Written By Jennifer McPherson

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…”
— Romans 8:29

There are truths so beautiful they almost feel impossible to believe.
And for many of us, being created in the image of God is one of them.

Especially when your life has told you a very different story.

Most of us grew up hearing more about what is wrong with us than what is right with us. Whether through trauma, family patterns, rejection, or the loud voices of culture, many of us were shaped by narratives that didn’t look anything like the identity God spoke over us before the foundation of the world.

I don’t know your story, but I know mine.
And nothing about where I came from or what I endured resembled the story of someone created to bear the image of the Father.

Yet Scripture is unwavering:
We were made to carry His likeness.
We were formed to reflect His glory.
We were predestined to bear the image of the Son.

This truth—once it gets inside of us—changes everything.

Image-Bearing: The Doorway Into Rest

In recent years, the Holy Spirit has been drawing me into a deeper understanding of what it truly means to be an image bearer. And in that place, I realized something profound:

Identity is the doorway to rest.

When you spend your whole life being told what needs to be fixed, healed, corrected, or earned, you begin to think that the Christian life is about constant repair. Unfortunately, that is the message many encounter in the modern Western church—
a striving gospel, not a resting one.

But the true Gospel begins with a different message:
You were created in His image before you were broken by the world.
You were loved before you were wounded.
You were chosen before you were rejected.
You were designed before you were damaged.

Once this becomes the anchor of your heart, something shifts.
You stop trying to earn acceptance and begin living from it.
You stop striving to become something and start resting in who you already are.
You stop believing the world’s version of you and return to the Father’s version.

And from that place, being an image bearer stops being a doctrine and becomes a lived reality.

A Generation Awakening to Who They Are

I believe we are living in a divine moment in history—a moment where God is raising up a generation who no longer wants imitation Christianity. They don’t want to be carbon copies of what they’ve seen. They don’t want the performance-based religion of the old systems. They don’t want borrowed identities or recycled language.

They want the real thing.
They want Him.
And they want to live as the ones He created them to be.

This generation is rising with a hunger to reflect the image of the Father—to walk not in striving, but in sonship; not in fear, but in freedom; not in the pressure to conform, but in the call to reflect.

They want authenticity over applause.
Identity over image.
Glory over glamour.

These are the Image Bearers—
the ones God is awakening to carry His nature, His character, His love, His radiance into the world.

And their rise is not just coming—it’s already happening.

You Were Created for This

If your life has told you that you are less than what God says…
If circumstances have tried to rewrite your identity…
If you have felt small, unseen, inadequate, or unworthy…

Hear this:

You were created to bear His image.
Not one day.
Not when you “get better.”
Not after you heal enough.

Now.
Today.
Because it’s who you’ve always been in Him.

You are accepted.
You are loved.
You are chosen.
You are carrying the imprint of the One who made you.

And you are rising.