Found

I wrote this post a year ago; 9 years to the day after the lights turned on.  I’m now celebrating my 10th anniversary, and hope that you will discover yourself deliciously found like I did.  Enjoy!

Stephen Fulton

September 19, 2016

Today is the 9 year anniversary of my awakening. It went something like this.

I was exhausted. I didn’t fully realize how tired I was, because when tired is a lifestyle….well, it seems normal. While circumstantially my life was pretty average, my soul and mind were under torment. I was in that special corner of hell described in Romans 7. I had great desires. I had a heart that wanted to know God. I wanted to be a good Christian. I wanted to “deny myself and follow Him”. These desires meant that throughout my childhood and teen years, I actually listened to the sermons in church. It meant that I actually read the bible for myself (though never having the self-discipline to achieve read-the-bible-in-a-year status), and perhaps most strange for my age, it meant that I devoured books on theology. But my actions failed me. I was…

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Where Sin Abounds

“but where sin increased, grace was carefully balanced with teachings of God’s judgment and fear of condemnation in order to ensure that repentance was genuine” – Romans 5:20…oh wait, that’s not what it says!

 

Romans 5:20 actually says, “…but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…”

 

This is confusing to our way of thinking. As humans, most of us have learned to use whatever power we have in order to manipulate other people’s behavior. Parents withhold privileges from children, bosses threaten to fire employees, and friends threaten the relationship itself (“If you don’t _______ I’ll never talk to you again.”) all in the name of changing the other person’s behavior. And since God has all the power, we would assume that he would know how to use it to get what he wants. But that’s not God’s way!

 

John 13:3-5 (ESV) says,

 

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (emphasis my own)

 

It is exactly in the place of knowing who he is and how much power he has that Jesus chooses to be a servant. Rather than using his position to control our behavior, he loves us in our frailty. He humbly approaches even our most embarrassing weaknesses, not to condemn, but to wash away our shame.

 

This type of love offends. This type of love confuses. This type of love draws all of God’s children back to their loving Father — a Father who will never leverage their relationship in order to control, but who will always give of himself until you are made whole.

Can The World Be Saved?

Take it from someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety for much of his life: There is SO MUCH HOPE!

The madness of our age is the blindness of our own eyes to see the potential in humanity. It is fashionable in Christian circles to look out on the masses and be overwhelmed by the sin and confusion and pain. Sad headshakes and weary “if only” statements are as commonplace as saying “amen” to end a prayer. Though rarely expressed in words, our pessimism would suggest that the victory of the cross is a loss-reduction strategy at best. As if the cross has no power to redeem and rescue, but merely to forestall the inevitable disappointment and destruction of all but a few. In our neutered gospel it would seem that the first Adam has retained his right to define humanity, while the second Adam has been commissioned to make a big show but little difference. This is a far cry from Romans 5, which portrays the new Adam as being of far greater consequence than the first Adam. In verses 17-18 it proclaims,

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, MUCH MORE will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for ALL MEN, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for ALL MEN.” (emphasis my own)

2 Corinthians 5:14-16a says,

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for ALL, therefore ALL have died; and he died for ALL, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard NO ONE according to the flesh…”

It’s time for us to stop predicting what only our natural eyes can see. Yes, there are dangers and there is darkness, but there is also something greater.

When the Israelites saw only a harsh desert, God saw the place where he would give water, food, provision, and direction to his people. When Jesus’ disciples saw only two small fish and five loaves of bread, God saw a feast that would feed the multitudes.

So today when we look at the challenges of our age, let’s see them through the lens of redemption. Let’s look at the world around us not as hopelessly lost, but as already found and included. Let’s learn to declare these unseen realities to our own souls, and let’s learn to declare them to the world. Redemption is not finished with us yet. Not by a long shot!

Heartbreak

Here’s an old journal entry I recently stumbled across.  I don’t remember the specifics of the situation, but obviously I was hurting pretty bad!  I’m sure I was only writing to try and process the pain, but what came out was an anchor for the brokenhearted.  I hope it encourages you!

