This is the weekend when people dress up in costumes, and put on the the identity of other people, freely pretending to be someone they’re not. For many, this is a chance to really stand out and get noticed.

I think everyone wants to be noticed. In our fast paced society with often impersonal customer service and on line relationships, people sometimes feel invisible.

Young people are especially susceptible to longings to be seen, noted, and known. Celebrities are on a constant hunt for ways to stand out. (Lady GaGa is a perfect example.)

But even older people, who you would think have found their identity, still search for clues to who they really are. I think we all wake up to the reality that we are not what we do. Our activity doesn’t define our humanity.

No one wants to be invisible.

I am absolutely convinced that we cannot know what we are to do FOR GOD, until we understand who we are IN GOD. If we get the order backward, we find our efforts to be very unsatisfying. Psalm 139 helps underscore the truth of what God is shouting at us through His word. We are His! He formed us beautifully and He loves us more than we can comprehend.

13-15 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.

17-18 Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!

I’m grateful for authors who try to paint this picture for us in different ways.

Perhaps we need to read it and hear it in many ways over a long period of time to begin comprehending it. I was having lunch with a friend this week who is one of the leaders on my team. She shared with me about a recent meeting she was in, conveying yet again the importance of embracing who we are and sharing the next chapter for the women she leads. A woman who has been in our circle of influence for years was sitting in this meeting. She suddenly gasped! She said, “I get it!”

Why does it take us so long to connect the dots? Because God loves us and has created us for a purpose, we had better get on with that purpose!

I love how this is stated in Micah 4:13. “On your feet, Daughter of Zion! Be threshed of chaff, be refined of dross. I’m remaking you into a people invincible.”

We are not INVISIBLE! We are called to be INVINCIBLE!

Invincible might look like my friend Nikki, who just ran her first marathon, even though she works full time and has 3 small children. It might look like my friend Gere who went from being a broken widow, to a woman people see with eyes of wonder because she has become so strong. It might look like the single mom I know, who is raising her kids to be in church and to know God even when they fight her the whole way, because she knows she was born for this. Invincible might look like YOU!

Invincible is not always Lance Armstrong or Serena Williams.

What does invincible look like to you?