Bringing Heaven Home

13 Identity (2)

Welcome back to our series on Bringing Heaven Home, ‘The World Needs A Father’. In our last session on the father's confers identity, we have learned on what is the true me and who am I. Today, we will share with you on what does it mean to be a child, a son of God, the primary identity and secondary identity.

As the father confers the identity in the child, it is important to lay the foundation by teaching the child his primary and secondary identity. There’s a difference between primary identity and secondary identity. Now we want to address primary identity. Our first identity is as a Kingdom person. And our secondary identity is our national and family identity.

Where do we get our secondary identity from? Obviously, we get it from our past, present and future. You are not only what you have been in the past, you are who you are now and what you are associated with and you are what you dream for and will become.

Therefore, the father has to teach himself and family, one identity that is in the past, present and future. Here’s the following:

You have to walk with your child through the past and filter the past, help them to see and understand what you have gone through in the past. Who are they? Grandparents, great-grandparents? Things that we adopt and things that we don’t want to have with us now. The decisions on who we are and how we want to deal with the past determine the present.

In the present, there are three things that are important for our identity. Firstly, the values that you associate with, you choose as your primary values. Secondly, the friends that you choose. Thirdly, the choice that you made on the 6 dimensions of human being. Let me run through this quickly.

Choose the 4 most important core guiding values that you would want to live by? Use the list on the follow page to stimulate your thinking.

As you can see, in the slide, what are the values. From this slide, choose four important core guiding values that you have. From this value, you may want to choose your own value and to work it out together with your family members to form your own set of values. Let me show you some example of the value sets, the values that you choose. For example, value set one, absolute truth, integrity, interdependence, social involvement, service, energetic participation, and originality, and creativity. So that can be one example. Allow me to share with you my own family value.

For example, 4 years ago, my husband and I called upon our children to come together, to work on our family values. What is important to us as family? Our children were 5, 7, and 8 years old then. One of them asked, what are values? I simplify by saying, “values are the things that is most important to us.’ So we start working on it together. Each one was given a piece of paper and a pen to write and draw. So, in Bringing Heaven Home, our family values are: trust in the Lord, love one another to be the light of the world, united as one family and from generation to generation bringing heaven home.

So this is what my children together with my husband and myself, how we put up as we wait upon a Lord. My 5-year-old girl draw a picture of one big rectangle and five squares and clouds. When I asked her, what is it? And she said, the five squares represents each of us in the family, and the rectangle is our home. With the clouds, it means bringing heaven home. And here, my 7-year-old, draw a picture of the globe, with a big cross, with the words: trust in the Lord. And then having my 8-year-old, having a world map with many people, with the words: from generation to generation.

My husband and I choose two versus from the bible, taken from 1 John 4:19, ‘We love because He first loved us.’ And John 13:34-35 it says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” So that's the picture of our family crest, bringing heaven home.

Let me now tell you our family story on bringing heaven home. How our family believe in family and live out family and put love in action.

I work as a Property sales person and several years ago, helped to do room rental to a single mom and her daughter. Recently, I heard that she was stricken with late-stage cancer and offered to help her in anything. In the process, I heard that the 10-year-old daughter will be adopted by a family.

Not long after, I received the request from her to consider if our family would like to adopt her daughter. I was shocked by the request. I was not prepared for this. After all, we have 3 young children of our own. But we commit this request to God in prayer and after praying with our children, we agreed that if God wills so, we will be willing.

Now, here comes the part of the story that touched my heart.

We processed this with our primary-school-going-children and asked what they think. They all thought about it and said – Our family motto is to “Love One Another”.

So they all agreed to it. Then all of a sudden, the reality hits home. One of our older boys said – That means two of us will have to sleep in the living room so that the newly adopted daughter can sleep in their room with their younger sister and helper. We processed a little bit more on that and both boys amazingly said Yes.

We are grateful to God in how our children responded to the call to “Love the Lord our God with all our hearts, mind, soul and strength and to Love Our Neighbour as ourselves.” (Matthew 22:37-39) God’s greatest commandment to all of us as children of God. “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Thankful to God that our children are willing to do so as we believe in family and we live out family to love one another in bringing heaven home. Our children are taught and grounded in our family motto “To Love One Another”.

To wrap up the story, eventually, the adoption did not come to pass as the single mom managed to find a relative to adopt her but requested our family to bring her to church every Sunday. Sadly, the mother passed on.

May you be inspired by our story and may we continue to “Love One Another” (John 13:34-35).