, my cheeks are killing me from smiling. Guys, our gospel identity is so epic. How privileged are we? God is amazing. Huzzah! All right, so let’s double back to the series that we’ve just completed, the ABC’s of identity, if you will. We’ve just gone through our attachment based, our beliefs based, and our community reinforced identity. And so why don’t we just take this journey, pull it together for us?

[46:22] Marcus: Well, we took this journey partly because, first of all, in my journey, identity wasn’t even on the table. And when it came to discipleship the first thirty years, well, twenty some years of my Christian journey, I don’t remember anybody talking about identity as a thing. And so partly we want to just understand identity is like that foundation on which we build. We have to understand that. And so that’s one, the second was the fact that I have an identity in Christ was eye opening to me. That was something that wasn’t on my radar.

And I think everybody needs to know and be able to explain their identity in Christ. And so that’s why I developed PACT, to make it super simple to explain that this is who I am in Christ. I’m pardoned, I’m adopted, I’m a citizen of the kingdom, and I have a new title, I’m a saint. And obviously there’s more nuanced things I could say, but it gets to the heart of it. There’s this difference though between a legal identity that every Christian has and this more individualized identity that is developed over time, that is developed relationally. And so we see two elements of this.

One is that there is a heart identity. Let me back it up this way, say there’s an attachment identity that is formed relationally as my brain grows and develops. And I need to pay attention to that because it gives me the capacity to grow and to live out of my legal identity. When it comes to community, that’s where I’m now looking at my heart values. I have an identity that God has given to me as a person of mercy, or a person of justice, or a person of order. A person who is characterized a certain way by certain heart values. And it’s the community’s job to recognize those heart values, call them out and reinforce them.

And so you get all three elements of identity this way. You get the legal identity that’s true of all Christians. You get the attachment identity which has to do with the growth of the brain and the development of my sense of self. And then you get the community identity, which is calling out my heart values and reminding me of who I am at all three levels and building this out. And then I’m doing it for others. And when all three of those things are operating together you get the strongest possible foundation for living an effective life. There you go, drop the mic. Right?

[49:02] Stephanie: Huzzah! Huzzah! Sorry, I pumped my fist, but I didn’t say anything. So what are some practical next steps for people coming out of this?

[49:16] Marcus: So first of all, that while I may have this all figured out, it doesn’t mean that it automatically happens every day. You don’t wake up every day and feel like, oh, I am such a victor in Christ today. I have to be aware of my feelings and that feelings are liars, right? They don’t always tell us what’s true. In fact, my feelings can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction. So there are times when I have to remind myself of what is true despite how I feel. It also means that I need to maybe be doing some study for myself to just reinforce, and not just take my word for it that this is true, but actually dive into this a little bit myself.

A great classic book on identity crisis is still Neil Anderson’s, Victory Over the Darkness. When it comes to community we need to be intentionally looking for people with whom we can take off our masks, and looking for people we can trust. And I’m a big believer that I need people at a variety of levels of trust in my life. Not everybody in my life I have to be able to be completely vulnerable with. There are people in my life that it wouldn’t be safe to do that. But it doesn’t mean I can’t have any relationship with them. So I just need to be growing relationships and adding some joy into those relationships.

So some practical next steps. Make sure I’m expanding my circle of people with whom I can share joy. And then specifically sharing, expanding the numbers of people with whom I can be vulnerable with and they can be vulnerable with me. Then I need to be doing some kind of a study on this. And then if I’m looking at repairing my attachment identity, again, that’s where I’m going to be working on skills that I missed out on. And again, Thrive Training is the best I’ve seen in helping people do that.

[51:26] Stephanie: So there’s some practical steps. Yes,very good. All right, I’m going to pull a note from one of our listeners. Cindy says, “When I first started listening to your podcast, I found myself skeptical of your close relationship with your dad. I realized it was because I never had that in my life. It has been really good for me to hear what a positive, healthy, father-daughter relationship is like. Thank you. I’ve also really been enjoying the content.”

[51:51] Marcus: As long as they like the content. No, it’s true. I was commenting earlier when you first shared that with me and how a lot of your life you’ve had to deal with people coming up and almost being angry with you.

[52:06] Stephanie: Yeah, literally. I’ve been scolded my whole life. People have come up to me saying, I hope you appreciate what a blessing it is to have your dad. And anyway, I just have so much compassion. I’m just so, so glad that honestly, it wasn’t even in my mind that was something people would get out of this. We were just thinking hey, I get to share content.

