“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5 

Imagine that you are touring a home you are considering purchasing and in the living room you see a huge crack in the wall running from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. This would be a big deal and something to seriously consider when deciding if you want to purchase the home or not. A crack in the wall reveals a much deeper foundational problem. You wouldn't simply fix the crack with putty and call it good. For the real problem to be fixed, you would need to go down to the basement and deal with the often unseen underlying foundational issues that are causing the visible cracks. The same is true in our own lives. The problems and issues we face in our own hearts and minds often come from an unseen root cause that hides beneath the surface. Because we don't see the underlying issue, it often goes unaddressed and ignored. That root cause is always identity. Identity can be summed up in one simple question: "Who am I?"

The foundation of a healthy life is having a healthy identity. In fact, all problems and issues in our world can be traced back to this single cause of holding onto a wrong identity we were never meant to adopt. That's a strong statement, but if there were no wrong identities, people wouldn't strap bombs on themselves and tyrants wouldn't enslave their people. In fact, all sin comes out of holding onto a wrong identity. This question of "Who am I?" carries so much power, both for if we get the answer correct, but also for those who get it wrong and choose to live their lives under a false sin-filled identity that God never meant for us to live in.

In just this one verse from the book of Jeremiah, God reveals so much about his own nature and also so much about who he wants us to be. We see that God formed us in the womb. God knew us. God cares for us. God sees us. God has set us apart for a special purpose. We are not an accident. We are not just a meaningless speck in an infinite universe. God created us on purpose and for a purpose. God knew who we were going to be before we were even born, yet he still loves us, And loves us so much that he will not force us to follow him or live out his identity for us. We get to choose, and often this choice boils down to which path we will walk in life, the path with an identity rooted in Christ, or a path with our identity rooted in self or in this world. Will we live our lives as the person who God called and created us to be, or will we live our lives based on the identity that the world around us has placed upon us?