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Heartbreak. This is the hardest state that I know of. In almost every other state good advice would be to “follow your heart”…but when your heart is torn into multiple pieces, all crying out for some sort of extreme action, what do you do? Do you bury things? Or do you let everything come out and wound the people around you? Do you cry, or find funny things to laugh at? What do you do when it hurts? This has been an enigma for me. My standard reaction to heartbreak is to withdraw and embrace self-destructive behavior. But what am I going to do now? What is the answer for a broken heart?

Acceptance. I accept that what happened, happened. I accept that what happened is not ok. I accept that I don’t know what to do, and I accept that I am perfectly acceptable in this place. This is where religion will destroy you, but God will lift you up…because if there is any distance that needs to be spanned in order to meet God, he might as well be a million miles away. When my heart is broken, I don’t need guilt, shame, or to analyze what portion of the blame I should be assigned. I don’t need to wonder if God is angry at me, or have any insecurity in that relationship. I need the God who is here.

I accept that God is here. In the midst of the chaos and the pain, and the rush of contradictory and violent emotions that flood through my being, I know that He is here, and His heart is big enough to hold me when my own cannot. So it’s not about what I do. It’s not about whether I shout or I cry, isolate myself or find comforters, lash out at others or numb myself and move on. When my heart is broken it is not about what I do, it is the knowledge that who I am is acceptable, that He sees me, He knows me, and He permits no dark cloud to hide me from his affection. Even the darkness is as noon to Him, and it is He that holds my days as well as my nights. I am allowed to feel what I feel without guilt because these feelings are just passing through. They are just temporary sounds that cannot silence the symphony of love that surrounds me.

It is God who gives life to my heart, and when it is healthy, it is my hearts beat that moves me to the rhythms of his grace. But when it is broken and no longer able to lead, I let my heart go on bypass and let his heart fill my veins. His heart is worthy to the task!

God’s Righteousness Revealed

What follows is an entry from my journal.  I delayed sharing it because I thought it might be too controversial.  It is hard enough for us to accept God’s forgiveness, but to accept ourselves as perfect (in biblical language: righteous) feels like dangerous heresy!  But as scandalous as it may appear, by his own actions, God has declared us righteous.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” -2 Corinthians 5:21

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.  Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” -Romans 5:17-19

This is not a polished blog post, just honest thoughts. I hope it inspires your own mediation on your redeemed perfection!

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I am at home with who I am! Matters of the heart can take years to resolve, and the mind can have long since accepted something that the heart continues to ignore. I knew that I was forgiven. I got that. But now to see that I am perfect….wow! I am perfect. And so are you! There is no fatal flaw, no bug, no mistake in our beings. We are as we were meant to be, and we were meant to be godlike! I am safe because I am known and trusted. I’m trusted not based on my past behavior, but based on my true nature. Who I am is trustworthy! Who I am fits into who he is with perfect ease. There is no need to try to shove a square peg in a round hole, and no need for Jesus to pretend he’s us so that the Father can tolerate us. We are not righteous by a shell game, or by some substitutionary trick…we are righteous first by design, and second by redemption.

At creation, God made man and woman, and said that we were “very good”. He said that we were made in His image. We were his children. Yet at the fall we get this sense that there must be some mistake. The fact that Adam and Eve sinned means they must have had some flaw. Then Adam and Eve had children who had children who had children who had children, down through the line this sense of inadequacy continued. We believed ourselves to be inadequate, we acted badly, and then used our bad actions to prove our inadequacy, thus trapping us in the sinner’s catch-22. A good metaphor would be the common racist attitudes that many white people had (and perhaps still have) towards black people. We enslaved them because we decided they were subhuman, didn’t educate them because they weren’t worth it, and didn’t empower them because they were not smart enough. Then when these uneducated, unequipped people acted uneducated and unequipped, we used that as proof of the inferiority of their race. What many whites did to many blacks is what the cycle of sin has done to all of humanity. We sin because we believe we are damaged, imperfect, only human, then use the fact that we sinned as evidence of being damaged, imperfect, and only human. Our belief produces an action that proves the belief…but does that make it true?

