Tag Archives: Life

Becoming You (The Identity Fight)

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I wrote this book for my second son on his thirteenth birthday. This is the first chapter of the book.

The Identity Fight
The Most Important Fight of Your Life


Son, I want you to get into a fight. Yes. Fight. I know you know I always ask you to seek peaceful resolutions to conflics, and even report your brother to me if he offends you so I can mediate. But at this point, I want you to fight.


Because this is about your life. This is the most importanr fight you’ll do. It is not John Cena against Brock Lesnar or Anthony Joshua against Oleksandr Usyk. It is far more important than that.
Let me explain the reason.

There is something that begins to wake up in a young man when he becomes a teenager. It is not loud at first. It does not announce itself with noise or drama. It is subtle. It grows quietly. It follows you into every room. It sits with you in class. It walks beside you on the field. It stands next to you when your friends are laughing.
It whispers:
See me.
Recognize me.
Notice me.


Nobody wants to be invisible. Nobody wants to feel overlooked. Nobody wants to feel like their presence does not matter.
Nobody wants to be a fly on the wall.
Flies are tiny creatures that cling to vertical surfaces. They have compound eyes that see almost 360 degrees. In a room, you usually ignore a fly until it starts buzzing in your ear or tries to perch its cholera infested proboscis into your food. Until then, it exists but it does not matter to anyone.
To be a fly on the wall means to be an unnoticed observer. You are present in a situation, but you are not participating, and the people involved have no idea you are watching or listening.


Son, I want you to understand something clearly. That desire to matter is normal. That longing to be seen is natural. It is part of growing up. It is part of becoming aware that you are an individual with thoughts, strength, gifts, and dreams.
You were not created to disappear into the background of your own life.
But here is where the danger lies.


The danger begins when the desire to be noticed becomes stronger than the desire to become.
When you live only to be noticed, you become a slave to whoever is watching. You begin to adjust your behavior depending on who is in the room. You measure your words by the reactions they produce. You start to perform. You start to wear masks. You start to trade your true self for a moment of attention.
And attention is a hungry master. It never says enough. What gets applause today becomes ordinary tomorrow. So you feel pressure to do more. Say more. Show more. Impress more. Sometimes you may even be tempted to expose more than you should just to remain visible.
One day, if you are not careful, you may look in the mirror and realize you do not recognize the person staring back at you.


That is the identity fight.
It is the fight between who you truly are and who the world rewards.
This is the fight I want you to fight. I will be your coach, I’ll shout from your corner, but you have to step in the right and win this fight.

The Truth of Your Worth
In this stage of your life, people will call you things. Some will praise you loudly. Some will misunderstand you loudly. Some will reduce you to one trait and act as though that is all you are.
You may be called the athlete.
The intelligent one.
The quiet one.
The funny one.
The difficult one.
The disappointment.
Labels are convenient for people. They help others categorize you quickly so they do not have to take time to truly know you. But you are not a category. You are not a summary. You are not a single story.


Your worth is not in what you are called.
Your worth is not in how you are perceived by your friends.
Your worth is not in what your teachers say.
Your worth is not even in how many people follow you on a screen.


Think of a crisp, new one hundred dollar bill. It is valuable because of what it is, not where it has been. If I take that bill, drop it in the dirt, step on it with my boots, and crumple it into a tiny, ugly ball, does it lose its value?
No.
If I hold it up, everyone still wants it. Why? Because the dirt and the crushing did not change its identity. Its value was set at the Mint the moment it was created.


Your worth is like that. It is deeper than opinions. It is deeper than trends. It is far deeper than popularity. It was set by your Creator long before anyone formed an opinion about you.


Never measure the quality of your soul by the volume of applause around you.
The Scripture says in First Samuel 16 verse 7, For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.


People look at appearance.
God looks at heart.
People look at performance.
God looks at posture.
People look at image.
God looks at integrity.
Build what heaven measures.


