Discover how leaning into your identity in Christ gives you lasting confidence when life feels uncertain or isn’t turning out how you hoped.
“Identity crisis” might be too strong a phrase for what you’re feeling, but it’s close. Life isn’t going how you hoped, and you’re not sure of what to expect anymore. The core of who you are feels unstable, and you probably can’t even pinpoint why.
What you’re experiencing is identity pressure.
With wit, wisdom and clarity, Justin Poythress helps you make sense of what you're feeling and offers a biblical path to lasting identity confidence by explaining…
When you build your identity in Christ, you'll experience clarity, discover your unwavering purpose and move forward with confidence.
1. Who Are You?
2. Where Are You Going?
3. Making the Best of What You're Given
4. Being Authentic
5. Living Free
6. Telling a Story
7. Relating to God
8. Finding Community
9. Three Red Herrings: Work, Sex, and Politics
Conclusion: How You Become Who You Are
| Contributors | Justin N. Poythress |
|---|---|
| ISBN | 9781802544190 |
| Format | eBook |
| First published | April 2026 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | The Good Book Company |
To live in the modern world is to be faced with endless possibilities: to be steeped in ready-made answers to the question, ‘Who am I?’ This book takes up many of the central questions which all of us face in forming an identity and reframes them by placing Christ at the center. With remarkable warmth, wisdom, and generosity, Justin Poythress encourages readers to embrace a fullness of identity and purpose: a fullness unique to each person, yet one reflecting the fullness of the one who called each of us into being.
Who Am I and What Am I Doing with My Life? is a steady and trustworthy revealing of God’s answer to the question aglow within each one of us: Who am I? It is deeply wise and pervasively insightful. I will be using this book in my life and ministry.
There are few matters more important to young adults than establishing their identity. Yet, in today’s culture and climate, there are few matters that are more confusing. Justin Poythress’s book will help readers find stability and purpose, not in custom-crafting an identity from the myriad of options available to them but by grounding it firmly and faithfully in the Lord Jesus Christ. This book will prove a trusted guide to anyone who is wrestling through who they are and who God has made them to be.
In Who Am I and What Am I Doing With My Life, Justin N. Poythress helps you find stability and purpose in Jesus.
In a world that allows you to reinvent yourself—where identity crises happen more frequently—this book offers the solid ground of an identity in Christ. It is unshakeable.
Authentic Self
Poythress defines identity as your sense of self that connects who you are, as shaped by your past, with who you hope to be in the future. He acknowledges that identity can be complex and confusing, but points us to the “master identity” found in the resurrected Christ.
I was most challenged to be my authentic self. This book presents it as a process—that we will spend the rest of our lives growing into this authentic self. To put off the old self and to put on the new, to behold Jesus and move in His direction, is not “faking it”—it is the process of becoming who we truly are.
Refreshing Clarity
I was especially inspired by the idea that we can tell the story of our lives through the redeeming work of Jesus. We are to repeat and internalize that story, much like the Israelites did. Christ is constantly forming our identity, and it is good and right to interpret our story through the lens of the gospel.
Toward the end of the book, he encourages us to see our identity lived out in community—something bigger than ourselves. The Christian church is crucial to understanding who we are and what we should be doing. This book provides refreshing clarity about who you are and what your life is for.
I received a media copy of Who Am I and What Am I Doing With My Life and this is my honest review.
Justin Poythress, author of the newly released book, Who Am I and What Am I Doing with My Life?, has written a phenomenal book on identity—on being and becoming someone whose longings for stability, growth, and purpose are fulfilled within one’s master identity. As a pastor, Poythress makes the case that such stable ground is found in Jesus, writing, “As you see more clearly who Jesus is, you grow more fully into your best self.” How can you live authentically free within the true story of reality? This book aims to help readers with this puzzling predicament. Reading this book over the past week with Easter approaching was helpful in considering my own resurrected identity given to me by the risen Christ. But regardless of the season, I highly recommend reading this one! Planning on having my 13 year old read it this summer, too.
Poythress writes, “Your mind is lighting the path of your identity journey. How do you make sense of your past? Who is the person you see yourself growing into? But your mind is never operating in isolation. It's always being conformed or transformed by the contexts you place it in. If you immerse your mind in beholding Jesus, you will have a stable context, a stable vision, and therefore a stable identity—even as you continue to grow.
The thesis of how a Christian becomes his or her best self is simple: Jesus and the Holy Spirit through God's word among God's people will transform your mind and self into someone more glorious than you could imagine.”
This is a deeply thought out exploration of the current question, as well as a Biblical map to navigate the right path in Christ
