My Name is Legion

One of my young ladies at church was asked to give a spiritual thought one Sunday. She gave a wonderful message out of a little book called "LYFSGUD". It was a great message and I asked to see the book for a second. She told me that I could borrow it if I liked. So I did. I have had that book for a couple of weeks now and last night decided to read it so that I could get it back to her. It is a short book. It is geared toward young women...teenagers...but the messages are ageless. There was one "Big Message" in particular that struck me last night. It was under the category of "God Luvs U!". It was a story about how a boy in middle school decided to give her(the author) a nickname. And how, for many months, he followed her around gym class calling her that name. Eventually someone stopped him, but the damage of that name had already been done. The author then talked about a story in the new Testament of how Jesus cast evil spirits out of a man. The spirits then entered the bodies of some pigs, who then jumped off of a cliff. In the story the man came to Jesus. Jesus asked his name. The man replied, "My name is Legion:for we are many" The author then says how sad that that is that Satan had been working so long to discourage him that he forgot who he really was. He forgot his real name. He forgot the name that God knew him by.
She wrote "Maybe the adversary had been whispering to this man for a long time. Maybe the adversary had been telling him he wasn't good, wasn't loved, wasn't worth anything. Eventually, the man believed it and let Satan overtake him."
She then wrote about how when life was hard. When she felt sad, discouraged, or afraid, that it didn't take much for the nickname to come back into her mind.
It got me thinking about some of the names that I have been called many times in my life that I carry around with me and when I am weak the adversary gladly uses those names to define me. To break me down and make me feel low. My sister, my mother, my grandfather, strangers, it didn't matter who did it, it cut me to my core each and every time. And now as a full grown adult those words still hurt some times more than others.
The author in this book tells the reader that they need to remember their real identity. That we are "daughters of our Heavenly Father".
"Let that truth be stronger and louder than any other identity someone might try to give you."
"He knows you perfectly. And your real name, your real identity, is known to him."
I hope that I can remember that when my heart is low and those words begin to burn in my mind more that they ever should. I hope that I remember that someone else's perception of me doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all.