The need to fellowship together, talk and share the burdens in our heart is something every one of us yearns for; even when we try to deny that fact. The meeting with our brethren makes us feel light, reenergizes and rejuvenates us to go through life well.
Also, let’s face the fact that most men lack communities where they can actually unburden and reequip themselves. The Bridge HUB is such a community; a community men can come together to fellowship, be vulnerable to talk, share and unwind themselves.
And so, as we planned for the second hangout, we intended to gather men to burrow into the theme, Identity, and the right self-knowledge and we wondered how that could be done. We figured if a Keynote speaker could come speak to us about My Identity: “KNOWING THYSELF” and then we have an open discussion on how knowing oneself can improve the self-esteem.. More than we prayed, imagined or thought of, God made the Hangout a great success.
Gamaliel Akinsola delivered an impactful address for the keynote speech. He explicitly explained how our identity is defined by a conglomerate of different things. He used the acronym MIRRORS to accomplish that. How our identities are the reflections of these:
M – Memories. Our identity can be shaped by our experiences, different events and all that we have gone through.
I – Intuition. We have that feeling that this is what we are, maybe because of what we have done in the past or our abilities.
R – Relationships. The people we walk and spend time with or the people we call friends. A popular axiom says, “If you walk with five wise men, you are the sixth and if you walk with five fools, you are the sixth”. So your company inadvertently defines who you are.
R – Responsibilities. Our responsibilities, like what we do or job specifications or career can be our identity. For instance, gender responsibilities define who we are even though the differences are getting blurry recently. What we do can peg us.
O – Origin. Our background defines us and you never know how deep certain culture or customs have been ingrained in us until things and different circumstances trigger them.
R – Reputation. People’s perception of us defines us and their tags shape our identities also.
S – Stuffs. What we have, that is the things we own such as cars, houses, and cloths, assets etc. actually define us.
All these define people but we must be wary of them and not allow them to define us because they are broken mirrors and not a perfect reflection of who we really are.
Only God can define us. We can get to learn our true identity in Him and in knowing Him more. While many people run to different places or things above to know who they are, our surest gateway into understanding who we really are is GOD!
Our open discussion was a beautiful one. We all were vulnerable to share our hearts on the topic and we were really blessed by every single word said during the discussion.
We are really glad something like this happened on Saturday, 8th May 2021, it was a major Hangout we won’t recover from.
Thank you, Lord!
THE BRIDGE HUB 