Sorry for the week with no posts, but vacation was good.

WHAT IS IDENTITY?

Identity, to make it short and sweet, is your understanding of who you are. It's not what you can do, or what you look like, or even who someone else says you are. It's who you really are; and, more specifically, it's who you understand yourself to be.

The term ID is short for "identification." Your parents probably have driver's licenses, which are considered ID. You might carry a school ID or some other kind of ID card. That little card says stuff about you--stuff that is uniquely you. It usually includes a picture of you, as well as some other information.

But whatever information is listed on that ID isn't your real identity.

We (Marko and Scott) remember when we were middle schoolers; we were just starting to think about who we were, what made us unique, how we were different from and the same as our parents, how we were different from and the same as our best friends. Those thoughts are the beginning work of figuring out your identity.

Today, we could say all these things about ourselves:

- I'm boy/girl crazy

- I'm a athlete

- I'm a child

- I'm a follower of Jesus

- I'm a student

- I'm an author (Hey, you're reading a book we wrote!)

- I'm a movie lover

But that's just a start. What kind of dad am I, and what kind of dad do I want to be? Because there are lots of different ways to be a dad, right?

One of the reasons our culture started making space for the teenage years (remember, the teenage years weren't even recognized in our culture as an age group until a little more than 100 years ago) was to allow people your age to figure out their identities. It's a long and challenging process. And you'll probably think of yourself in lots of different ways over the next several years--that's okay.

Ask yourself: Who am I, really? Who do I want to become? And, most importantly, who did God make me to be?

**

Taken from "My Changes" by Mark Oestreicher and Scott Rubin, copyright 2008 Youth Specialties/Zondervan. Used by permission.