This episode is a faith-based reminder that your identity, purpose, and value are not up for debate. If you’ve ever felt pressure to conform to culture, the streets, addiction, or other people’s expectations, this conversation points back to the One who created you and defines you.
Craig Gordon of Truth Messenger TM shares a personal and direct message about resisting external labels and returning to God’s design for your life. The core message is simple but powerful: you were made in God’s image, and that means you already have worth, direction, and assignment.
He speaks honestly about the pull of drugs, alcohol, and destructive patterns, while also offering encouragement for anyone trying to break free from old habits and live with self-control, obedience, and spiritual clarity. This is a message about repentance, identity, and choosing the path that leads to life.
If you’re looking for motivation to stand firm, reject toxic influence, and walk in purpose, this episode offers a strong word of encouragement.
Key Topics
[00:00:01] - Craig Gordon opens with Genesis and the idea that God created humanity in His image and likeness
[00:00:33] - Why material things, social pressure, and comparison should not define identity
[00:01:04] - Resisting the pressure to drink, smoke, and conform to culture
[00:01:25] - Saying no to harmful paths while still showing love to others
[00:01:48] - Dominion, self-control, and the power to choose obedience
[00:02:18] - Personal testimony about addiction, street life, and chasing destructive highs
[00:03:08] - Walking in agreement with God instead of celebrating darkness
[00:03:31] - Finding true manhood and womanhood through the Creator
[00:03:50] - Encouragement to trust God and believe in the new self He created
[00:03:56] - Having faith to resist conformity and live as God intended
Relevant Links
Genesis 1:26–27 (Bible Gateway): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201%3A26-27&version=KJV
Truth Messenger TM: https://truthmessenger.com/
When you stop letting the world name you, you make room to live from God’s truth instead of culture’s pressure.
The invitation here is to remember that you were created with purpose, equipped with self-control, and called to walk in agreement with God. No matter what you’ve come from, there is a better way forward—and it starts with believing what God says about you.
[00:00:01] - [Speaker 0]
How you doing today? This is Craig Gordon of truth messenger, TM with another word in line with that word in the book of Genesis, the first chapter, and where it it it speaks about how God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. He has given us definition and purpose. And so on that why, just wanna address it from the perspective of us turning to other sources, turning to the streets, turning to people, so called friends and acquaintances to define us. No one else can define us.
[00:00:33] - [Speaker 0]
And so we find ourselves giving in to the pressure to be something God never intended us to be. God already created us in his image, and after his likeness, we're already like God. But when we see some of the things we see in the world, when we go out into the marketplace and we see somebody drive up in a certain car, we see people wear certain types of clothes. There's nothing wrong with material things until it becomes your god, until it becomes your focus. You're already significant.
[00:01:04] - [Speaker 0]
You already belong. You already want it. You already have purpose and assignment that's been given to you by God your father, God your creator. And so it's important that we don't give in to the pressure to conform, the pressure to drink, the pressure to smoke, the pressure to to conform to what the the current culture is doing. No.
[00:01:25] - [Speaker 0]
Those are not things that that daddy god that that our god and our father wants us to do. We have to be able to turn away from our flesh, turn away from ourselves, turn away from those people. We have to be able to stand up and say, no. I love you, but I don't like the road or the path that you're trying to lead me down or the road or the path that you're going down. I don't have to go down that road.
[00:01:48] - [Speaker 0]
I have dominion. Amen. God has given me rulership. God has given me self control. I don't have to go down that path.
[00:01:56] - [Speaker 0]
I can choose to walk in obedience to God. I can choose to obey the voice of God, my father. I can choose to do that. I don't have to go down that path. I don't have to go and and and and and do powder cocaine and hard, and I don't have to smoke weed and I don't have to drink big alcohol or beer or smoke a cigarette.
[00:02:18] - [Speaker 0]
And I've done all of those things. And I know what it's like to be out on the block. I know what it's like to be out there running behind those things and chasing chasing the high up for days and days on end, days at a time bound, smelling just like the streets, looking crazy because I'm chasing something that I should never be been chasing at all When I'm already created in the image of God and after his likeness, he's already given me definition and purpose, yet I found myself after on the streets day in and day out, literally out of my mind, literally conforming to the pattern of this world. And what we applaud that, we applaud people that what are walking in darkness. No, no, No.
[00:03:08] - [Speaker 0]
No. We need to we need to walk in agreement with God the father. We need to be in agreement with him. We can only be fulfilled by living in who he says we are, what he says we have, what he says we can do. He is the maker, and we must go to the maker, the manufacturer of man to function in our purpose.
[00:03:31] - [Speaker 0]
You can't know what it is to function in true manhood or true womanhood without or apart from God who made us. And so be encouraged today. You can do it. You can make it. You don't have to conform to the the toxic mindset of the streets or the modern day times.
[00:03:50] - [Speaker 0]
Those things don't make us. Those things don't define us. God defines us. Believe in God. Trust in God.
[00:03:56] - [Speaker 0]
Believe in yourself because God wants you to, the new self, the self that he created you to be. So in this time, we need to have faith to be who God has created us to be. Faith to fight against what the world is trying to conform us to and into. Be encouraged today.