Understanding who you are In Christ is the first step that propels you smack dab into the second step in the information "piece together" process. This past Monday i started this three part study in a post that asked the question, WHO ARE YOU?
If you can realize who you are in Christ, there really is nothing that can rise up and take advantage of you unless you make a conscious decision to trade your established identity for one that is offered in a source other than Christ.
The day I truly looked at God as my Father was a transforming day. It was like I was given a new set of glasses to read the Bible from and I saw father and son relationship over the entire thing!
In the very first post of this blog "God's Created Picture of Us", I talked about this picture that I had drawn of my first born son and I.
It resonates with my spirit that God is my Father and He wants me to receive His love. There is nothing that He needs from me other than for me to enjoy Him and to be in His presence! He wants our fellowship to resemble this picture. A son enjoying his Father and completely secure in the fact that "Daddy" has His child safe and delights in him.
Does my your prayer life resemble this picture?
Does your conversations with the Father look anything like this image above?
This is what son ship looks like!
The next step in our identity process was to understand fully what happened when the Holy Spirit came to reside within us.
People say, "Well if God is all love then people will just go do what ever they want to do and grace becomes this limitless licence to sin!"
If the Crucifixion was the end of the story than yes it is. Jesus rose from the dead defeating sin and death and the Spirit now empowers us! You can do whatever you want, now what do you want to do?
Notice what Paul says to the Christians in Rome.
"What shall we saythen? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound ? God forbid.
How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein ? Know ye not , that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed , that henceforthwe shouldnot servesin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shallalso live with him:" ~Romans 6:1-8
He explains the Spirit's role in our lives and as he writes to the Christians please notice that he never refers them to a law, but rather to the remembrance of who now indwells them. He says repeatedly through out the epistles, "Know ye not?". In other words he is asking them the same thing that this post would ask, "Don't you know" whose you are? "Don't you know" Who that makes you now?
"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?"
~ Romans 6:16
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" ~ 1 Corinthians 3:16
That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God." ~ Ephesians 3:17-19
The direct result of understanding who you are to Him, and who you are IN HIm is the awareness of His love for you. If you stop and just think about the dimensions of God's love for you as His child it is absolutely overwhelming because it tramples all over our paradigm of love.
God really does love you you know?
When you are filled withe understanding of His love for you as His child, your "wanter" changes. He fills you with an understanding of His love and it is not a matter of remembering a law, but rather a reflection of what you have been given that changes you. You cannot help but operate in and through that love.
I love the close of this passage. It prompts me to ask so many questions and the answers that come are mind blowing.
"Father, in light of who I am in you and to you, what can we do together?"
I think that i know my limitations, but God knows that I can do through Him more than I could ever think or ask of Him. God gave me "The Man and The Wall" simplistic concept and when I ask Him where He wants to go with it, He tells me so much more than a book or a weekly blog. I get goose bumps peeking in on the possibilities that He has in store for this message and the way it has and will impact His kingdom!
Climbing with you,
~Dan
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