Identity.

"Who am I?"


This has been a question always lingering deep inside me. Yeah, yeah, I know... "You can be whoever you want to be!"........ I tried that. A lot. 

• The good kid.
• The smart kid.
• The "I'm going to go to college and be successful" guy.
• The spontaneous guy.
• The wild-fun-drunk guy.
• The gay guy.
• The "no one can tell me who I am" guy.

My perception of who I was changed many times from the time I was a kid until young adulthood. Often, who I wanted to be was influenced by who I was around. My ever changing desires of who I wanted to be were ultimately controlled by the central desire to be accepted and esteemed by other people.


Every identity change would result in failure. As soon as I would start to think "this is who I am!", some form of rejection would tear down the image I had created of myself. But I thank God for this. I thank God that I was not ever successful in defining myself. Because the people who are successful in defining their identity are successful in doing so only because they are under the wrath of God. They are so blinded by their self-exalting desire to be accepted in the world that they are oblivious to their true identity. God has simply let them go their own way (which may sound good, until you realize our own way ends in death).

The can't see, through the haze of their self-righteousness, the horrific truth about who they really are.


They do not see that they are a God-loathing sinner heading full speed toward an eternity under His wrath. This is the true identity of all humanity. It is a frightening reality to stumble upon, but only when we come into a full realization of the dangerous position we are in can we finally see the beauty in Jesus Christ. The hope in Jesus. 


When we give our lives to the Son, we attain an unchangeable identity as adopted children of God. We no longer remain the objects of God's wrath, but are transformed into objects of God's steadfast love and unwavering grace. 


We don't have to spend any more time endlessly working to define ourselves. We are defined by Another.


No longer do we have to worry about how other people voice their opinion about us. We only listen to one Person's voice.

Stop letting your feelings and other people shape your view of who you are. You will continually walk in self-pity and weakness if you choose to believe lies like:


You're pathetic.
You're a coward.
You're nothing.
You'll never change.
You're weak. 


Listen rather to the TRUTH! Jesus bore the identity of your wickedness so that you could bear the identity of  His righteousness. 


You are holy! 
You are blameless! 
You are strong!
You have been predestined for glory!
You are the righteousness of God! 


This is the promise of God to every believer in Christ. Stop believing the lies, start believing God and become who YOU ALREADY ARE in Jesus.


"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God."- Galatians 4:4-7


"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."- 1 Peter 2:9-10


"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."- Ephesians 2:10 

Hell or no Hell? That is the question.

Many people in our post-modern society would prefer heaven and hell not be talked about. We see many influencing leaders of our culture going as far as to say that heaven and hell don't exist. Here in the bible-belt, where I live, we arent used to much talk like this. We tend to believe in Hell, but just pretend it's not a reality by keeping it as far back in our minds as possible. But this "no eternal consequences" ideology is gaining vast popularity in much of our country and much of the world.


 I'm not going to lie, the idea of there not being a real Hell sounds great. No eternal punishment? No eternal anguish? Who wouldn't want that to be true? I would love for that to be true! I mean, who really wants people to suffer forever? Not me.


 But let's think about this. If there is no heaven nor hell, then there can't be an absolute "right" or "wrong". And If there is no absolute right or wrong, there is no thing as absolute truth. If there is no absolute truth, then we have nothing but "personal truths" which differ according to each individuals feelings and opinions. This idea is an oxymoron in itself because two or more "truths" that contradict each other doesn't even make sense. Either one is right and one is wrong, or they are both wrong. If I tell you the sky is green and you tell me the sky is blue, we can't both be right can we? How much more severe then is the matter of truth concerning eternity. Some say there is only heaven. Some say there is both heaven and hell. Some say there neither are real. Well, someone's got to be wrong.


 Humanity in its limited capabilities is not able to determine truth. Sure, we can discover certain truths, such as gravity or the water cycle or the color of the sky. But we as mortal beings are not able to determine eternal truths. We can come up with ideas and philosophies all we want about eternity and eternal destinies, but at the end of the day they are just ideas and philosophies.


