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Your Identity in Christ | Seeing Yourself Through God's Eyes
September 10, 2026 · 54 min
Today we're revisiting one of our favorite Hope Talks conversations about identity and learning to see yourself through God's eyes instead of through the opinions of others, your past, or the lies you've come to believe.
Series Hope Talks Podcast Videos September 10, 2026 · 54 min · Hope Talks Podcast Videos
Today we're revisiting one of our favorite Hope Talks conversations about identity and learning to see yourself through God's eyes instead of through the opinions of others, your past, or the lies you've come to believe. ...more Show the full description Show less Today we're revisiting one of our favorite Hope Talks conversations about identity and learning to see yourself through God's eyes instead of through the opinions of others, your past, or the lies you've come to believe.
Series Hope Talks Podcast Videos 113K followers
Hope for the Heart is a worldwide biblical counseling, coaching, and caregiving ministry founded by June Hunt in 1986. We’re passionate about helping people
113K followers
In this video 0:00 Understanding Identity in Christ13:00 Replacing Lies with Biblical Truth29:00 Practical Application and Forgiveness38:00 Growing in Awe of God and Group Study47:00 Living Out Your Identity
Understanding Identity in Christ 0:00 Today on Hope Talks, we are talking about 1 of my favorite discussions within our ministry, and that's the concept of seeing yourself through God's eyes. It's basically knowing your identity in0:11 Christ. Sometimes we undersell ourselves. Sometimes we oversell ourselves. What we want to do is we want to right size. We want to Christ size our concept of our identity. We0:23 wanna see ourself through God's eyes.0:25 Yeah. And a lot of our conversation today is based around June Hunt's 31 day devotional, Seeing Yourself Through God's Eyes. So you can find a link for that in the show notes. And if you've been listening to Hope Talks0:35 for a while or you enjoy this conversation, be sure to take a moment and just follow the podcast. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can follow along on the Hope for the Heart channel. So thank you for listening, and0:45 thank you for your support.0:47 Welcome to Hope Talks. We're your hosts. I'm Haley Scully along with Dustin Anderson, and we wanna give you every reason for hope for every challenge in life because hope means everything.1:02 This is a devotional we have, that, June and the team put together while ago Mhmm. Years ago. But it's kinda 1 of these concepts that I think is foundational to a lot of our ministry, to a lot of1:14 our keys and resources. And
1:17 Foundational to my soul.
1:18 That's right. And as we yeah. I wanted to just ask upfront as we were praying, you had said that this is just your favorite your favorite topic, your favorite thing. So
1:29 Mhmm.
1:29 Why is seeing yourself through God's eyes such a such a favorite thing for you?
1:34 You know, sometimes it's what's that saying about don't miss the forest for the trees. Don't miss the trees for a forest 1 way or the other. Yeah. Seeing yourself through God's eyes. When we say those
1:46 words, I think there's many of us that, especially those of us who are Christians or, you know, feel like we've been at church. We know some things. We'll say
1:58 we need to see ourselves through God's eyes, which is ultimately understand our identity in Christ. Yep. Because scripture, if you peel back all the layers of that, God sees us through Jesus.
2:10 So Jesus is our filter. So seeing ourself through God's eyes means that he sees us through Christ. When we say it though, it sounds like we kinda know that we
2:22 understand that. Short story long, Dustin,
2:25 this is
2:25 to tell you why it's my favorite. When I 1st came to hope for the heart, I, you know, I was baptized as a little girl. I prayed the prayer in the front seat of like a 19 81 cream
2:37 colored Cadillac, whatever. Yeah. I looked up at the stars and I asked Jesus into my heart. And so that started the whole lesson of that. When I started at hope for the
2:48 heart, I had been through seminary. I had gone to every church, you know, church camp every year, growing up. I knew all the things I had been in church and in the word for a long, long time.