There will be seasons when you feel overlooked. There will be moments when someone else is celebrated while you are ignored. In those moments, remember this truth: visibility is not the same as value. Some of the most valuable things in life are hidden. Roots are hidden. Foundations are hidden. Character is often hidden. The powerful V8 engine in our car is hidden under the hood, but you can hear it roar when I press the throttle. You feel its power in the back seat where you are seated anytime the car accelerates forward. You don’t have to see it to enjoy it.
Hidden does not mean unimportant.

Fight for the Ideal
Because the world does not understand your true value, it will tempt you to lower your standards. It will tell you to blend in. It will tell you to shrink. It will tell you to adjust your values so you can belong.
It will whisper that everyone is doing it.
It will say that you are taking life too seriously.
It will suggest that your convictions are outdated.
Do not surrender.
You must fight for the ideal. Always.


This is the most important fight of your life. It is the refusal to cower in shame for standing alone. It is the courage to say no when yes would make you popular. It is the strength to walk away when staying would make you accepted.


A young man who stands for something may stand alone for a while, but he will never stand small.
In 2014, a man arrived in Lagos from Liberia carrying the Ebola virus, one of the deadliest diseases in the world. He was a high-profile diplomat who insisted on leaving the hospital to attend a conference. He had the support of powerful people, and there was immense pressure on the hospital staff to let him go.
Dr. Adadevoh was the physician in charge. She stood alone in that hospital room and refused to let him leave. She was threatened and pressured, but she knew that if this man stepped out into the crowded streets of Lagos, millions of people would be at risk.
She did not have a crowd cheering for her. In that moment, she was standing alone against the “Notice Me” power of a diplomat and the weight of a terrifying situation. She chose to stand for the ideal of protecting her country rather than the comfort of following orders.
Because of her courage, the virus was contained. She saved Nigeria from a catastrophe that could have claimed countless lives. Tragically, she contracted the virus herself and passed away, but her name is now etched in history. She stood alone in a hospital ward, but she will never stand small in the hearts of Nigerians. She proved that one person’s integrity can be the shield for an entire nation.


Consider the life of Chinua Achebe. He was a man of immense talent, but more importantly, he was a man of strong identity. Twice, the Nigerian government attempted to honor him with national awards. Twice, he declined. He did not need validation from a system he believed was failing his people. His integrity mattered more than recognition.
He chose conviction over convenience.
He chose principle over praise.
That is identity in action.


Son, your generation is surrounded by noise. Everyone has a platform. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a highlight reel. You only need to open tiktok and see what folks are putting out there. In such a world, quiet strength will look strange. Deep conviction will look unusual. Patience will look weak.
But it is not weak.
It is powerful.
You are not called to echo every trend. You are called to embody truth. And truth often stands quietly before it stands publicly.

Defeating the Label Makers
There are four common ways people will try to define you.
First, their expectations.
They may want you to become something that makes them proud or comfortable. Sometimes expectations are loving. Sometimes they are controlling. Learn the difference.
Second, their fears.
They may tell you that something cannot be done simply because they were afraid to try. Their limits are not your limits.
Third, their limitations.
They will project their ceilings onto your sky. Because they stopped dreaming, they may suggest that dreaming is foolish. Do not inherit small thinking.
Fourth, their projections.
They may see their own flaws in you and try to name you by them. If they struggled with discipline, they may accuse you of laziness. If they battled insecurity, they may shrink your confidence.
People often speak from their wounds.


You must fight for your identity.
But hear me clearly. You do not fight with anger. You do not fight with rebellion. You do not fight with disrespect.
You fight with clarity.
Clarity about who you are.
Clarity about who you are becoming.
Clarity about whose voice carries the most authority in your life.
Clarity is quiet confidence. It does not shout. It does not argue endlessly. It simply stands.
It is in the doing, in trying, in stretching yourself, in failing and rising again, that you grow into your identity. Identity is not discovered in comfort. It is shaped in courage. Every challenge is an opportunity to define yourself by your response.


Do not be afraid to disappoint people when their expectations are not aligned with your purpose.
Galatians 1 verse 10 asks, For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
You cannot serve applause and purpose at the same time.
At some point, you must decide which one matters more.

