The Double-Sided Counterfeit

 

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Psalm 139:16–17

Discovering Who God Is, and Who You Are

For months, two phrases have been relentlessly chasing me. They followed me into the quiet moments of worship, they echoed through the Sunday sermons, and they popped up on the pages of my Bible during the quiet but crowded spaces of my busy life.

Know who God is.
Know who you are.

Of course, I understand the English words, yet I sensed a deeper essence behind this commission. I finally stopped running and decided to sit with these thoughts.

Side One: Who God Is

        When we think about knowing God, we are standing at the edge of an infinite ocean. We are catching glimpses of His absolute sovereignty, His perfect and permissible will, His unchanging character, and His immeasurable love. Through the Word of God, we grasp what grace is and, in our limited, human capacity, a fraction of His infinite nature. Crucially, I realized this truth: 

God is who He says He is, not who I think He is. 

        We cannot recreate Him in our own image, nor can we reduce Him to our comfort levels. Scripture reminds us of His unshakeable nature in Malachi 3:6, "For I am the Lord, I do not change;" and His supreme authority is declared in Isaiah 46:9–10, 

"Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; 
I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, 
and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, 
‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.’"

Side Two: Who You Are

        Then comes the second flip of the coin: knowing who we are. True identity means embracing a simple truth: 

I am who God says I am, nothing more and nothing less. 
It also means I am not what God says I am not.

        Yet, as I looked closely at my own heart, I realized I had been living with a double understanding. I had cherry-picked the beautiful, comfortable parts of my Christian identity, while simultaneously holding onto the old identities, insecurities, and labels that my past and my present circumstances handed me. I was trying to balance two different versions of reality, like two sides of a coin, like two sides of a counterfeit coin.

        There is no such thing as a coin with one real face and one fake face; if one side is counterfeit, the whole coin is a fraud. My mixed understanding of God and myself was two faces of one coin; but one counterfeit coin.

The Lesson of the Rolex

        A few years ago, someone proudly showed me a Rolex watch. I have lived long enough to know that a Rolex is a masterpiece of craftsmanship, excellence, and immense value. As I was admiring it, the person smiled and whispered a secret: it was a fake.

        Having never handled a genuine Rolex before, I had no way of distinguishing the real from the replica. It looked shiny, it ticked, and to my untrained eye, it looked like an absolute thing of beauty.

        But here is the truth about counterfeits: you do not learn to spot a fake by studying the variations of falsehood; you learn to spot a fake by intimately knowing the original. A bank teller does not study every bad photocopy of a note; they handle the real currency so often that their hands instantly reject the texture of a fraud. 

        We fall into trouble when we establish our value based on human perceptions rather than the truth of God, as Galatians 1:10 warns, 

"For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? 
For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ."

The Man in the Winepress

        There is a powerful story in the Bible that proves this exact truth. In Judges 6, we meet a man named Gideon. He is hiding inside a winepress, secretly threshing wheat to keep it from being stolen by invading enemies; he is terrified, insecure, and acting out of deep survival mode.

        Suddenly, the Angel of the Lord appears to him and says in Judges 6:12, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."

        Gideon looks around, completely confused. He looks at his circumstances, he looks at his fear, and he answers in Judges 6:15,

"O my Lord, how can I save Israel? 
Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, 
and I am the least in my father’s house."

Gideon was holding a counterfeit coin of reality. 

On one side, he thought he knew who God was; a God who had abandoned them.
On the other side, he thought he knew who he was; a weak, forgotten coward.

        But notice what God does next: God does not argue with Gideon about his weaknesses; instead, God reveals His own presence and character, promising in Judges 6:16, 

"Surely I will be with you". 

Later in the story, Gideon builds an altar and names it The-Lord-Is-Peace.

        Gideon had to learn who God was; Sovereign, Present, and Peace; before he could accept who he truly was: a mighty warrior. The moment he encountered the true character of God, the counterfeit version of himself melted away; he stopped acting like a coward and started leading like a king.

God did not call him a mighty warrior as a prophetic or motivational speech.

He called Gideon a mighty warrior because that’s what God said he is, not who he is going to be.

Your Invitation

        If you are tired of carrying a double-sided counterfeit identity, partly trusting God’s grace, but partly living bound to your circumstances, past failures, or insecurities, the invitation today is simple:

Align !!

Stop trying to fix a fake version of yourself; shift your gaze away from the mirror and onto your Creator. Align your mind with His unchanging character, His sovereignty, and His immeasurable love, resting in the reality of Psalm 100:3, 

"Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; 
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture."

Agree!!

When old insecurities whisper that you are forgotten, or defined by your past, reject the counterfeit; choose to agree with what God says about you. We must capture every rogue thought, as 2 Corinthians 10:5 commands, 

".....casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

I am who God says I am, and I am not what He says I am not.

Know who God is.
Know who you are.

Step out of your hiding place. Lay down the heavy burden of the double-faced counterfeit reality. 
Get to know the heart of the Father.
And let Him tell you exactly who He is, and also who you are.