[52:28] Marcus: We were literally thinking about that.

[52:30] Stephanie: And I’ve gotten that feedback a lot since we’ve started. People have enjoyed just our interaction, whatever the content is. And so that blesses my heart. And, yeah, I have a lot of compassion and happiness for people that…..

[52:47] Marcus: It is sad that it’s so rare. And one of the things that I found just as a dad is that you get some people who are like, oh, when they were little, I miss this or that. I’ve always felt like I enjoyed the next stage more than the last one all through growing up. Like, oh, yay, this is cool now we can do this. Our relationship can grow this way and then it can grow this way. I think part of it is that I’ve enjoyed every stage of your life and every stage of Ben’s life. As you grow it just feels like there’s more to be shared now and there’s more that we can relate to. The joy is authentic.

[53:33] Stephanie:  Yes, yes.  And I will also say it’s not that we don’t ever have struggles, but we are very, very authentically happy to be with each other. I just respect and appreciate you so much. And if I haven’t said that enough on this podcast I say it again, that I am constantly just in awe of your brilliance and your compassion. What you hear is what you get you guys, he’s not different.

[54:10] Marcus: We’re not fighting and then say, okay, okay, we got to pull it together, we got a podcast. It’s like you see in the movies sometimes. And part of it is we’ve always tried to just be honest.

[54:29] Stephanie:  That’s what I was gonna say. We’re good at being honest and communicating with each other and it’s a very huge blessing to have you as a counselor my whole life.

[54:43] Marcus: And again, you can only start where you’re at too. So if you’re like, oh, I want a relationship like that. Well, we’ve been working at this our whole life. You just start where you’re at and try to build a little bit more joy than you had before.

[54:56] Stephanie: I will also say, for instance, I think it was the last episode that we had the testimony from the woman who was seventy-seven. She’s mentoring people and having a mentor for herself and she’s growing there. That’s one of the beauties of when we talk about the levels of maturity and the stages of life. Elders are there for shepherding the community, for parenting the community. And so I know a lot of people who don’t have a good relationship with their biological parents, but they have spiritual parents.

[55:31] Marcus: And that’s an excellent point because sometimes there’s nothing you can do to change the nature of your relationship. It’s like they always say, it takes two to do these things. And there’ve been plenty of wonderful parents who haven’t had the blessing of having kids grow up to have a healthy relationship. It’s not like there’s a secret. Like, I did something right and that if anybody just does this one right thing, but it is authentic. We like each other.

[56:06] Stephanie: I was gonna say it is a privilege to count you as my very best friend as well as my father.

[56:12] Marcus: It’s a good thing.

[56:13] Stephanie: : All right, well, after that lovefest, do you want to wrap up this series? Final thoughts?

[56:22] Marcus: It’s hard to wrap up, isn’t it? But, it is fun. What I think throughout this is that one of your core themes in life has been true identity. And I can’t get away from this because a lot of people don’t know that you are a novelist who has yet to be officially published. But it doesn’t mean you don’t write prolifically and someday this is all going to come to a head and people are going to line up to buy your novels.

But there’s always been a theme, I think, in this thing about people searching for their identity. For me, it starts as basic as the story of the ugly duckling. And I can remember telling you this story when you were young and struggling at some different points, but this story has just always been profound to me. So we’re going to wrap up all the theology and everything else with the story of the ugly duckling, and we all know it. There was a baby swan who was raised by ducks and always thought she was a duck. And it turned out later when she didn’t look like everybody else, didn’t act like everybody else, and didn’t see that it’s because her true identity was a swan.

And I think what God wants us to know is that regardless of how our family saw us, regardless of how our church treated us, regardless of what others have said about us, he knows our true identity. He knows who he made us to be and he knows our identity in Christ. He knows what’s gotten broken in our attachment development and he knows what our heart values are. And so God is always going to see us not in terms of our performance, like, have you been a good duck this week even though I made you to be a swan? It’s this idea that God is always seeing us for who we really are and that’s who he loves. He loves the real us.

So I tell people frequently, and I’ve told them this throughout ministry life. God isn’t interested in you performing your way into intimacy with him. He is interested in you being honest with him. God will always meet you at the point of your honesty. Not necessarily because you do things exactly right. And I just leave it there. We got to be honest with God, be vulnerable with God, and realize that he loves us and made us the way we are for a reason.

[58:45] Stephanie: Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, and share with a friend. Do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk Trailblazer.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.