 The search for truth always parallels with the search for God. I mean, the Creator of all things would obviously be the holder of truth, correct? Correct. And every person, whether they want to accept it or not, has an innate knowledge that there is indeed a God. Therefore there is such thing as ultimate truth. The problem is, we would never know this truth unless He decided to reveal it to us in an absolute and objective way. Has God done this?


 He has. Through His Son.


 Jesus Christ came into this world bearing witness to the truth. "In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth."- John 18:37. Now, Jesus did not merely expect us to believe what He said on account of Him just saying so. The signs and miracles He performed (and ultimately His resurrection from the dead) bore witness that He was in fact true.


Many would agree that Jesus was the Son of God, but still reject the idea of the Bible being inerrantly true. But we see Jesus also confirming the authority and divine nature of Scripture. He constantly would use the words, "so the Scripture might be fulfilled" and often referred back to the Old Testament Scripture in His teachings.

• And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. (Luke 16:31) 
• Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. (Matthew 22:29) 

 Yet still people would say, "well, the old testament is inspired. But not the new testament. The epistles and gospels were written after Jesus' death so we can't trust them to be true." Yet, we see Jesus addressing this as well while speaking to His disciples:

• I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. (John 16:12, 13)
• But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14:26) 
• And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning. (John 15:27)

If God provided the first covenant in the form of written Scripture, why would He not provide the New Covenant in form of written Scripture? And by the way, don't let your skepticism fill your mind to the degree that you forget God is sovereign, as I have done before. He posseses the omnipotent power to reveal truth accurately and preserve it.


The Scriptures are true. The Heaven and Hell Jesus and the apostles taught about are real, folks. They are physically real places. Because of our fallen nature, we fail to see how evil we really are and how much we justifiably deserve an eternity of punishment for the trespasses we have committed against God. Before He saves us and gives us a new nature, we walk the paths of our lives blatantly ignoring Him and ignoring the truth He has revealed. We pursue our own desires and lusts and never give Him a second thought. He is our CREATOR. He deserves our worship. But we worship ourselves instead.


 Yet in a profound expression of His love and mercy, we see Him send His Son Jesus into the world to take upon Himself all of our heinous deeds, corrupt desires and vile natures. He was crushed under the wrath of God and poured out His blood so that all who would see the incomparable beauty of His sacrifice and their dire need of His rescue could drown themselves in the never-ending supply of God's grace and love. For eternity.


 Eternity may only be a concept in our minds right now, but it will be an experiential reality for every human one day. Grab hold to Jesus. He is our only escape from the damnation that we surely deserve and our only way of entry into an abundant and explosively joyful eternity with God.

Kill Unbelief.

My mind is completely messed up, I will be the first one to admit that. Not only does the bible explicitly provide this truth about the human mind, but my daily thought-life confirms this reality. 


Some people seem to think I have it all together. This is eons from the truth. I struggle with doubt on almost an hourly basis. I constantly have thoughts coming into my head:

• "How do you know all of this about Jesus is true? You can't prove it."
• "Why would you trust the bible when you can't prove God wrote it?"
• "What is truth?"
• "You've tricked yourself into believing a lie."
• "God doesn't care about what goes on with you."
• "God is not involved nor interested in what goes on in this world." 
• "He's not listening to you."

There was a time a few months ago when I collapsed under the weight of these conflicting thoughts. My mental capacity was overtaken with these thoughts 24/7. I doubted my salvation. I doubted the Word of God. I doubted Jesus. I doubted God. This all drove me away from the Bible. I didn't want to read it because I didn't want to have to deal with the pounding of the words "Lies. Lies. Lies." in my head as I read the Scripture. 


One night at a worship service, I wasn't even able to worship. I could not escape the thoughts in my mind. I couldn't escape the fear and the doubt. A friend of mine came over and told me, "You have more control over what goes on in your head than you think." Could this really be true? I mean come on, I wasn't asking for these thoughts to come into my mind. I didn't have control over that. 


But what I did have control over was how I handled the doubts. For so long I would feed them by rigorously over analyzing them. My thought life just kept going in circles, round and round and round, but not really getting anywhere. I was miserable and felt utterly defeated... by my own mind. I wasn't trusting Jesus in the slightest.


