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Day 2: Labels and the Blame Game:
Welcome to day 2! Today, we're talking about the labels we give ourselves.

What do you believe about you? What does the conversation going on all day in your head sound like? Do you find that you are frequently upset with yourself? Do you call yourself names?

Labels can liberate or confine us. They can grow us or beat us down. When we use negative labels about ourselves, they tend to be self-fulfilling. But it can be the same with positive self-labels. There is a common idea in psychology called the Pygmalion Effect, named after a character from Greek mythology. The idea is that high expectations lead to more productive performance, while low expectations have the opposite impact.

Let me cut to the chase: We need to counteract and overcome labels that hinder our growth and happiness. These labels represent things we believe about ourselves that are just plain wrong. When you think about it, a label is like a bad tattoo on the psyche. It is something that becomes almost engraved on our hearts. We believe the lies and act out accordingly.

You see, when God speaks into your life, it’s never about your past—it’s about your future.

He doesn’t identify you by the painful things you’ve experienced. He identifies you with a new purpose. If you’ve been carrying around a negative label—a soul tattoo that marks you as some kind of failure—you need to find a new label from Him. In other words, you need to prophesy divine truths over your life. Speaking forever truths, not right-now realities or past circumstances. If you have been internalizing a negative label based on lies or half-truths or if you have bought into something that’s inconsistent with the reality of how God sees you, then you need a new label. Take a look at how you should be labeling yourself in 1 Peter 2:9-19.

The process of applying new labels to your inner dialogue begins with identifying those areas where negative labels have been engraved on your heart, and then asking the vital question: How does God see me?

The apostle Peter nailed it. He said we are “a chosen people,” “a royal priesthood,” “a holy nation,” and “a people belonging to God.” Those are powerful truths, glorious thoughts, and they can be the basis for transformative internal labeling.