Sermon Illustrations
Who We Are Is More Important than what We Do
What is more important: who we are or what we do? Here's how pastor Noel Jesse Heikinnen answers that question in his book Unchained:
Down through history, the predominant viewpoint has been that what we do determines who we are. We've all heard the old adage, "You are what you eat." This isn't a new school of thought. Aristotle wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do." A recent TED talk declared, "You are what you tweet." Each one of these proclamations, while carrying a significant nugget of truth, gets the core message of the gospel backward. Frank Zappa, of all people, got it right: "You are what you is." In other words, it's not what we do that determines who we are; rather, who we are determines what we do. This is the biblical paradigm.