But God was faithful, even in my faithlessness. I decided one day I was going to spend the whole day reading the Word, even if I didn't feel like it. So I did..........and nothing happened. I didn't feel any different or any better. I didn't have some crazy super-spiritual enlightenment. 


But a few hours later I realized that I had an unexplained peace that I had not felt in months. Immediately I realized how to defeat my unbelief! I had to kill it with truth. I had to invade the crevices of my fallen mind with the Word of God... constantly. More than just once a day. I needed to be flooded with truth. My mind needed to be renewed and transformed. Of course I "knew" that before. But now I really knew it. Sowing the Word into our hearts will always result in a harvest of faith, love, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 


I still struggle with doubt, but now I know I am not helpless. I have the power to immediately take captive and  kill any thought that comes into my mind that rises against truth and against Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Rather than pondering on and over analyzing doubtful thoughts, I immediately speak the Word of God over myself and my mind. I speak the truth that conquers all lies. I speak light into the dark abyss of my soul. I speak life into the depravity of my heart.


"Jesus Christ is Lord. His Word is truth. Absolute truth. I will not allow my carnal mind to rise up against this truth. I will not let the opinions of others sway what I know God has confirmed in my heart to be true. I take captive and kill every thought that goes against what I know to be true. I will not let my life be dictated by my emotions and what I do and do not "feel." My life will be led and dictated by TRUTH."


I want to end this with a warning:

Satan is very real. And his army of demons is very, very real. He wants to deceive us. He wants us to doubt God. If Satan keeps us doubtful, fearful, and weak, what impact could we possibly make in this world? None. Obviously Satan could not mess with me or torment me unless God allowed him to. Does this make God mean or evil? Absolutely not. God is my Father. I believe He has allowed me to go through this in order to show me the strength that is inside of me, Christ in me. 


 If we believe we are weak and helpless, we will respond to demonic attacks in a weak and helpless manner. We can't believe that lie! Every regenerated child of God has the power inside of them to tackle the devices of Satan head on. Christ Jesus lives inside of us. He CREATED demons. Does He not have dominion over them? Yes He does. And has He not given us authority over them? Yes He has. Through His power you can stand against the weapons that the enemy forms against us. The devil wants to destroy us, and although He can't (because we are sealed by the Spirit of God until the day of redemption), he surely is going to try to make us believe that he can.


"Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me"- John 14:1.


"... I believe; help my unbelief!"- Mark 9:24

Words of Life.

This morning while I was walking outside this verse hit me:


"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."- Hebrews 4:12.

I think I have really been underestimating the power and vitality of Scipture. In my mind, I have acknowledged it as the written revelation of who God is and as the source of ultimate truth.  But in my heart I seem to have only skimmed the surface of the deeper reality and purpose of Scripture.


Hebrews 4 makes it clear that the Word of God is:
1) alive
2) active


We know and see plainly that the Word is alive in the form of Jesus, who is the personified and embodied Word of God. But Scripture is the Word of God as well. Therefore Scripture is also living, and just as living as Jesus is. Meditate on that. 


My mind immediately goes back to these passages in John: 

• "..the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life"- Jesus (John 6:63). 
• "You have the words of eternal life.."- Peter to Jesus (John 6:68). 
• "you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you."- Jesus (John 15:3). 
• "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples"- Jesus (John 8:31).

Scripture is drawing a direct line from the Words of God to LIFE. (whether through the physical mouth of Jesus or the inspiration of Scripture) 


Think about this for a second, in human terms, what are words? When we speak, what is it we are actually doing?  We are expressing an internal thought. Words are the physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. And what is the ultimate spiritual reality? God.


"God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."- John 4:24


The written Word of God is a physical manifestation of God Himself. 


Before we were regenerated, we were spiritually dead. And dead people don't have hunger pains. Well thanks be to God, now we are spiritually awakened and therefore yearn to be fed! When we read Scripture we saturate our hearts and minds with His Spirit, life, presence and power. And we need this strengthening if we are going to walk in the paths He has laid out for us. We need His life continually poured into us. 


"but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."- John 4:14