He has work for us to do, and has equipped us with individual gifts in order to carry out our assignments.
Jesus didn’t plan for us to be saved and then sit around just soaking in His love. When we trust Christ with our lives, He forgives us completely of all our sins-including our very sin nature ( Luke 11:4 and 1 John 1:9). Everyone who gives their life to Him does so because He first loved them ( John 3:16 and Romans 8:29-30). I am assured of my home in heaven ( John 3:16 and 14:1-3). I don’t have to worry about what will happen after I die. I am an intentional creation of God ( Psalm 139:13-17). I’m not a random accident, or the mere product of two cells interacting. We are like butterflies awaiting release from our cocoons to live a new life ( 1 Peter 1:3, 23). But really, if we think about being born spiritually as our second birth, then adoption into a new family is the next logical step. It might seem contradictory to consider that new birth and adoption both happen to us when we accept Jesus as our Savior. As believers, we’ve been adopted into the family of God ( Romans 8:15-16). Adoption is a permanent, legal change in familial status. This way of understanding my relationship with God is especially meaningful to me because I have three adopted sisters-and we’ve been a family for about 50 years. Unfortunately, in this swirling, manic, media-driven era, it’s easy for us to forget who we are. And that makes it easy to feel intimidated or insignificant. Unfortunately, sometimes I think we don’t understand ourselves. It is difficult for others who don’t know Him to understand us. Rather than allow a cultural narrative to stereotype us, we need to understand why we are different-and what those differences are. It’s important to know who we really are in order to be authentic.
Faith is not a result of any political persuasion, but of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. This is what we need to let others see when they interact with us. Nobody is more transparent than the Lord Jesus Christ about His mission and what He intends for His people. We hear a lot about authenticity and transparency today. If what we hear about Christians from the secular world isn’t true, then what is, and why does it matter? Why It's Important to Know Your Identity in Christ Many Christians seem to flounder under the new societal persecution because they don’t have a solid knowledge base of what God says about them. We are often lumped in with the “far right” and categorized as a fringe element by some media outlets and prominent political figures. It’s no longer an advantage to be seen in church like it was as recently as the late 1900’s-in fact, it seems like most of society doesn’t care. Who am I in Christ? Christians are coming under increasing attack in western culture.
0 kommentar(er)
