Cliff Sims

My identity is found in Jesus Christ and who he says that I am.

And he says that I'm his.

And I meant it.

It was the right answer.

But in retrospect, I don't think that that was an accurate reflection of where I was at in my life at that point, because it hurt me a lot more than I was willing to admit publicly

because my career mattered so much to me.

And getting attacked by the President of the United States in that way bruised my ego much more substantially than I would have admitted.

And the reason that was such an important experience is

God created work.

The first thing that we see God doing in Genesis 1 is creating, created the whole world.

And it is part of his plan for our lives that we would reflect his character by being many creators ourselves.

And so work is an important thing.

But it also says in the Bible that do anything as if you were doing it unto God, not for man.

And so when I left the White House, I realized I had found my purpose in that job.

And I thought that defined me.

And what I was able to realize is no matter what you're doing, if you do it unto God,

you can find purpose in that.

I mean, I remember thinking like, especially even after I left, I mean, the last day, the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated president, I was standing in the lobby of the CIA, and Inauguration Day is basically a government holiday.

It may be a government holiday, like nobody's there, near empty halls.

And I'm walking around in there because I'd never really taken a lot of time to like really soak it all in.