When I was around 10 years old, we were leaving my grandparents' house after having visited them over a holiday weekend. As I was walking out the door, my grandfather stopped me suddenly. He turned me around, lowered his head, looked me square in the eyes, and in a gentle voice said, “Stand up straight and tall. Walk like a soldier... Be proud of who you are.”
I loved my grandfather and respected him very much. His love for God was apparent in everything he did. He always had a smile on his face and, more often than not, you would hear him singing "Amazing Grace."
So, I nodded my head. Not because I understood the full meaning of what he was saying to me, but just to acknowledge that I had heard him. I then turned and walked to the car, got in with my parents, and we left to begin the few-hour journey back home.
But my grandfather's words... they stayed with me my entire life, echoing back at random times throughout it.
Now, I fully admit that during that time in my life I was a very shy child. I was small and thin, and to be honest, would quite often walk with my head held down. So, I could very easily understand the first part of his words to me, “Stand up straight and tall. Walk like a soldier.”
My father had been in the Army and I had seen soldiers before, so I knew how they walked. I took in the words and did from that point on begin walking differently. Head up, shoulders back, chest out. That part was relatively easy, though I still had to make a conscious effort toward doing so.
But the part that eluded me, the part that I just could not seem to comprehend was, “be proud of who you are.” Understanding the words themselves was not hard, but what kept going through my mind was... who am I?
I'm sure that's a question that many of us have asked ourselves at one time or another throughout our lives. I think in many ways it is a normal part of self-discovery, whether we recognize it or not.
My quest for the answer, so to speak, truly started when I was 17 years old as I left home and stepped out into the world on my own to begin my service in the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time I had reached my 21st birthday, I had already set foot on the soil of more than 15 countries, including countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And even though I discovered many things about myself, none of what I experienced during any of that time helped me to understand who I was. Nor did the many years that followed.
My problem was that I had been looking outward and at the world for the answer to that question. I was looking in the wrong place. Sure, I was discovering my skills, abilities, and what I was capable of doing and accomplishing. My character as a man was being formed and molded through my many experiences in the military, the business world after that, and as a missionary to third-world nations, but none of that revealed the answer to my question.
The truth is that it was almost 30 years after my grandfather spoke those words to me before God Himself revealed the answer that eluded me and still eludes many others. And it was only through my time with God, and through my relationship with Him that I began to not only understand... but to know.
There are too many times we walk around with our heads down unwilling and sometimes even unable to lift them up. We walk through life not knowing or understanding who we really are. Instead, we spend too much time listening to the world and focusing on who it says we are.
What the world says to us is wrong.
What the world says to us will many times lead us down very different paths than the one God has prepared for us. What the world says to us is only partial truths and sometimes even complete un-truths. But the world cannot say who we are, because it is not the world who has a say in it.
We might be a husband or wife, a mother or father, a soldier, a business owner, wealthy or homeless, and while we often let those things define us, in the end they are not who we are, because at any moment those things can change.
The truth that we must be seeking is the truth that can come only from God.
It is a truth that cannot and will not change, nor be undone. And regardless of how hard the world tries, there is nothing that the world can say or do that will make it untrue.
The seed my late grandfather planted in me all those many years before took root and grew deep, seeking out the nourishment and the living water of God's Spirit in me until it was time to sprout out and reveal itself.
The who I am… the who we are… is children of God.
At one time or another we have all heard that phrase, but hearing it and knowing it is not the same thing. We must take it in deep, to our very core and let our Father bring us to a full and complete revelation of that truth.
To all who received him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
– John 1:12-13
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
– 1 John 3:1
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
– Galatians 3:26-27
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
– Romans 8:16-17
If we are heirs, then that makes us princes and princesses to a kingdom that is not of this world. And the world, regardless of how hard it may try, cannot take that from us.
If you have confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed with your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you can unashamedly hold your head up high... be proud of who you are... YOU are a child of God!
