In this sermon Rosangela Atte urges believers to make the pursuit of their identity in Christ the primary resolution for 2026, arguing that knowing who they are in God is essential to participate in the divinely‑appointed "kairos moments" of the season. She explains that spiritual growth does not happen automatically; it requires active participation and a process of refinement—removing the impurities of false narratives, coping mechanisms, generational strongholds, and trauma that the subconscious has built for self‑protection. Drawing on neuroscience, she describes how the amygdala’s fear response and the prefrontal cortex’s rational decision‑making are hijacked by subconscious beliefs, and she introduces metacognition as the practice of examining and capturing thoughts to align them with Christ. Healing, she asserts, is a deliberate, often painful, layered journey that involves feeling safe in God’s presence, confronting and releasing past wounds, and undergoing a chrysalis‑like transformation where the old self is dissolved and a new creation (2 Cor 5:17) emerges, enabling the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2). The sermon concludes with a practical call to prioritize healing, spend intentional time in the secret place of God’s presence, and allow the nervous system to become responsive rather than reactive, so believers can step into the divine timing prepared for them before they were even conceived.
Chapters
Blessings, everybody. Uh, my name is Rosangela Atte, and if you follow me, you must have seen the latest word that the Lord gave me about 2026 and about what he wants his children to pursue in 2026. And that is, uh, our identity in him. He wants our New Year's resolution to be the pursuit of our identity in him. And this is vital in this season. Although it's vital in our life in every season, but especially in this season because there are certain events, certain kairos moments that the Lord needs us to participate in. And if we don't know who we are in him, we cannot participate. You know, it's the same in life. If we don't have identity papers, if we don't know who we are, we cannot possess our inheritances. We cannot travel. We basically cannot do anything without an identification, without knowing who we are. If we lose our memory and we don't know who we are, it's the same thing in the spirit realm. We need to know who we are in order to walk in the authority and the power that the Lord has given us. And, you know, in the spirit realm, walking in our identity, growing spiritually requires our participation. It doesn't happen the way it happens for a baby in the natural world. where the baby grows organically and naturally, the way God designed the human to grow. Even though we do need nourishment in order to thrive, a healthy environment and healthy food, but the human still grows. In the spirit realm, we can go 70, 80 years and still remain at the baby stage. And that's because growth in the spirit— Requires our participation. It requires refinement. And I just wanted to read you what the Oxford Dictionary says that refinement means. It is the process of removing impurities or unwanted elements from a substance. In this case, we are the substance and we need to remove impurities from our lives in order to become who we're meant to be and in order to grow in the Lord. And the impurities are all those false narratives, coping mechanisms, false beliefs, strongholds, and generational patterns, everything that our subconscious has constructed to survive. You know, when we are born, we're like a blank canvas that hides a priceless work of art, a priceless painting. And when we're born, It's hidden by a white canvas. And our purpose in life is to uncover, peel off that layer of white paint and find out who we are in Christ. And that's the priceless work of art, the priceless painting. But unfortunately, life has a way of painting layer after layer after layer on top of that blank canvas, on top of that priceless, precious work of art. And so it becomes harder and harder for us To uncover and to find out who we are in Christ. And that is because of the way we are raised, the environment we're raised in, or the trauma and the pain that we go through as we become adults. And that really hinders us from uncovering our true identity and actually receiving God's love. And that is a big problem because in order to become who we are meant to be in Christ, we need to receive his love and find out who he is. And consequently, we can find out who we are and then we can walk out our purpose in life. So healing in this season is essential. Healing is what will allow us to find out who we are in Christ and walk in those works that the Lord has prepared ahead of time for us to walk into, which are the kairos moments, that the Lord has established. And that's why healing requires our participation. We have to consciously work at our healing, consciously think about our thoughts, take them captive. And this is called metacognition. It's about the ability to think about your thoughts, to examine them and really think about where are they coming from? Are they from the Lord or the enemy? Or is it my own flesh that is giving me these thoughts. And, you know, through our life, because of all the events that we've been through, the trauma, we erect these walls and these beliefs and these structures form about ourselves, about people, about God, about the world. And these are all distorted beliefs that are totally opposite from what the Lord says, from the truth. And We begin to react certain ways to certain situations because they remind us of the past and the pain we've been through. And when these events happen that remind us of the pain from the past, it triggers a need for the brain to protect us from what it perceives as danger. And so it builds this false narrative that shapes our external world, basically. And that's why we feel like We are stuck even though we prayed, we fasted, we went through inner healing, deliverance, and all that. We cannot seem to go past certain things, and that's and that's why Paul says what I don't want to do I do, and what I want to do I don't do. It's because it all happens on a subconscious level, and in order for us to be aware of those thoughts, we need to find the root, and to find the root, we need to go deep. We need to go. You know, to that memory and ask the Lord to heal it and submit it to him. And as he, you know, exposes it gently without shaming us, and that's what can begin to heal the root of that dysfunction. But these are all things that are created, that our brain creates to protect us, to protect us from the pain. And this is how we are shaped as we are growing up. We can either become perfectionists or people pleasers or live in always self-sabotaging ourselves, or in my case, a parentified child because I had parents that were not emotionally available. They were not there. I learned how