3:00 Get through seminary fast forward. I'm starting to see clients here at hope for the heart. And I start to walk through the very practical pages of the devotional. You are
3:12 precious. You are chosen. You are born again. It's actually, I am are the, the statements I am justified. I am forgiven. Yeah. And I thought I'm gonna help
3:24 these ladies that I'm counseling. I'm gonna help them do
3:27 this. Yeah.
3:28 You know, they need to know their identity in Christ. So let's start with seeing yourself through God's eyes. And so I'm not very good at I don't have a poker face. I'm not very good at faking it, honestly.
3:40 And so I would work with these ladies in session, and then I would walk them out. And then I would think, I don't believe anything that we just talked about.
3:49 Wow.
3:50 The way I kind of say it is like the holy spirit would be tapping me on the shoulder. Hey, how about you? Yeah. You know, I'm in there counseling these ladies that you are precious and God loves you and you are chosen.
4:01 Yeah. And at that season in my life, I kind of in particular wasn't feeling that. So I'm gonna pause right here. Is there anything you wanna respond to in
4:13 that so far before I because you asked me a big question because this is my favorite.
4:18 Yeah. A couple of things. Where can I start? 1, the devotional itself. Yeah. The so that's a 31 day devotional. Yeah. And, it just kinda walks through statements of your
4:30 identity in Christ. So each day is kind of like, I am loved by God. I am adopted.
4:35 Super short. Super powerful.
4:37 I am forgiven. I am made new. I am washed. Mhmm. So it's a way of to me, it's almost like a spiritual discipline where it helps you understand your identity in Christ, what
4:49 God says about you. It also helps correct any just underlying lies Right.
4:56 Or, you
4:56 know, maybe false beliefs about yourself. And, yeah, to me, it's it's just a great concept of really growing in your walk with
5:08 Christ. I feel like, seeing yourself through God's eyes is 1 of these concepts where it really gets at the root of a lot of beliefs about ourselves. Yeah. So that's kind of the general
5:20 concept of seeing yourself through God's eyes. But 1 of the things that came to mind when you said just growing up being baptized, all of that, I thought of the, the story of Jesus' baptism. I think it's in Matthew.
5:33 He comes out of the water and hears a voice from heaven that says, this is my beloved son. This is my son whom I love. With you, I am well pleased. And I remember having a pastor years ago back in college who said who
5:44 had said, when you kinda become a Christian, that's how God sees you.
5:50 Mhmm.
5:50 He looks at you and says, this is my son whom I love. With you, I am well pleased. This is my daughter whom I love with you, I am well pleased. So that was kind of like where I started 1st understanding that concept of,
6:02 like, there's a way God sees me, and when I think through that, it's often different than how I see myself. And I should I should probably 9.9
6:13 before the time over here. Yeah.
6:14 And I should I would do well to think on how God sees me.
6:19 Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. A lot of times we know those truths. You can read scripture, the whole Bible, and you get to the end and you still feel a guilt or a
6:31 shame or you haven't had Yeah. So we know these truths, but what I found is I wasn't living as if I knew those truths. I didn't have them in my heart. I had it in my head
6:42 and a lot of the a lot of the people that I was working with, they had it in their head head, like, yeah, I'm precious. I'm chosen. I'm adopted. Like, all the things that scripture tells us, all the truths and the
6:54 tenants. But do I live as if I believe that?
6:59 Yeah.
7:00 So a lot of the ladies that I worked with when I 1st started counseling, you know, there would be certain certain struggles that they were experiencing in their life. Maybe it was parenting or marriage or, you know,
7:10 their job, or they have all these things that maybe brings them to counseling. Mhmm.
7:15 It's
7:16 kinda like setting a New Year's resolution. Like, I want to do this. When a council lead comes in, they want to achieve something. Yeah. They have a goal. They wanna fix something. So it's like setting a New Year's
7:27 resolution. Right? Yeah. So you set that resolution. I want this kind of change, but I realize if we change right now I I used to say it
7:39 was like holes in a bucket. If there is a hole in the bucket and you've got a you've got a bucket, if you will. Dustin, imagine hole in a bucket, A life bucket. And your marriage, your parenting, your
7:51 identity, maybe employ all those things are different holes in the bucket. Mhmm. And sand is pouring out. We can start to consider together what changes do you need to make in your marriage? What changes do you need to
8:01 make in your parenting? Like, we can start to address all of those issues, but if there's other holes still in the bucket, you're still losing ground. You're still sand is still pouring out.