With Jesus, we finally get some clarity! At the cross we see all of mankind failing Jesus.  In killing Jesus religion sacrificed love to maintain control, politics did the necessary evil to maintain the status quo, the crowds who worshiped a hero gladly crucified a villain, and the radicals — the Jesus lovers, the sold out believers — ran and hid for cover. At the cross is the utter failure of humanity to do anything right! Surely, if nothing else, it once again proves our belief that we are inadequate, imperfect, broken? Surely this proves God made a mistake? And yet in our worst showing of all time, when humanity condemned our hope to death on a cross, the words “forgive them” and “it is finished” preceded a resurrection from the dead! And what did the resurrected hope do? He found his friends, empowered them, and let them loose to declare the forgiveness of sins and redemption of mankind to the ends of the earth! It turns out that even at our worst, God counts us worthy of the precious blood of Jesus! It turns out that while the fall distorted our understanding and distanced us in our hearts from knowing God, sin did not have the same affect on God! Even while our hearts and minds were in hiding because of our guilt and shame, God was ever loving us and valuing us according to the incredible worth he gave us at creation! If we were perfect then, we are perfect now! Sin did not change our nature, it only darkened our understanding!

In beginning to see this and accept this, I am finding freedom from self-suspicion. While religion promotes ruthless self-analysis as a means of rooting out sin, it turns out that finding oneself forgiven and redeemed restores innocence, and innocence is a much stronger power than self-suspicion! Forgiveness frees us from guilt so that we can enjoy God instead of hiding….and this is good! Discovering that there is nothing wrong with you enables you to make no more excuses, and to no longer assume the worst of yourself. Sin is not a fruit of my nature, only a fruit of a darkened mindset! As I feast on my true nature and the perfect fellowship I share with Jesus, I am unwittingly inoculating myself from the dangers of temptation. Childlike innocence is the greatest defense!

Found

September 19, 2016

Today is the 9 year anniversary of my awakening. It went something like this.

I was exhausted. I didn’t fully realize how tired I was, because when tired is a lifestyle….well, it seems normal. While circumstantially my life was pretty average, my soul and mind were under torment. I was in that special corner of hell described in Romans 7. I had great desires. I had a heart that wanted to know God. I wanted to be a good Christian. I wanted to “deny myself and follow Him”. These desires meant that throughout my childhood and teen years, I actually listened to the sermons in church. It meant that I actually read the bible for myself (though never having the self-discipline to achieve read-the-bible-in-a-year status), and perhaps most strange for my age, it meant that I devoured books on theology. But my actions failed me. I was unable to live up to the standards I believed in, which led me often to “repentance”, meaning I confessed my sins a lot, asked for forgiveness, and tried to start fresh. But however pure the intentions of my heart, they still failed to bring me the victory I so needed. Instead, with every new failure, a layer was added to the condemnation that weighed heavily on my soul. Because now not only were my actions falling short of the standards I believed in, but I didn’t even believe my own repentance. How could I? I mean, it felt sincere when I was depressed, crying, begging for forgiveness, and waiting for some sense that God had forgiven me. It felt like real remorse and a real desire to change…but as I listened to preachers who had high standards for repentance, as well as the self-loathing voice that inhabited my thoughts, I decided that, however real my repentance felt, it clearly wasn’t real because no change happened. Which made me feel utterly hopeless. Not only did I fail the standard, but I also failed to take the proper steps to being forgiven. Sincerity be damned, I was clearly headed for hell.

I couldn’t fall asleep. My normal was torment, and the only rest for the tormented comes when your brain is simply too tired to entertain another frenzied thought. The gaps grew longer between my attempts at repentance, cause I really couldn’t stand the added condemnation of another failure. Anxiety, depression, hopelessness. You get the picture.

