Chosen

Who or what defines us?

We live in a label-driven world. Sometimes those labels feel positive, defining us by our accomplishments, our talents, our appearance, but all of those labels are only variables. They rise and fall, shift or disappear, and the danger of rooting our identity in these things is that our value rises and falls with them.

That’s why it’s imperative to root our identity in something unchanging: God. He is our Maker, the one who thought of us and designed us, and therefore only He has the right to define us. Every other label is secondary. God gets the last word.

We are defined by God choosing us.

Look at Ephesians 1:1-14. 

There’s a divine mystery here: God chose us, and yet we also choose Him. Scripture holds both together. As Paul wrote, “We who were the first to hope in Christ” believed (Ephesians 1:12), but only because God had already chosen us and set His love upon us.

Being chosen means that our place in God’s family isn’t random, fragile, or temporary. We were adopted as sons and daughters of the King before anything in creation existed. That’s how secure our identity is in Him.

Chosen by God

To know you are chosen fills every day with holy awe. Being chosen crushes aimlessness and gives us direction. That truth reshapes how we can view ourself, how we endure trials, and how we engage with the world around us.

Undeniable worth

The gospel speaks a better word of the labels that seek to define you, and it is that your worth is not up for debate. You were chosen by God, loved before time began, and sealed with the Holy Spirit. Your identity isn’t fragile, it’s eternal.

That undeniable worth also comes with purpose. Paul writes that God chose us “to be holy and blameless in his sight” and “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:4-6). Our lives matter because we were written into God’s story from before time began.

As Louie Giglio said, “The people who are unshakable through it all are the ones who know they were chosen before it all.”