The Goal Is to Become
Your fight for identity is not a fight to be famous. It is a fight to be real.
Fame is external.
Reality is internal.
Fame depends on who knows you.
Reality depends on whether you know yourself.
When you focus on becoming the man God designed you to be, you stop chasing the spotlight and start pursuing the light.
If you become light, people will see you eventually. Not because you demanded attention, but because authenticity cannot remain hidden forever.
Shining does not mean perfection. It means consistency. It means integrity. It means that who you are in private matches who you are in public.
That kind of man is rare.
That kind of man is trusted.
That kind of man influences without forcing it.


Son, I do not want you to be impressive. I want you to be grounded. I do not want you to chase platforms. I want you to build pillars. Platforms rise quickly and fall loudly. Pillars are slow, steady, and strong.
You are not in a race to be noticed. You are in a journey to become.


Win that fight.

Oluwaseyi Ige is a media consultant, communication strategist, and the Chief Operating Officer of Jabbok Media Services. An associate pastor at TBC Kubwa and a youth missionary, he previously served as the Media and Communications Coordinator for Youth for Christ (YFC) Nigeria. He is the founder of Quantum of Grace, an outreach ministry, and the author of Still Becoming and Digital Loneliness. His latest work, Becoming You, is a personal guide helping the next generation navigate the identity fight and build a life of impact.

Take Your Life Seriously

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A quick note to my young friend.
Think of 3 people in your last class. In ten years, one of you will be running a boardroom, another will be a distant memory of “potential,” and the third will still be “figuring it out.”

The difference isn’t intelligence. It isn’t even luck. The difference is a visceral, unapologetic commitment to being serious.

We live in a culture that worships the “casual.” We are told to go with the flow, to stay chill, and to never let them see us sweat. But I am here to tell you that “chill” is the graveyard of champions. If you want to occupy the heights of leadership, you have to stop treating your life like a dress rehearsal.

Take Yourself Serious

If you don’t take yourself serious, why on earth should a producer, an investor, a potential spouse or a CEO? Taking yourself serious is an internal revolution. It means you stop showing up late because “it’s just a meeting.” It means you stop dressing for the job you have and start dressing for the empire you intend to build.

Look at Marsai Martin. Most people know her as the witty Diane Johnson from the hit show Black-ish. But at age fourteen, while her peers were navigating middle school drama, she was in boardrooms. She pitched the film ‘Little’ to Universal Pictures and became the youngest executive producer in Hollywood history. She didn’t wait for a gray hair to speak with authority. She understood that authority is not given; it is assumed.

The scriptures back this up in 1 Timothy 4:12: “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example” People will only despise your youth if you give them a reason to. When you carry yourself with the weight of a leader, the world forgets to check your ID.

Take Your Life Serious

Your life is not a series of accidents. It is a construction site. Taking your life serious means you stop being a consumer and start being a producer.

Many people spend their twenties drifting, waiting for a “big break.” But success is the visible result of invisible discipline. In his book ‘Atomic Habits’, James Clear argues that you do not rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems. Clear himself was a promising baseball player whose life was derailed by a horrific facial injury. He didn’t wait for a miracle. He took his recovery and his future serious by mastering 1% improvements every single day. That seriousness turned a personal tragedy into a global movement that has helped millions.

You cannot have a high level life with low level habits. If your circle doesn’t challenge your growth, it is not a circle; it is a cage. As Ecclesiastes 10:10 warns: “If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.” Sharpen your edge before you hit the wood.

Be Serious With Your Talent

Natural talent is cheap. Everyone is “creative.” just check Tiktok and fb reels. Everyone has a “vision.” But vision without precision is just a hallucination.

Being serious with your talent means moving from being a “gifted amateur” to a “disciplined pro.” Consider Giannis Antetokounmpo. Born to Nigerian immigrants in Athens, he spent his childhood hawking watches and sunglasses on the street to help his family survive. When he was drafted into the NBA, he was a raw, skinny kid with more potential than skill. He didn’t settle for being “lucky to be there.” He transformed himself into the “Greek Freak” through a work ethic so legendary it led the Milwaukee Bucks to their first championship in fifty years. He treated his talent as a debt he had to repay through sweat.