Anyway, on September 19, 2007, I sat through a class about hearing the voice of God. In a last ditch effort to take hold of the God who seemed so impossible to wrangle, I had signed up for a 5-month Christian school with YWAM that I hoped would save my soul. As the teacher went on about a life of hearing from God directly, as well as the different things that obstruct our hearing, I still didn’t have much hope. Just a glimmer.

At the end of his talk, we all had an opportunity to spend some time alone to think of the areas in our lives where we had fallen short. Great. Sounds like every day of my life until that point! But this time, there was a subtle twist. We were to write down all of the areas that we had failed, all of the sins that continued to shame our souls, and then bring them to the “sin shredder” (really just a standard paper shredder…but I guess this one was multi-purpose). And here we each shredded our record of sins…hopefully to remember them no more. While this process had a more hopeful twist than my usual efforts at repentance, it would take more than a multi-purpose shredder to unchain my heart. As I went up for prayer after shredding my sins, I had the faintest question in my mind. Could I really hear from God?

Suddenly, in the span of about one second, everything changed. I instantly found myself standing at the foot of the cross. I saw the face of Jesus. And a loud voice boomed, “It is FINISHED!”. The vision ended as quickly as it had begun. And I was left a sobbing mess.

Words can’t possibly describe that experience. After nine years, I myself haven’t even come close to grasping it. It was not just an overwhelming experience for my senses. It wasn’t just the magic of being transported in a vision to another time and another place. It was the voice. It was those eyes. And it was everything they so perfectly communicated in the blink of an eye.

I cried for a long time. Not just normal crying, but the weeping of a thousand bottled-up tears from a thousand unanswered prayers. A tear for every time I felt abandoned, for every time I felt like I was an object of wrath, for every time I longed for heaven but seemed destined for hell. I cried it all away, as hope reclaimed a weary heart. I was found! Not in some generic way, but in the most meaningful, personal way possible. I saw him. I saw love. I saw grace. I saw a deep pool of mercy. A pool which I thought I had dried up with my endless failures, as if a person could drain the Pacific with a straw. I hadn’t even tested the depths of His mercy! I was not a disappointment, I was not living under the dark glare of the Judge. I was instead captivated by the eyes that held a fathomless, unchangeable, eternal love. In the reflection of those eyes, I found myself!

Needless to say, I cried a lot after that. For at least a month after seeing Jesus, random things would bring back the tears. Someone might say “love” in a conversation, and I would start bawling. I would hear the word “Jesus”, and again the tears would fall. When I wasn’t busy crying, my face was plastered with a stupid grin. The grin of someone who is completely overwhelmed with a goodness that he knows will never leave.

The years since that eternal moment have not been easy. It turns out that when Jesus said, “It is finished”, he didn’t mean that I would never fail again. There have been seasons where I’ve found myself right back in a familiar rut. At times I even thought that I had once again fallen too far for his mercy. Surely the guy who had such a vision should be on the fast track to perfect behavior, right? How could I so scorn the grace of God as to fail to fully embrace it at all times? The accuser is very crafty! But while I have endured trying seasons, times of doubt, and circumstances that I couldn’t easily make sense of, there is a voice that resonates in the depths of my soul. Deeper than knowledge, experience, or the unstable realm of emotions, there is a timeless place within me where I simply know. I am His. He is mine. I cannot possibly outrun his mercy. I have no hope of extracting myself from his love. He loves me. It’s who He is. I am loved.

Whatever is going on around me, and whatever the status of my performance (are we still doing that? Are will still performing as if God doesn’t value us for who we are? Are we still measuring each other as if our judgment carries any weight?), I have a home. I have a place from which I will never be evicted. I have sanctuary in the heart of God, even as he makes his home in a deep part of mine. What bliss! I do not know what the rest of this life will look like, but of one thing I am certain.

“surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of God forever” –Psalm 23: 8

Politics, Religion and the Kingdom of the Heart

The time of Jesus (as well as the next 40 years or so after his death and resurrection) was very tumultuous and confusing for Israel. Foreign occupiers who didn’t believe in God and at times committed sacrilege according to the Jewish faith were the ruling power. The “king” of Israel (actually the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea to be specific!) was only partly Jewish and spent much of his childhood being educated in Rome. He was Jewish for political purposes, but really nothing more than a Roman puppet. Judea (which includes Jerusalem) wasn’t even under the Jewish leader’s rule but fell to a Roman governor.

The religious authorities walked a tightrope, attempting to preserve religious traditions and maintain control of the Jewish people while being careful not to challenge Roman rule in the fear that Rome would take away the special religious rights that it had given to the Jewish people. In this time of compromise and political intrigue, there were the teachers of the Jewish law who lamented Israel’s compromised position and who taught the law especially strictly in order that the Jewish people would maintain their faith and identity in the midst of the corrupting influence of Roman culture. At this same time, there were the zealots, who saw absolute freedom from the Roman occupiers as the most important concern. These men would often mount guerrilla attacks and stir up mobs against the Romans.

In this tense environment, it was impossible to not be caught up in the chaos of the day. Rumours of the Romans desecrating the temple or of the cultural corruption of the nation were all over Facebook (or whatever 1st-century website people used for gossip), and opinions were split on what should be done. Should the people join fighting units to drive out the occupiers? Should they be grateful for the partial religious freedom they still enjoyed and find a way to coexist? Should they follow a certain preacher who teaches about strict religious observances over politics, or should they listen to the preachers who remind them of the gallant battles of past days when Israel triumphed over her enemies? Should they wait for the prophesied messiah who would deliver them from oppression? If so, which of the many voices speaking might prove to be him? Or should they once and for all delete their Facebook accounts and ignore it all? Maybe they should just make a living and support their families?

Is it any wonder that people didn’t get Jesus? With so many serious problems that needed resolution, he seemed hopelessly out of touch.

When the Jewish faith needed teachers who would rigorously uphold the law, Jesus at times seemed like he would fit. Certainly he didn’t preach against the law, and his sermon on the mount clearly calls for a purity not only of the body but even of the heart. But then he goes and eats and drinks with sinners. And talks alone with a foreign woman who a proper Israelite wouldn’t even say “hello” to. Then he allows a morally bankrupt woman to clean his feet with her hair, and touches lepers and other people the law declare “unclean”. Jesus seemed to not understand the pressing need Israel had for a return to pure religion. To those looking for religious salvation, he was far too friendly with outcasts to be considered.

When the zealots needed a popular leader who could unite their nation and take it back from Roman oppressors, Jesus again seemed like a possibility. He had a large following among the common people, and rumours were spreading that he was indeed the messiah. He performed countless miracles that seemed to show he had favour with God (either that or he had a demon, as some said), and if God would favour him to heal, surely He would also favour him to fight and win like He had with other leaders in the past. But then this Jesus seemed to be completely inept at leading people. A good leader knows how to direct his popularity towards achieving a common goal, but Jesus just allowed all of his influence to be wasted, even working against his own popularity by teaching strange things (like something about eating his flesh??) and allowing even tax collectors, who collaborated with the Romans to extort money from the Jews, to be part of his inner circle. To the zealot looking for political salvation, Jesus was just too impractical and poor at leadership to lead a movement.

Even after his resurrection and appearance before his disciples, proving his identity as the Son of God, he acted so strangely. With an imperishable body, why didn’t he just claim authority? Why didn’t he march back into Jerusalem and declare himself king? No one could have stopped him, and seeing the man who was killed before such an audience back among the living surely would have encouraged belief! But instead, he disappears again, leaving only the promise of the “Holy Spirit” to help the flesh and blood that are left to pick up the pieces.

While we now have the hindsight of history to shed some light on what Jesus was (and perhaps still is?) up to, at the time it seemed that he made a complete waste of his influence, authority and position. The corrupt religious institutions of his day WERE a big problem…why didn’t he sort that out? Why not sit as high priest in Jerusalem? The oppressive and often murderous regime that ruled Israel was a huge problem! Why not fix things by taking charge himself?