to take care of myself and my younger siblings. And so I grew up way too fast and I wasn't taking care of the way I should have been. You know, I had CEN, childhood emotional neglect, and all that. But this is how we develop all the coping mechanisms that we have, like perfectionism, people pleasing, and all that. And this is all done by our brain on a subconscious level to protect us. And that's why 95% of our decisions and our thoughts are subconscious. If you think that every decision you make is from, you know, your prefrontal cortex, which is the thinking, decision-making, part of the brain, you're wrong. Decisions we make are all based on our past experiences and beliefs and inner narratives. And only by helping our nervous system feel safe, we can begin to consciously make decisions from a prefrontal cortex, which is offline when the amygdala is firing. The amygdala is the fear center of the brain that is always scanning for danger and trying to protect us. So when the prefrontal cortex goes on, then we can consciously be aware of, you know, why am I thinking this way? You know, examine our thoughts, take them captive like the word says, submit them to Christ. And this is also where we are able to renew our minds, right? Be transformed and not be conformed to the pattern of the world. But we need to be aware of this and consciously bring it to the Lord, find the roots of the dysfunction. And this is why our healing And finding our identity requires our participation and refinement. Refinement means, you know, the process of eliminating foreign objects, things that are not meant to be there. And this is totally us. You know, we need to eliminate all the things that are not supposed to be there so that we can start slowly, finally peeling off those layers that have been placed upon us and uncover that priceless piece of art, which is our identity in Christ. And that is why pursuing our identity is vital and healing is vital. But in order to know who we are, we need to know who God is. And in order to know who God is, we need to be able to feel his love. And to be able to feel his love, we need to be set free from everything that hinders us from receiving his love, all the shame, all the guilt, or the false narratives, all the walls that have been built in us because of our past. Whether we realize it or not, we relate to God through the lens of our caregivers. And if we were raised by unavailable, emotionally unavailable, not present or unsafe parents, we tend to look at God through the same lens. You know, we see God as distant, hard to please, unsafe, inconsistent, mean, judgmental, because unfortunately those are the lenses that these situations have placed upon us. And so we need to do a deep work and heal those parts of us. that have been affected so that we can look at God as a safe place, look at God with the right lenses of a loving, wonderful Father, forgiving, and not a parent that is critical and makes us feel ashamed about who we are or what we've done. And this is what pursuing our identity requires. It requires healing before anything else. And it can only happen if we feel completely safe in him and with him. And This only happens by spending time with the Lord, bearing ourselves completely naked in front of the Lord and saying, God, take everything that is a hindrance in me, all the walls that I've built, all the false structures and narratives, and make me completely new. Because if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17. And so it is something that doesn't automatically happen. Again, it requires our participation. And, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen what happens or studied what happens in a chrysalis when the caterpillar encloses itself in it. These enzymes get activated and the caterpillar completely decomposes and becomes liquid. It completely liquefies. There's nothing left of the old creation. And that's For us, that means dying to ourselves in this lonely, dark, secluded, constricted place of dying to our ego, dying to ourself, laying our plans down, our dreams down, our motives, our agenda at Jesus's feet and being completely rebuilt anew in his image. And this is what happens to the caterpillar. These little enzymes that are left, the cells that are called the imago cells, and these cells contain the blueprint of what the butterfly is going to look like, the The shape of the wings, the size of the wings, the antennas, the eyes, everything. And slowly, when it's ready, the enzymes get activated and the butterfly starts forming until it's ready to fly. And this is us dying to ourselves to find our true self. We need to lose ourselves to find ourselves, lose ourselves in who we think we are, in who life made us to be, to find ourselves in Christ. Once we have died to ourselves, Then we can begin to heal. We can begin to transform. Once our nervous system feels safe and we're not reactive anymore, but we are responsive because now we feel safe, right? We have emotionally attached to the Lord in a healthy way. We can begin to be transformed. That's when our prefrontal cortex has been activate, and that's when we can actually be transformed by the renewal of our mind, as Romans 12:2 says, and not be conformed to the pattern of the world. You know, transformation doesn't happen just by knowing things, by information. It happens with renewal, you know, reordering our beliefs, making our nervous system feel safe. And we can do that only when we look at God and we see God as a refuge, as a high tower, as our protector, as our loving Father. And so This year, make it a priority to heal, to spend time with the Lord in the safety of the secret place, safety of His presence. And then you will begin to feel safe, to feel renewed, to be able to change your thoughts, change your mind, rebuild your nervous system, rebuild those false beliefs, completely change from the inside out. But it needs to be Something that we seek, something that we consciously do, something that we work really hard at, and something that is going to be painful. We need to be aware of that. It's not easy. It's not a one-time thing. It's cyclical. It happens in layers and layers and layers. Just as it took time and years, decades to have those layers placed upon our true identity on that canvas, it takes years. I don't want to say decades, but— It took decades for me, but to peel those layers off and find out who you are in Christ, because that is the only way. You need to feel the pain. You need to relive it in order to be set free from it. But when it's done in a safe space, in a safe place, which is in God's presence, we can do it with him. We can do everything is possible with Jesus. And so make it a priority to seek your healing and your identity because you don't want to miss out in walking in those works, Kairos moment that the Lord has prepared for us, uh, before we were even a thought in our parents' mind. Blessings.
