Who Are You Speaking Identity Over?

We’ve spent this series talking about receiving your identity as something given rather than earned. But identity doesn’t just get received in private. It gets spoken over people, out loud, by other people. And that means you’re not only on the receiving end of this. You’re also someone else’s voice. The question worth asking isn’t just what you believe about yourself. It’s what you’re telling the people around you about who they are.

Words That Name

Scripture is full of moments where God renames people in the middle of their story, before they’ve proven anything, as a way of telling them who they actually are. Abram becomes Abraham. Simon becomes Peter. A name gets spoken over someone ahead of the evidence, and the naming itself becomes part of what shapes them into it. That pattern didn’t stop being true just because we don’t usually do formal renaming ceremonies anymore. Words still name people. They just do it more quietly, in a thousand small comments instead of one dramatic scene.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

— Ephesians 4:29

Think about the words that got spoken over you when you were young, the offhand comments that stuck for decades. Some of them probably built something in you. Some of them are still things you’re trying to unlearn. That’s the weight words carry, whether or not the person saying them meant for it to last that long.

The People Waiting on Your Words

There are people in your life right now who are still forming their sense of who they are, and you have more influence on that than you probably realize. Your kids, still figuring out whether they’re capable and worth loving. Your spouse, who hears your tone more than your words. The person at church who feels invisible most weeks and would notice if someone actually saw them. You don’t have to manufacture something false to speak life over people. You just have to notice what’s true about them and say it before they have to go fishing for it.

You will spend today speaking identity over somebody, whether you mean to or not. The only real question is whether it’s identity rooted in what’s true, or identity rooted in whatever mood you happen to be in.