But you see, in Jesus mind, it has never been about politics. Or religious purity. No, Jesus is the King of another world. He is King of the heart. This is no secondary kingdom…it is the only kingdom that really matters! Because whatever puppet is sitting on whatever political throne and writing whatever clever law, it is in the heart of each person that love, hope and the promise of change can be awakened. A politician can make it illegal to use certain drugs, and people will adjust and find secret ways of using said drugs, but it is in the kingdom of the heart that Jesus gives us an identity as sons and daughters of God. It is in the heart that he awakens our union with Christ! This produces a deep and often euphoric peace that is far superior to the best drugs. A politician can tell us not to murder, but it is in the heart that we become recipients of an unquenchable love that births in us a love of the same kind; a love that gives and forgives. Such a heart cannot murder! A politician may tell us that we can kill our unborn children, but it is in the heart that God’s sacrificial love for us enables and impassions us to lay down our lives for our children, however inconvenient and difficult it may be! Likewise, a preacher or pastor can tell us to pray more, but it is in the heart that desire and love for God are awakened, and a heart that has been awakened needs no other compulsion to pray! Another religious leader may teach permissive sexuality to better match the prevailing culture, but it is in the heart that sexual desire is reunited with restored identity and selfless love, and it is to such a heart that committed love no longer restricts sexuality, but perfectly partners with and enhances it!

Jesus is everything he says he is. Don’t be fooled by his apparent silence and don’t be distracted by the pressing issues of today. If he is quiet, it is because he is calling you to be quiet with him. Maybe it is in the midst of the political or religious “valley of the shadow of death” through which you are now passing that he is calling you to walk “beside still waters and restore your soul”. Maybe he is awakening something in the depth of your heart that will banish fear and heal wounds. Maybe he is restoring your heart to a place where your inner life is no longer at the mercy of external events. Maybe he is birthing in you a kingdom. It may appear out of touch or insignificant when compared to the much louder worlds that surround you…but it is in the kingdom of the heart that you will find the life and purpose and love that you are afraid to even hope for. It is in the kingdom of the heart that you will learn what love is, and begin to receive and give it freely. It is in this kingdom that you will begin to change the world around you…not because you have found a way to harness your influence or attract a following, but because one who has been awakened cannot help but awaken others.

Let us join Jesus in becoming out of touch, impractical and confusing. Let us waste our influence, lose our moral superiority and throw away our standing or appearance of purity that “good people” so value. Let us love and embrace people of questionable morals. Let us be counted as drunkards and gluttons because of it! Let us gain popularity only to lose it by our strange behaviour. Let us leave those who don’t understand us utterly bewildered! Let us welcome the King of our hearts to awaken whatever beautiful madness he wants to! Whatever dignity we lose in this world will be worth it. Who needs respect when you have joy? Who needs reputation when you are beloved children of God? Who needs politics and religion when you have a kingdom of the heart?

God Given Idenitity

God has been speaking to me about my true identity repeatedly.  He has been leading me into surprising territory to discover this.  There is much that Jesus taught that is offensive to our natural understanding.  To me there has never been anything so offensive and difficult to grasp (and so fulfilling and fruitful in my life) as the revelation of how God sees me.

Almost seven years ago Jesus visited me in a vision.  In that vision I saw him on the cross, and I heard Him say the words “It is finished”.  That vision has radically transformed my life in almost every way, and since that day my life has been a pursuit of the fullness of this revelation.  Over the next few years God walked me through understanding his grace and his love.  I fought many battles with condemnation and feelings of being unlovable, but God was so outrageous in his demonstrations of love and grace to me that I no longer deny it.  God loves me so much, and His grace for me is endless.  His steadfast love endures forever, and his grace is ALWAYS far greater than my shortcomings!  I could (and sometime will) expound on these more, because God’s grace and love are the greatest things in my life, and the things that are closest to my heart.  That being said, a few years ago God started taking me deeper into another revelation.

