"My ethnicity means people will never see me as truly American or fully belonging here."
How it sounds in your head: You've lived here seventy years, served your country, built a career—but they still ask 'where are you really from.' Your grandkids don't face this, but you spent a lifetime proving yourself to people who never fully accepted you. At job interviews, church gatherings, even the VA office, you saw the look—you're perpetually foreign in your own homeland.
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
-- Galatians 3:28Source: World system of prejudice and the enemy's assignment to make you feel like a permanent outsider despite citizenship, service, and decades of contribution.
Seventy years of microaggressions don't lie—the questions, the assumptions, the 'compliments' on your English. You've watched white colleagues with less experience get promoted while you had to be twice as good to get half the credit, and even now people are surprised when you show patriotism or talk about 'the old days' as if you weren't here.
A black African official, sexually mutilated (banned from Jewish assembly per Deuteronomy 23:1), reading Scripture he couldn't fully access—Philip was SENT specifically to him. God interrupted Philip's successful revival to reach ONE man the religious system excluded, baptized him immediately, and he went home rejoicing—no probation period, no cultural assimilation required.
I REFUSE the lie that my ethnicity makes me less American or less belonging. IT IS WRITTEN that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek—I am not a hyphenated Christian, I am a BLOOD-BOUGHT SON. My citizenship is in heaven, and my identity is in the One who created every tribe and tongue. The Father doesn't ask where I'm 'really from'—He calls me His own. IT IS WRITTEN in Ephesians 2:19 that I am no longer a stranger or foreigner but a fellow citizen with God's people and a member of His household. I carry the BARAK blessing of Abraham—the same blessing that made him a father of MANY NATIONS, not one ethnicity. I am the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, regardless of what any cultural system says.
The Father is running toward you with a robe that has no flag on it—just His family crest. He's been celebrating your unique design since before the foundation of the world, and He assigned you your ethnicity as a gift, not a limitation—He's now demolishing every lie that tried to make you ashamed of His craftsmanship.