In the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25, the master didn’t care about the gift itself. He cared about the multiplication. The servant who sat on his gift out of fear was stripped of everything. If you have a voice, a pen, or a strategic mind, and you aren’t sharpening it daily, you are being negligent.

Ruthless With Your Opportunities

The word “ruthless” makes people uncomfortable. Good. Leadership is not a polite invitation. It is a conquest. Being ruthless with your opportunities means that when a door cracks open, you don’t just peek in. You kick it down.

Before he became the most successful director in history, Steven Spielberg was a kid with a dream and a briefcase. He didn’t wait for a formal internship. Legend has it he snuck onto the Universal Studios lot, found an empty office, put his name on the directory, and started acting like he belonged. He was ruthless with his proximity to greatness. He didn’t ask for a seat; he built a table in the middle of their room.

The same energy is found in the career of Robert Greene, author of ‘The 48 Laws of Power’. Greene worked over eighty different jobs before he saw the opening to write his masterpiece. When the opportunity arrived, he didn’t “dabble.” He used every ounce of his observation and experience to create a book that has become the “bible” for leaders, moguls, and kings.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 tells us that “time and chance happeneth to them all.” The sun rises on the prepared and the unprepared alike. The difference is that the leader sees “chance” and seizes it with both hands.

Your Victory Lap Starts Now

Playing small does not serve the world. Being “low key” does not pay the bills or change the culture. The transition from your twenties to your thirties should not be a panicked wake up call. It should be a victory lap.

Stop apologizing for your ambition. Stop shrinking so others feel comfortable. Stand up, take charge, and run your race as if the finish line is the only thing that matters.

Because it is who you finish as that matters.

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Ravi Zacharias, popular evangelical defender of the Christian faith, dies at 74

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RAVI

Ravi Zacharias (Ben May/Ravi Zacharias International Ministries)

Ravi Zacharias, an Indian-born preacher who rose to prominence in a predominantly white evangelical subculture and who wrote popular books and lectured widely at colleges to make an intellectual defense of the Christian faith, died May 19 at his home in Atlanta. He was 74.

The cause was complications from an aggressive form of bone cancer, according to a statement from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, the evangelical organization he founded in 1984 and is based in the Atlanta suburbs.

Rev. Zacharias published and edited more than 25 books, and he was a frequent presence in university lecture halls. His international travels as well as his radio and television show “Let My People Think” extended his reach globally.

He did not get involved in political campaigns but befriended leaders in politics, particularly conservative Republicans. He mentored the son of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations. Before his death, President Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, lauded him for reinforcing her faith. He also was close to baseball player Tim Tebow.

“His fan base included leaders in many high-profile places, yes, but he’s one of those rare evangelical leaders from his generation who is actually known for being an evangelical who evangelized, rather than an evangelical who did politics,” said Michael Wear, who worked in faith-outreach for President Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.

Rev. Zacharias, ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1980, came to wide attention three year later, at age 37, when he preached at the invitation of evangelist Billy Graham at a conference in Amsterdam.

He soon became one of the most sought-after evangelists to promote apologetics, or the defense of Christianity, and began building a ministry based on what he called intellectual arguments for evangelical belief rather than direct appeals to faith.

“Much of the evangelistic preaching at the time was being done to the person whose life was already collapsing,” he later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But the reasonableness of the Christian faith was not being presented to those whose lives seemed to be self-sufficient, who seemed not to need God.”

He said he began building a ministry “to carry the Gospel message to the skeptic — honest skeptics [of Christianity] and those who were hostile and adversarial to the message.”

Drawing on philosophy, poetry, science and other areas of academia, he spent most of his life trying to show how Christianity gives answers to life’s most pressing existential questions.

“The cross [of Jesus] stands as a mystery because it is foreign to everything we exalt — self over principle, power over meekness, the quick fix over the long haul, cover-up over confession, escapism over confrontation, comfort over sacrifice, feeling over commitment, legality over justice, the body over the spirit, anger over forgiveness, man over God,” he wrote in his 1994 book “Can Man Live Without God.”

