When Your DNA Is Not What You Think – UNITE Linky

Every Christmas, I passed the red flag with the vertical blue and white cross. I’d find my mom in the kitchen, spending hours on her iron press, making Krum Kaka, for neighbors, relatives, friends.

I never learned how to make Krum Kaka, alongside her. Though I saw the Norwegian prayer next to the sink each morning, and began to memorize it on my own, accenting words I remember my Grandma emphasizing every time I heard it.

We were proud to be Norwegian. Entertaining relatives, and friends coming from Norway. Hearing my Grandmother talk about how special it was to be 100% Norwegian.

“Pure Blood” Norwegian, she used confidently boast….

But then, one day, everything changed that.

My brother and I payed for my dad to do, Ancestry.com. And the flag, the ship coming from Norway to America, and the wooden trunk my ancestors carried across the ocean…

Soon had far less meaning.

My DNA test revealed I was much more Irish, than Norwegian, even though my family came straight from Norway, and everything I remember about my heritage was Scandinavian.

And I don’t want to get into the history of Irish and Norway, how Norwegian’s took captives, or integrated in lands, plummeting and pilgrimaging…

But, I will say, from that day on….everything made sense…like why I was drawn to Francis Assisi who converted Ireland, or the story of Christina Noble, a Irish women who fearlessly saved thousands of children in Southeast China.

It was like the fire in me, the passion, the determination to not just exist, but be and live, and love, and serve Him….all had a name.

I found my identity.

I was happy to know my roots, and yet today, so many of us can feel lost, uncertain of our identity.

We can live in a culture surrounded by things decorating, and demanding who we are supposed tobe. Memories, stories, things telling us what kind of life we should be living….

When deep in our souls, we just know, something just doesn’t seem to fit.

We form to a culture, mold into the home we were born into, but forget our God-given identity, modifying our passions to fit others purposes.

Still, our earthly person doesn’t equate to what our spiritual identity is. It is then we have a choice: Live from our carnal self for worldly esteem, or live from our God-given, heaven ordained, pre-destined identity. 

In scripture, I see this people who sacrifices, gave, did good works all throughout the Old Testament.

They were bent on pleasing God, mostly doing the right thing, giving sacrifices in hopes to make God heal or help them…

And yet, in a world where we are saturated in “self-created” doctrines, we can strive hard, make sacrifices, or think if we “act right” somehow God will bless us….

Yet, we forget Job and Paul, and the promises of Solomon, “It rains on the just and unjust.” (Ecc (9:11)

We forget that God is not like a Casino, where we throw out what we have, and hope for luck, or a better exchange, because God has seen the chips and somehow must owe us…

Our doctrine, is a doctrine of Grace. We are saved by His blood running through our veins, not by anything we’ve done.

When I found out I was Irish, everything changed in me. I was hungry to learn about Ireland, wanting to know about the people, how they think, and what their history is.

It was like somewhere deep within me, I fit, completely. My fire wasn’t self-earned, my passion wasn’t fake. My strong-will wasn’t rebellion, or something self-created from not trusting Him…

My entire personality, our personalities are given and created by God, for God, and for a purpose of loving and serving Him solely.

• God used Luke’s love for medicine to bring healing
• God used Peter’s passion for fishing, to take him from fishing for fish, to fishing for men.
• God used Paul’s apostolic, and leadership skills to spread the Gospel.
• God used Job’s humility, to prove to other’s that we could trust God no matter what we went through.
• God used David’s love for battle, to fight epic warfare.
• God used Esther’s identity as a Jew, to save her people.
• God used Deborah’s authority to lead and win battles.
• God used Ruth’s devotion to save her Mother-in-law, to redeem her heritage.

And God wants us to operate out of who He says we are too. Out of, not our culture, but our predestined purposes…the identity He said He has placed in us even before we were born. (Jer. 1:5)

He wants us to know this life of faith is worth the journey. He is our ancestry key, in Him is the sole DNA, meaning, and purpose.

Our goal isn’t to please people, but to walk in humbleness and truth, gratitude and transparency.

Today, do you question why you are here or what you were made for? Do you feel like you are an accident, or like it wouldn’t matter if you just disappeared, or never-existed?

Or do you feel self-righteous, thinking we are great because of some great genes, or some earthly calling or purpose, a man-centered ego or influence?

Well friends, what I find is….we are nothing unless we go back to scripture. Live from the New Testament by the power of His resurrection.

His grace is sufficient, His mercy evident, His blood was shed that we might walk…not in our own identity…but so we might reflect His image.

I never connected to Norway in the way I probably should have. And yet, I know who I am now…

Not because of some DNA test….but because scripture says that, “I am His.”

Let’s live set apart, as dearly loved children of the Most High God fulfilling His will for us, living out His purposes.

It’s not too late to find your identity in Him.

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph 2:10)

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:18)