What Does The Bible Say About Me?

When Identity Feels Like Shifting Sand

Most of us have a running internal monologue about who we are. Some of it is kind. A lot of it is not. We measure ourselves against what others think, what social media reflects back, and what our own mirror tells us on a Monday morning. But what if the most important voice in the room — the one that actually gets to define us — is saying something completely different?

That is the question at the heart of this episode of Crowd Church, where Matt Edmundson and Phil Watson sit down to ask a deceptively simple question: what does the Bible say about me?

The Story That Reframes Everything

Matt opens the talk with a story from Mark's Gospel about a man called Jairus. Jairus was the ruler of a local synagogue in Capernaum, and his daughter was gravely ill. He went to find Jesus, and the two of them set off towards his house. But before they arrived, friends intercepted them with devastating news: "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?"

In that instant, Jairus's identity shifted. He was now the father of a dead child. Everyone around him confirmed it. The grief was real, the medical evidence was real. But then Jesus said something extraordinary: "Why make this commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping."

The crowd laughed at him. Of course they did. But Jesus took the girl by the hand and said, "Talitha kumai" — little girl, I say to you, arise. And she got up.

Matt draws out the tension in this story brilliantly. There were two competing narratives about this girl — what everyone else said about her, and what Jesus said about her. And Jesus had the last word.

"What is more important," Matt asks, "what God says about you, or what those around you say about you?"

The Speed You Did Not Know You Were Travelling

One of the most striking illustrations in the talk is about speed. Matt asks: how fast are you travelling right now? If you are sitting still, the obvious answer is zero miles per hour. But relative to the sun, the earth is moving at around 67,000 miles per hour — and so are you.

Both statements are true. It depends entirely on your frame of reference.

This is Matt's point about identity. We can look at ourselves relative to what we see and feel — our flaws, our failures, our bad hair days — or we can look at ourselves relative to how God sees us. And when we shift that frame of reference, everything changes.

"When we understand and believe what God says about us," Matt says, "our lives are transformed."

What God Actually Sees

So what does God see when he looks at us? Matt walks through several identity statements drawn from the New Testament, each one anchored in the phrase "in Christ."

Loved. Paul writes in Romans that nothing — not death, not life, not angels, not demons, not fears, not worries — can separate us from the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus. Matt is honest about the fact that we do not always feel loved. But the truth of it stands regardless of feeling.

Forgiven. In Ephesians, Paul writes about redemption through Christ's blood and the forgiveness of sins "according to the riches of his grace." Matt is careful to point out that this is not about self-righteousness. It is about grace — something none of us earned.

A new creation. Paul writes to the Corinthians: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." Matt puts it plainly: "What affected us in our past no longer has to affect us in our future."

Chosen. God chose us before the foundation of the world. Matt shares a moment of vulnerability here, recalling the school team-picking ritual where he was usually one of the last chosen — ginger hair, glasses, not particularly sporty. But God, he says, looks beyond all of that. "Before he slung the worlds into existence, he chose me. And he chooses you."

Mental Health and the Sabbath

Phil Watson brings an important dimension to the conversation. It was World Mental Health Day when this episode aired, and Phil talks openly about a season of anxiety he experienced around ten years ago — worry that spiralled beyond normal parameters.

One of the things that helped him was a surprisingly ancient practice: taking one day off a week. Making it different from the other six. Phil does not insist it has to be called the Sabbath or happen on a Sunday. He simply observes that "having one day that is different from all the others is really good for the human soul."

He also references John Mark Comer's book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and raises the question of whether the things we own bring us pleasure or simply cost us time and energy.

It is a grounded, practical contribution to a conversation about identity — because how we see ourselves shapes how we live, and how we live shapes our mental health.

Why This Matters on a Tuesday Afternoon

Identity is not just a Sunday morning concept. It plays out in the office, in the school run queue, in the quiet moments when no one else is watching.

If we believe we are defined by our failures, we will live cautiously — or recklessly. If we believe we are defined by our achievements, we will burn out chasing the next one. But if we believe that we are loved, forgiven, made new, and chosen by the God of the universe, that changes the way we walk through the world.

Matt's talk is not about ignoring reality. It is about recognising that there is a deeper reality underneath the one we can see. Just as the earth's speed around the sun does not cancel out our experience of sitting still, God's view of us does not cancel out our struggles — but it puts them in a very different context.

Something to Sit With

The invitation here is not to paste positive affirmations over genuine pain. It is to consider whether the voice that gets the final word in our lives is the right one.

Jesus looked at a dead girl and called her sleeping. The crowd laughed. And then she stood up.

What might change if we let God have the last word about who we are?