It started one night at church.  There was a man visiting our church who was really interested in what we were doing and what we believed, but who had some definite skepticism as well.  Myself and some others at the church ended up talking to him after the service.  I really felt God’s presence, and was sharing with him about the love of God.  Then a friend said something that offended my natural mind, even though my spirit jumped with excitement.  She said that God likes us.  It may seem strange, because having had a revelation of God’s love, you’d think it would be easy to accept.  I was confused as to why those words offended me so much.

I have since dug deeper, and realized that I thought that God loved me the same way people say they love friends who are getting on their nerves.  I felt like God’s view of me was, “I love him, but he can be really annoying”, or “I love him, but I wish he wasn’t so slow to learn” or “I love him, but I really want to change who he is into something better”.  I really felt that He was disappointed with me.  Whenever someone would say to me “God’s really pleased with you” or anything to do with God having a positive view of me, I would throw it out.  I would think, “If only they knew what I did” or “If they could see my thoughts they would realize that God cannot be pleased with me”.  Just as He was aggressive in showing me love and grace over the previous few years, recently God has aggressively been changing my view of how He see’s me, and thus how I see myself.  I want to share some of these revelations so that those of you who are having your own identity crisis can be uplifted and find peace with who you are in Christ.

 

1:  God created you exactly the way you are!  He likes you exactly the way you are.  Yes you were born into a fallen world and with a sinful nature, but the truest form of who you are is what Jesus died to set free.  When Christ redeemed you, he didn’t then begin to form you into someone new, but rather freed you to be the you that he made you to be from the start.  There are lies and wrong identities that you may have accepted that form who you think you are.  God does want to change those….but please know that God is not working to form you into something you’re not.  He’s freeing you to be the child of God that you were always designed to be!  Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!

 

2:  God’s pleasure in you has nothing to do with your rule keeping!  Many people realize that they are saved by grace, but then feel that they need to keep all of the rules in order to please God.  I was one of those people!  The Galatians also fell into that false teaching.  Galatians 3:1-6 (ESV) says,

“O foolish Galatians!  Who has bewitched you?  It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.  Let me ask you only this:  Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?  Are you so foolish?  Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?  Did you suffer so many things in vain – if indeed it was in vain?  Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith – just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as rightousness’?”

If you are in Christ, then you have already died to the law (rule keeping) and are alive in Christ, so please don’t try to keep rules!  God is pleased with who you are, and he is pleased with the perfect work of Jesus that has, once and for all, washed you clean!  Do not submit to it again, but enjoy the freedom of being a child of God!

 

3:  God has called you, and has given you the authority to walk as prince’s and princess’s in the Kingdom of God!  In Luke 10 Jesus sent out 72 disciples to proclaim the good news, to heal the sick, and to cast out demons.  When the disciples returned, here’s what happened.

“The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!’  And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.  Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.  Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:17-20 ESV)

It is almost treated as a footnote, because the greater thing to rejoice in is that our names are written in heaven……yet Jesus also stated that we have authority over all of the power of the enemy!  We are not called to walk as slaves, who do not know our Master’s will, but as friends, as beloved children, who know our Master’s will and walk with Him in authority in every situation.

 

This is just a fraction of what God has been showing me about identity.  It may seem that I’ve oversimplified it, but I’ve come to realize that the truth is simple.  The struggle is to believe.  I realize that much of what I’ve stated my seem offensive to some (it used to be offensive to me), but please meditate on it.  Think it over.  If you don’t accept it, then you have lost nothing…but if there is a treasure in this for you, please don’t let the offense of the gospel push you away.  Also remember that what always offended the Pharisees was the grace, mercy, and liberality of Jesus.  They wanted to kill him because he healed on the Sabbath, he forgave sins (even when people didn’t ask for forgiveness!) and lavished love on sinners.  If it seems like undeserved merit….then you’re on the right track, because that’s what grace is!  If you take nothing else from this, please just rest in the truth that God loves you, and God is for you.  If He is for you, who can be against you!?  He also likes you!  These revelations have given me so much freedom in so many areas, and I pray that they give you greater freedom too!