Much of today’s identity-seeking culture reflects a problem we’ve been bypassing for decades in Christian formation: we’ve told people to “know your identity in God” without first forming them in who God is. What is meant to be life-centering ends up being flimsy advice, especially under the bombardment of cultural pressures. Without a solid foundation, we risk temporary identities formed in abstraction, by fads or sentiment. Solid identity is formed in relationship, and an eternal identity is rooted in who God has declared his creation to be. And if our children do not know him as he has revealed himself, they cannot build an identity in him at all—we’ve left them to build it in the dark.
Many of us raising children now grew up in youth groups that handed out this language and expected us to prevail through college, into adulthood, and build a life on it. Most of us were not introduced to God’s full revelation in the Bible, and even fewer were taught to walk across the bridge from knowing God’s character to understanding what that means for who we are. It was not until I encountered Christ in a deeply personal way and was drawn by the Holy Spirit to search for the God revealed in the Old Testament that the phrase began to take on substance. Encountering him reordered everything. Knowing God reshaped everything. Who he is became the bedrock for who I am, even though I had been a Christian for over 30 years by that point.
My own path included a delayed awakening, shaped by an early marriage, divorce, miscarriages, and suffering—experiences that all threatened to define who I was—until I felt a deep call to immerse myself in the Old Testament. It is there that God names himself and reveals his character with extraordinary clarity. What struck me again and again was the richness of God’s names. Each one I studied carried covenant weight and a call to right relationship with a holy God.
This call to relationship cuts through the scholarly tendency to keep distance or remain theoretical. When God shows up in scripture, declaring yet another name and revealing himself to flawed and ordinary individuals, we are invited to encounter him. These names are not labels; they are doorways into his character, his covenant, and his nearness. Each encounter is deeply personal, meeting our lack and weakness with his overflowing goodness.
At the center of these revelations is the name Abba, a name that carries the invitation that, if accepted, reorients us from striving to belonging. Before God is known as provider, healer, or shepherd, he is known as Father. Yet, many carry wounds created by earthly fathers, and those wounds distort this first revelation. Until that place is healed and this truth is settled, the rest of his character will feel distant or conditional, and we will struggle to receive our identity as sons and daughters.
Jesus addresses this fractured identity directly in his parable of the Prodigal Son. (For a breathtaking retelling of this parable, read Sergio’s post here.) This parable contains two distortions of identity that still threaten us today. One son rejects his father outright, choosing life on his terms and seeking fulfilment apart from him. The other son remains near but builds his identity on performance, feeling every inch a servant or employee, not a son. Though their expressions differ, both their identities are disconnected from the Father’s heart, and both must return.
Identity is restored through repentance and return.
Repentance is not merely naming the rebellion or even turning away from it; it is coming to our senses. It is the moment we recognize that the life we’ve been building apart from Abba Father cannot sustain us. Return is where the power of that rebellion is broken because we receive again what was never withdrawn: sonship, belonging, and inheritance.
And this return does more than heal personal patterns. It breaks generational ones.
Many of us carry generational patterns—ways of thinking, reacting, and living that were handed down to us from our ancestors (1 Peter 1:18). These patterns may have been shaped by fear, shame, control, addiction, idolatry, rebellion, and distorted beliefs about God and ourselves. Scripture tells us these patterns carry covenant consequences across generations. Yet, Scripture also demonstrates that what is passed down can be interrupted:
If my people who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. —2 Chronicles 7: 14
In the language of the Prodigal Son parable, this promise is for those who come to their senses, return to the Father, and seek his face. He hears before we finish the journey, He forgives before we make our speech, offering to return in a lesser position. And he restores our destiny as my sons and daughters.
When we begin to live through the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:!5), false identities lose their grip and new ways of thinking take root. In response to the call to put off the old and put on the new (Ephesians 4:22-24), our minds are renewed (Romans 12:2). The Holy Spirit forms new pathways in us, aligning our hearts with the Truth of who we are becoming in Christ.
As this transformation unfolds, the Holy Spirit brings conviction, not to condemn but to invite us into freedom. We are faced with a choice: do we hide our sins or, like the prodigal son, come to our senses?
We repent, not only for our own participation, but also for the way we’ve remained in quiet agreement with what has been handed down. From there, we renounce agreements with lies. We name what is not from God and surrender every false allegiance. Then we cooperate with the Holy Spirit to fill the places where the old patterns once lived, replacing them with the truth. We allow the Holy Spirit to train us in the practice of new patterns of obedience, learning to live as those who belong to the Lord.
This is how generational patterns are broken. This is how families move out from under covenant curses and begin to thrive under covenant blessings—not simply because what was wrong has been identified, but because allegiance has been transferred.
Which brings us back to the beginning: Identity is not something we construct but Someone we return to: Abba, Father.
If you’re exploring what it means to know God and live from your identity in him, I share more on this journey through Revelationship and my ongoing writing. You can find more here: https://substack.com/@cgarland and at Revelationship.net.
Cathy Colver Garland is a writer, theologian, and former COO who is passionate about helping others move from information about God into a lived relationship with him. She co-authored Revelationship: Transformative Intimacy With Christ, the KNOWN Devotional, and writes regularly on identity, surrender, and the unfolding life of Christ within us.
