April 24, 2025

Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, Novelist and Story Coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is Thursday, April 24, 2025, and this is episode #4 in Series 2025. This episode is titled, “Do You Know Who You Are?”

Let me ask the question again. Do You know who you are?

You may be thinking, What a ridiculous question! Of course, I know who I am. I’m an accountant. Or, I’m a plumber. Or, I’m an electrician. Or, I’m a lawyer. Or, I’m a teacher. Or, I’m a basketball coach. Or, I’m the CEO of XYZ Company. Or, I’m a mom. Or, I’m a grandfather—and on and on and on it can go.

But let me ask you a question: Is that who you really are? What if your career were suddenly stripped from you? What if, God forbid, your family and friends were suddenly taken from you? Who would you be then?

Have you ever considered this profound question? If not, I would urge you to do so. For you see, who you believe you are is at the very foundation of your purpose on this earth. Who you believe yourself to be will determine your path in life, and whether that path takes you to fulfillment or to destruction, to life or to death.

Sadly, most of us grow up with the idea that we will discover our identity in our job or career. And so, we plod along, year after year, until one day we realize that, despite the outward success, we feel empty on the inside.

As a Life Coach, I have had numerous clients over the years come to me in their forties and fifties, admitting that the career they thought would satisfy them never did. In almost every single case, the client discovered that he was not living in God’s purpose for his life, but in his own.

Recently, I have been discipling my three teenage granddaughters using the outstanding Lifeway Bible study titled Defined. It was created by the Kendrick Brothers, producers of several powerful Christian movies, including The Overcomer. (As an aside, if you haven’t seen The Overcomer, I urge you to do so.)

In the Defined series for Girls, author and Bible teacher Priscilla Shirer discusses the topic of identity with a group of young women who face the identity struggle all of us face at some point in life. You, too, may be struggling to know who you are and why you’re here on this earth. You, too, may be wondering how to discover who you really are. If so, stay with me until the end of this podcast. I’m going to give you some insights you may never have considered before in your journey toward discovering who you really are.

Now, hear what I’m going to say next because it is a game-changer.

There is only one way to discover who you truly are, and that is by turning to God for the answer. I’m going to repeat that because it’s critically important: There is only one way to discover who you truly are, and that is by turning to God for the answer.

Now, before you get upset with me, consider these four points, taken from the Defined study:

1_God made you. Only the one who made something can define what it is. If you create someting—let’s say a work of art or a tool of some sort—only you have the right to say what it is.

2_God owns you. He purchased you with the greatest price of all, the Blood of His Son Jesus Christ. If you purchase something, it’s yours and only you have the right to do with it what you choose.

3_God has authority over you. Only the creator of something has authority over his creation. Only the creator of something can determine the purpose for which he created it. Since God created you, He alone can determine your purpose. Only you have authority over something you create.

4_ God knows you better than anyone knows you, even you yourself. Because God made you, no one knows you better than He does. So no one else has the right to tell you who you are. If you create a painting, no one besides you has the right to tell you what the painting means.

Now, considering these four points, doesn’t it make sense then that God alone can tell you who you are? Of course it does!

But, instead of going to God to tell us who we really are, we go to other people who don’t know us the way God knows us. We take the word of friends, and we base our life decisions on what they tell us about ourselves.

Or, if we don’t like what friends tell us, we turn to drugs, or alcohol, or sex, or food. We allow those things to define us. But all of these are the wrong places to go. All of these false sources of our identity will lead us to only one place, and that place is destruction.

Bottomline, only God has the right to tell you who you really are. He alone can give you your identity. And the good news is that He already has given you your identity. You just need to discover it. God knows who you really are, who He created you to be, and He wants you to know as well. But, unless you turn to Him, you will never discover who you are. Instead, you will discover a false imitation of who God made you to be.

I can hear your next question now. Dr. MaryAnn, how can I know who God made me to be?

I’m glad you asked.