Your Identity as a Woman

Women are beautiful in a way that is more powerful and unique than the world realizes. Our feminine qualities include strength, beauty, intuition, fidelity, self giving, acceptance, and receptivity. These are qualities that God placed in our natures that empower us women for who we are. We also have four qualities that are completely unique to women, the first one is receptivity. Women have a special way of receiving those they love into their hearts and loving them there. Women are compelled and meant to try to form these deep, loving relationships with others.


The second uniquely feminine quality is generosity. Us women desire to give ourselves freely to everyone we come into contact with. We pour our heart and soul into our relationships with other people. We even go so far as to give up our own bodies for the lives of others, through our unique ability to carry a life within us. This is something only women have been given the ability to do. Through our generosity of our soul and body, others are built up and strengthened, guided towards who they are and are meant to be. 


The third quality is sensitivity, which is often seen as a weakness in our society. However, the sensitivity of us women is what allows us to enter into another person’s perspective in a way that men are unable too. Through our sensitivity we can understand another person’s situation and be their strength. 


The fourth quality extends to all aspects of our being: maternity. Motherhood extends past the relationship of mother and child, motherhood means to protect and safeguard humanity and bring it to its full development. When we put our receptivity, generosity, sensitivity, and maternity to use we are able to strengthen humanity with love and care. 


This is who we are, Ladies. This is how we were built. However, due to a society that has pushed us down, many of us have lost our identity. We have forgotten who we are and are constantly striving to understand it in all the wrong ways. We have no idea how special we are.

The Workout

My favorite workout during the summer is swimming. I like to do a HIIT swimming workout just before sunset. I love doing swimming workouts in the lake because I prefer to do all my workouts outdoors. Lake Ontario and Lake Huron are my gym in the summer.

My workout routine has changed a lot over the years. In my early twenties my main motivation for working out was to lose weight or become fit, it was all about beauty. During my late twenties my motivation changed and became all about performance. My focus was on getting faster,stronger and better. I was focused on getting a better PR every year and winning medals. After getting injured a lot I decided I was done with trying to prove my worth through fitness and sports. It's astonishing what us humans will do to ourselves in the search for meaning and self-worth.


Today my motivation for working out is to take good care of my body. Some weeks I treat my body well, I eat healthy and reach my goal of four workouts per week. On other weeks I eat more cupcakes than green juices and do zero workouts. I have to admit that it was easier to find motivation to work out when what motivated me was fear of not performing well enough or fear of not looking good enough.


Today I'm very content with how I look and I no longer need to have a good PR to feel that my life has worth or meaning. The downside is that contentment sometimes leads me to choose watching TV over going for a bike ride. On the other hand, I still remember what it used to feel like to obsess about my level of fitness. A few years ago I used to work out 5-6 days per week, sometimes twice a day. Today I do 3-4 workouts per week (on a good week). I have a peace, joy and contentment about my body and performance level now that I never want to lose. My body and my strength are gifts to enjoy, but it's not what my body looks like or how fast I can run that gives me my worth as a human-being.


What can easily happen with things like a sport/fitness is that we make it the source that will give us our worth in life. We become addicted to the praise and approval we get from others when we look fit or perform well in a certain sport. But fitness isn't the only thing that can make us addicted when we start relying on it to give us our sense of self-worth. We can get addicted to things like our careers, our achievements, our social status etc. We get addicted to the approval we get from these things so we have to have them.


We know we have become addicted to something when without it we feel insecure, anxious and like we aren't good enough. Good things like our work, relationships, sports etc. have the power to enslave us if we start basing our identity on them. There is a big difference between being good at a sport and needing to be good at it constantly to feel good about oneself.

4x7: Coryn Epps

Coryn Epps shares her story at Oasis Church in Los Angeles. Coryn talks about how she spent many years of her life building her identity based on the praises and attention she got from other people. Coryn was chasing happiness in all the wrong places and over time she ended up in a hopeless place. Coryn developed an eating disorder and depression and was wondering what her purpose was in life. After learning about Jesus everything changed and Coryn was able to take the same passion she had felt toward pursuing success and apply it toward loving other people.

Our True Identity

Everything God has created is beautiful, unique, special and created for a particular purpose. Each individual on this Earth is precious to God. Us humans love to label people; rich, poor, smart, stupid, beautiful, ugly etc. The truth is that we are all beautiful, special and precious to God. You might not love and appreciate your annoying neighbor but God loves her. You might not love and appreciate yourself, but God loves and appreciates you so much! He's just waiting for you to realize that.

When we finally find our identity in Christ we experience an incredible freedom. When we realize that we are special just the way we are, without the need to achieve something first, without owning the right possessions, without a particular status or job title, that's when we find freedom. We are precious to God just the way we are, because we are made by Him and nothing that God has created is less than amazing.

Many of us spend so much of our time in life trying to prove to others that we matter, that we are important people, but there really isn't any need for us to prove anything. We try buying more expensive things to prove our worth or maybe we try achieving more in our careers to show others (and ourselves) that we matter. But no matter how much we achieve we are not worth even a bit more than the homeless person in God's eyes, we are all equal. We are neither worth one bit less than somebody else. There is no other person on Earth that God values higher than you. You are not less worth than that successful and beautiful person you admire. No matter how many people have tried to put you down and make you believe that you don't matter, in God's eyes you are royalty.

In front of the God of the universe we are all equal, precious and important. The feeling you get when your eyes are opened to this truth is amazing! It gives you freedom to be who you are. You don't need to do more to be worthy in God's eyes, you are already loved and cherished by him. The day we understand this important truth we can stop striving for more money, possessions, achievements etc. with the goal to feel worthy. We will now have an entirely different motivation behind why we do what we do. We work hard in our careers because we want to love others, contribute to this world and make a difference. We buy new possessions simply because we need them and enjoy them, not because we try to measure up to some cultural ideal.

We accept, appreciate and love ourselves because we know that we are children of God and are very precious and special to him. Knowing this truth we find a peace, freedom and joy in life that is unlike anything we have ever experienced before. We are happy to be alive, excited about the future and eager to spend the rest of our lives serving God through loving Him, loving ourselves, and loving other people. When we have found our true identity in Christ we have also found a peace, freedom and joy that can never be taken away from us. People can leave us, people can hurt us or criticize what we do, but God's love for us will always stay the same.

God doesn't love us only when we are good, God's love for each one of us is constant and unchangeable. Even in the midst of our deepest darkness and failures God's love for us stays the same. You will not find love this pure and constant from any other source in the universe. We will go through both easier times and more difficult times in life but regardless of what situation we find ourselves in God's love for us stays the same. We are never alone. We can call on His name at any time and he will be there to offer comfort, strength, hope and a future. God will carry us through both the ups and downs of our lives. We live in a broken world, filled with broken people, but God's love has the power to make us whole again.

What happens when we base our identity on our achievements?

We live in a culture today where power and achievements are celebrated more than anything else. The cultural ideal is to be strong and successful. It's easy to start believing that our worth is connected to our achievements, but what happens when we start to base our identity on our success? What happens the day that success is gone? How do we view ourselves then? Baron Batch shares his story.

Restoring a broken identity

These are the stories about four young women who went through really difficult things in life that left them broken and without hope. They all ended up with broken dreams and identities but God restored their identities and brought healing into their lives. Today these four women live to help others who are hurting.