When Your Performance Becomes Your Identity
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
And behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." — Matthew 3:17
The Father said it before Jesus had preached a sermon, healed a body or gone to a cross. Well pleased - with a Son who had not yet "done" anything public. That order is deliberate. Identity came first; ministry came out of it. When the order reverses in a believer, performance becomes identity, and the results are predictable.
The signs
- A good result makes you feel like a good person; a bad one makes you feel worthless.
- You cannot rest without guilt.
- Praise is oxygen and criticism is suffocation.
- You resent people who succeed without trying as hard as you.
- You are afraid to stop, because you do not know who you would be if you did.
None of these is a sign of wickedness. They are signs of a person carrying his identity on his shoulders, and the load is heavier than anyone was made for.
Why it happens to believers especially
Church can reward performance without meaning to. The faithful server, the gifted singer, the reliable giver - all good, all quietly at risk of hearing "well done" so often that it starts to sound like "you are worth something because of this". The Father's "well pleased" said something different: you are worth everything before you have done anything.
The way back
Jesus gave the picture: a vine and its branches. "Apart from me you can do nothing." The branch does not perform to stay on the vine; it bears fruit because it is on the vine. Fruitfulness is a consequence of union, not a condition of it. When you know that, results stop being a verdict on you and become gifts through you.
A daily reset
Every morning, before the day's performance, hear the Jordan verdict as your own - because in Christ it is. Beloved. Well pleased. Then go and work, hard and well, as someone who has nothing to prove. The work will be better for it. And when it fails, as work sometimes does, you will still be who you were at dawn.