Quite often, we're asked to be honest about our weaknesses and shortcomings -- job interviews ask us to disclose this, churches obsess about it,  and accountability groups major on our failings.  There's nothing wrong with being honest about our weaknesses, but there's something more worthy of our attention:  it's the vein of gold within:

"Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness; yet, perhaps, as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of." -- Jonathan Swift

The vein of gold is where God focuses his attention:  he is obsessed with what's most alive, radiant, and strong in you.  A vibrant seam of gold.

We're often told to "find your identity in Christ alone" so that we don't take our need for validation to other, false substitutes.  I think that's a good idea; but I think most of us don't get the follow-up conversation we need on this issue.

For example, "What the heck does that mean?  How am I supposed to 'find my identity only in Christ?'  Do I pray more?  -  Try harder to think how much God loves me when I feel wounded?" 

How do you obtain an "in Christ alone" identity?" Here are two things that come to me:

1.  It's about being a daughter or a son, first.  More than what we can offer the world by means of our giftedness or calling, we first rest in, then offer our identity as sons and daughters of God.  This is often particularly difficult for me, as I want you to tell me how much what I do for you means.  I want to find validation in how much you respect me as a writer and teacher.  But this can never, no matter how much our gifts are genuinely needed, heal our identities.  We must find confidence in our identities as sons and daughers, first.

2.  It's about hearing our new name.  Abram becomes 'Abraham.'  Jacob becomes 'Israel.'  Saul becomes 'Paul.'  The new name expresses your new identity, uniqueness, and what you mean to God in a way that no one else does.  It is your particularity.  Hearing your new name helps heal the wounds -- those blows that were designed to take you out of play and to prevent you from offering what the world needs from you.  As for me, I remember God whispering, "Jim, you are my Aragorn."  He may not ever whisper that to you, but he knew what it would mean for me to hear that.

Listen, daughter or son, and rest there.

Then listen for your new name.  It is waiting for you.

There was more than one incarnation.  Jesus wasn't the first word that God made flesh.  There were many before him, and many since.  He was simply the fullest, unhindered and truest incarnation of God's speaking.

God creates by speaking:  Power goes out,  creativity happens.  When God wants to get something done, he speaks. Whatever it is -- an orchid, a zebra, a person -- he voices it and something is formed.

You, too, are a spoken incarnation, a living word (small "w," of course).  As Robert Benson suggests in his book, The Echo Within - Finding Your True Calling, there is an incarnate word that has been spoken into you from day one.   And that incarnate word is unique to you.  (Your new heart is at the center of your unique identity.)  Since God had something specific in mind that his world needed, he voiced that specific thing into you:  "Now I will give the world what it needs through the incarnate word, "your name here".

When God works in a person, he does it in them, as them.  You express something God wants to say, but he does so as you, not simply in you.  He is making his ongoing incarnation personal.  There is nothing generic about it.  As God uniquely and supremely made a statement in the fleshed-out Word, Jesus, so he continues to make a statement in you, as you.  You are the new fleshed-out word.

And the word became...you.