Hey everyone is Leslie Ludi host of the Set-A-Pah girl podcast biblical encouragement for women of all ages. I'm really

excited about this week's topic discovering your true identity because we feel

a constant pressure as women in our culture today to somehow figure out who we are and what makes us unique and special.

I feel like almost every book and message that is coming out for women today is somehow

centered around this idea of finding your unique identity, discovering who you really

are, learning how to be yourself.

And as a result, so many of us are consumed

with self-discovery, self-expression, self-identity,

and self-fulfillment. But it's so refreshing to realize in the midst of

all this pressure that the Bible points us to an entirely different pattern for finding our

true identity. We're not actually supposed to look to self to define who we are, but to Jesus Christ.

And that can be such a freeing thing to realize, because I remember when I first began to feel that pressure to figure out who I was and what made me unique and special and what my niche or my identity was in the culture, I couldn't figure it out. It was like I constantly heard this message of, you know, tap into your true self and learn who you really are and express yourself to the world, but I didn't really know how to do that I really didn't

know who I was and so I began to feel like okay do I even have value and worth because I can't

figure out what this unique thing about me is or what my true self really is.

And then I began to realize that I was looking to the wrong source to define who I was.

I was looking to myself instead of to Jesus and that was such a refreshing wake-up

call for me. In Psalm 8611 it says those who look to him are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. And

radiant in that verse means to shine and to give light. It's very similar to what

Jesus said in Matthew 5 when he tells us you are the light of the world.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father

in heaven. And so when we are truly shining his light to this world,

then the result of that is not that people will see more of us, but that they will

...