How do you define yourself?

Many of us define ourselves in various ways.
You have the 'business man' - that important executive who is top of his business and defines himself according to his powerful position.
Then you have the 'Sporting guy' - Whatever the sport, football, surfing, snowboarding etc this guy defines who he is by the sport he loves.
You also get the 'musician' - guitarist, drummer, lead singer, whatever place they have, this person defines who they are according to the instrument and music they play and sing.
There's the 'gamer' - who defines himself by the games console he adores and the games that hook him.

There are many things by which we define ourselves, from a job to a social position, from familyman to hardman, from nerd to hunk, we love to build up a persona by which people know who 'we' are!

One of the things that has become more and more used in this way over the past years has been the internet. The rise of Bebo, Facebook and Myspace etc have given us online persona's and a place where we can build up an image of who we are so that others can look on in amazement!

Just a glance through some Bebo's for example, can give an indication as to what people are about, what they value and how they define themselves and their lives.
One of the things I find myself doing periodically is typing 'christian' into the search engines of bebo. I like to see what is going on, and what God is up to in others lives. Weird I know, but if I find other Christians out there then I'm finding family, blood bought, Spirit sealed brothers and sisters in Jesus!
But usually this search just disappoints me as time and again I find that people in a section about themselves say "by the way I'm a Christian" or something like this. Yet reading on and looking through pictures I find that what they are really about, or at least what comes across most evident through their 'online life' is many other things; cars, sports, family etc

Now, there is no sin in loving any of these, but Jesus tells us that the number one commandment is to "Love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind". Yet so often we place our love for Jesus into the background of other loves. And apart from the mention that we're "a Christian" there is nothing else to define us according to Jesus.

The Apostle Paul was very clear about how he defined himself; "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me", I suspect that Paul's Bebo or facebook would look radically different to any of ours!
Paul was a man defined by Jesus - when you met Paul, his words, lifestyle, passions etc all pointed Christ ward.

Am I saying that we ought not to put our sports, families etc on our online sites? No!
And I'm definitely not saying that we should get Sankey playing in the background as flames shoot out of the background and the 10 commandments fly up on our blogs.

But I'm simply posing the thought that if Jesus is indeed our greatest love then He'll be our greatest love in a very evident way! We may mention our other delights, but we'll be defined by our passion and making much of Jesus the Saviour!
We don't need to be 'in your face' with our passions for sports, gamesystems, families etc and we don't need to be 'in your face' about Jesus but surely our passions filter through and show how we define ourselves!

Let's define ourselves, not according to jobs or positions, sports or image, but according to how God defines us through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Louie Giglio said something a few years ago about Myspace - he said that we need to remember that for us Christians there is no Myspace - it is now HISspace!