Didn't you used to be?

I was watching a television program the other day, binge watching on Netflix I might add as we've discovered a program called Friday Night Lights that we never watched when it was on.

A football player a year out of high school is greeted by someone this way: "didn't you used to be Tim Riggins?"

I haven't been able to get that thought out of my brain lately. I've actually been asked the exact question, with my name substituted, once in a line at the grocery store after I had retired from the newspaper.

For many of us, particularly those of us who have looked into the mirror lately to discover all the mileage on our faces, that question sometimes seems so appropriate.

Didn't you used to be Billy Turner?

A writer/editor.
A father of small children.
A coach.
A worshipper of God eagerly awaiting each new Sunday.
An assistant pastor who sort of understood all that was going on around him.
An author.
A pastor.

Didn't you used to be Billy Turner?

I guess the answer to all this is more of a question than anything else. Where do you get your identity? If identity comes from job or occupation, then yeah, you used to be if you're not doing it any longer. If identity comes from your relationship with God, then I hope the answer is year, you used to be, for to me to settle into a position where you're not growing in Christ is to settle. Period.

There is no resting in discipleship, that I understand. Even when times are particularly difficult and it seems the bad stuff is closing in, we go on. We must, or else the answer to the question will always matter more than the trivial aspect of the question in the first place.

Paul said it this way:  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

I covet your prayers, my friends, for I'm being attacked spiritually. And most of my readers know me real well. They knew me when I was Billy Turner.