ADRev. Zacharias sometimes went beyond focusing on a defense of the Christian faith by promoting conservative views on culture war questions around abortion, transgenderism and homosexuality, which occasionally drew controversy before he would speak on campuses.

He often engaged in a tense question-and-answer format with students who did not share his views of a society in need of a Bible-based morality. One of his exchanges, at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, received 2 million views on YouTube.

“Why are you so afraid of subjective moral reasoning?” a student asked. “Do you think we all are just going to start raping and pillaging just because we don’t have a book telling us what to do? Are you afraid of that? I’m not, because that’s not what we are going to do. Yes, Nazis were bad, but there were Christian Nazis and atheist Nazis. So I don’t see . . . what are you so afraid of?”

Rev. Zacharias responded, “Do you lock your doors at night?”

The audience erupted in laughter.

John G. Stackhouse Jr., an apologist and a historian of evangelicalism at Crandall University in Canada, said that Rev. Zacharias knew how to boost the confidence of evangelicals, but he was not considered by academics to be a scholarly arguer. Instead he was seen as a gifted evangelist who could encourage Christians to step up their faith and ministry.

Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was born March 26, 1946, in Chennai (sometimes called Madras), and grew up in New Delhi. His mother was a teacher. His father worked in the Indian civil service. They had Hindu ancestors and celebrated Hindu festivals, but on Christmas and Easter they attended an Anglican church.

In interviews, he considered himself “a skeptic” of faith in his youth and attempted suicide at 17 by swallowing poison after being seized by feelings of academic failure in a family with expectations of academic excellence.

He said a hospital worker gave him a Bible, and he kept asking his mother to read him passages about Jesus’ words to Thomas: “Because I live, you will live also.”

“I read the very strident claim of Christ: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ ” he told the Journal-Constitution. “He spoke these words to the apostle Thomas. Thomas was the one who went to India and was martyred.”

He sensed an immediate personal connection to the Bible an

d committed himself to Christianity.

His family immigrated to Canada in 1966, and Rev. Zacharias spent a few years as a banquet manager for a hotel. He graduated in 1972 from Ontario Bible College (now Tyndale University) and received a master of divinity degree in 1976 from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill. He was a professor of evangelism at Alliance Theological Seminary in Nyack, N.Y, from 1980 to 1984.

He then grew his ministry to more than 250 employees and 15 locations around the world. The ministry listed revenue of $25 million in 2015, according to its most recent public filings. His daughter Sarah Zacharias Davis serves as its chief executive.

In 1972, he married Margaret “Margie” Reynolds. In addition to his wife

and daughter, survivors include two other children, Naomi Zacharias and Nathan Zacharias; and five grandchildren.

In recent years, Rev. Zacharias came under scrutiny for inflating his credentials; he had long insisted on being called “Dr.” when he only held honorary doctorates from Christian institutions.

He also publicly apologized for his previous false claims that he had been formally affiliated with Oxford or Cambridge universities in England and for using titles in the past suggesting he was a professor at Oxford. He had a guided study in 1990 at Ridley Hall, an independent theological college affiliated with Cambridge, and was an honorary senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, a private hall of the University of Oxford, from 2007 to 2015.

In 2017, he settled a lawsuit involving sexually explicit communications with a married Canadian woman he met at a conference. Both parties agreed to a nondisclosure agreement.

To his followers, he will be remembered for how he sparred with skeptics of faith. The Atlanta paper captured one such episode with a student:

Rev. Zacharias: “I will define reality as what is.”

Student: “Reality is whatever you believe in . . .”

Rev. Zacharias: “No, reality is not whatever you believe . . .”

Student: “That’s what you believe . . .”

Rev. Zacharias: “What’s your definition of faith?”

Student: “I can’t actually define faith. . . . I have faith that you exist.”

Rev. Zacharias: “So you’re not even sure I exist?”

Student: “I’m not absolutely sure.”

Rev. Zacharias: “When you’re absolutely sure, you can ask a question.”