8:13 And so when you start with understanding who we are in Christ, just like you said, how does God see me? If I am found in Jesus,
8:25 how does God see me? That gives us a new bucket. It replaces the bucket. If we're getting ready to start new year's resolutions. Now, if I understand who I
8:37 am, that I am chosen, I am precious. I am accepted. I am given the mind of Christ. I have been given work of my hands to do these short daily devotionals. If
8:49 I really start to believe that if I get a new bucket, then I am working in those different areas of my life from the right foundation.
9:00 Right.
9:00 So that is why, to me, it is the most important concept. If we're wanting to help people have hope, if we're wanting to help people really experience transformation in their life,
9:12 that 1st thing is whether you like it or not. And I didn't, I did not like it, whether you like it or not, you gotta start understanding who God says you are and start practicing those muscles. So for me, when
9:24 I would walk out and I would feel the holy spirit being like, Hey, you don't, you don't believe that you're not feeling that. Well, I would, don't be shocked. I would back talk. I would say, yeah.
9:36 What didn't you like about that?
9:38 Well, chosen. I'm just, I've talked about singleness. This was 14 years ago when I 1st started in all of this. And so I'm gonna I'll share things at different times, and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time talking about
9:50 how maybe I feel all different. In that moment, 1 of the ways that I would back talk God When he, when him and his word and the scriptures that are found in here were telling me that I am
10:02 chosen and given me the understanding of how he sees me, I would say, I'm not chosen. I'm not married. No one's I haven't been chosen. You haven't, you know, so I would list out
10:14 all of my definitions of what my expectations were. To say, I agree with I'm chosen.
10:23 Yeah.
10:23 So as I would work through with other with clients, and then as I would start to work through in my own heart, I would realize this is a, this is a pivot point. This is a choice point
10:35 for me. Yeah. Either I can continue to believe based on my definitions and my expectations that I am not chosen and I lean in that direction. Or
10:47 I begin when I hit those moments and I am feeling rejected, or I am feeling forgotten or I am feeling left behind, whatever all of those things are, in those moments,
10:59 that's when you apply this is what God's word says. That's when I apply this is what God's word says. I am chosen. I changed my definitions of what it meant. Yeah. I let him
11:11 change my definitions of what being chosen meant. And I started leaning into scripture. To me, that is the application piece that so many of us never learned
11:23 to practice. We didn't work those muscles. So we set it with our head. I would say it to those ladies. We didn't know it in our heart. So seeing yourself through God's eyes, the very practical
11:35 it's so short every day, but it is absolutely transformational because how do I begin to practice believing how God sees me? It completely
11:48 changed my life very shortly after that is when I started working in our international department and going and doing things that I had to
12:00 wrench my gut
12:01 Mhmm.
12:01 To get the courage to do. And constantly had to say, I see myself as God sees me, not as all the other different eyes that
12:13 maybe have rejected me or all the other eyes who have mocked me or all the other people that didn't believe in me. So I get excited. I can, I can hear my
12:23 voice when I'm
12:25 a little bit rant?
12:26 I appreciate
12:27 it. Man, this is the 1 thing. If I could just sit down with everybody and look them in the eye, I would say, don't lean on your own understanding, but trust in the Lord with all
12:39 your heart. Yeah. Because he will change everything if we will do this 1 thing.
12:44 Yeah. There's a lot there to respond to, but it reminds me as well so many times in, like, the small group recovery ministries that I've been involved in. Yeah. It's that same story of, you
12:56 know, I I know the gospel. I know Jesus forgives me. He died for me. Mhmm. I know that, you know,Show more
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