Finding My Identity in Christ

Deeper than gender, “race” and other intersectional “identities,” Stephanie Estes rejoices in her true identity – in Jesus Christ. This identity, she shares, produces forgiveness, joy, community and new life.

In an interview with Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Stephanie Estes says it was her father who led her to Christ. “Ever since I can remember he was always introducing God into our lives. And he said something to me I didn’t understand when I was a child. He said ‘Stephanie, you’re not really going to be saved until your mind is saved because we are transformed by the renewing of our mind.’ So now, because of what [Jesus] did, he took my sins away. He took the shame associated with my sin away.”

“I don’t have the luxury to hold resentment from the past, present or future because all my sin from the past, present and future were all forgiven.”

Estes says the Lord has given her a new identity found in him that supersedes all other. “I no longer look at myself first as female, even though I love being a girl. I don’t just look at myself as black, whatever that means, it means so many things to so many people.”

She goes on to say, “What I realize in my relationship with Christ is that every other identity that people try to assign to me, even my past, is subverted by the blood of Christ and by the transforming work of the spirit of God which is changing me into the same image that Christ has…he set me free from my own sins. Everybody else’s sins pale in comparison.”

Estes says she is very grateful. “Forgiveness is never a luxury for a believer. It’s part of what comes out of a grateful heart of somebody who’s truly been forgiven. And I have been truly forgiven. I’m very happy about that.”