January 18, 2020

Who Are You in Christ?

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! – 1 John 3:1a

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. – Romans 15:7

We get so caught up in labels, don’t we? This person owns her own company. That person teaches school. The man over there works on the military base. It all sounds good – until it isn’t.

She stays home with her kids. He refuses to work. He is obese. She is lazy. Their kids are out of control. Did you see what she wore? Did you smell his breath?

Gosh but we can be mean. We call ourselves justified but there’s no justification for judging circumstances we can’t possibly understand. There’s no justification for putting others down in a vain attempt to build ourselves up.

Oh, no! That’s not so, we explain. Really? Are you saying you don’t feel a little bit better about yourself, a little more secure in your position, in your life, when you look down on someone else? I’m not buying it.

Those arrows hurt. They cause us to question who we are. They remind us that no matter how much we accomplish or how hard we try, there will always be someone who does it a little bit better.

I am so thankful that our identity doesn’t come from the things we do or don’t do, from how we look or who we know. Our income or our address or the car we drive don’t factor into our worth.

We are valuable because of Jesus. Our identity – our true identity – comes from Him. Jesus thought we were good enough to die for. Jesus reached out His hand and, with His blood, calls us blameless. And because of this God looks at us with love and beckons us into His Presence.

Don’t let this world beat you down. Don’t believe the lies those daggers shoot at you day after day. You are loved. You are cherished. You are more than enough. When life gets tough today, rest in that.

January 12, 2018

What Labels Do You Wear?

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. The old has gone, the new is here! 

– 2 Corinthians 5:17

What is your label? Who are you, to the world and to yourself?

Think about it. Are you an employee, a spouse or a parent? Are you a liar, a thief, a hypocrite? Are you someone who thinks highly of yourself or do you feel sorry for yourself? Are you someone who makes excuses or who takes responsibility? Do you know everything or do you judge everyone by standards no one could reach?

What does the world say, and see, when it looks at you? Are you a failure or a success? Are you a giver or a taker? Are you honest or do you skirt the truth when it benefits you? Do you have potential or have you stumbled so many times no one expects anything else from you?

We all carry labels. Some we place on ourselves. Some labels others brand us with. Some of those labels are justified and some aren’t.

When you become a Christian, when you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior over your life, you become a new creation. You have been washed clean by His blood. What is past no longer defines you. Yes, there may still be consequences from past choices but they don’t define you. That is no longer your label.

The hardest part isn’t moving beyond your past. The hardest part is ridding yourself of the labels you and the world use to define who you are. God may have forgotten our sins the moment we repented, but we haven’t and neither has those around us. It’s like lugging a ball and chain into the future. It sure does slow the journey down.

We all are guilty. Have you ever watched a recovering alcoholic try to make amends and peace with what their actions did to their children? It doesn’t matter how many years they’ve been sober, they still beat themselves up over a past they can’t change.

Have you ever listened to a parent trying to make excuses for an adult child? They can’t seem to grasp that the adult child continues to make bad decisions. They are full of excuses. Admitting anything else means they failed as a parent, doesn’t it? Better to pretend something else, anything else, than to know and accept that sometimes you can do everything right and still have a child repeatedly make poor choices.

Have you ever cheated on your spouse, even if it was only in your heart? Have you ever told a “white lie” rather than deal with the truth? Have you ever spread gossip, played “politics” at work, or taken advantage of someone and called yourself justified?

I’ve asked a lot of questions. Sometimes the hardest part of labels is looking ourselves in the heart and taking inventory of what is real, what is the past, and what belongs to the world. It isn’t an easy journey. We aren’t nearly as awful as we think. And we aren’t nearly as innocent as we want to believe. It’s easy to point the finger. It’s easy to wallow in past mistakes. It isn’t so easy to get up, dust ourselves off and go forward as a new creation.

Jesus gives us an opportunity to take a different path. He calls us beloved, child of God, forgiven. Does your life reflect that? Really? Think about it.

January 11, 2018

Will We Ever Learn?

Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you. – Galatians 4:17-18

We have thankfully completed yet another election cycle. The ugliness was awful but not unexpected. One of the candidates has a way of stirring things up, calling himself a conservative Christian and his opponent a liberal who is light on crime.

It’s not true, of course. But he has used this platform and repeatedly been elected to political office. It’s like he has on a Teflon coat that mud refuses to stick to.

He knows exactly what buttons to push. Prayer. Pro-life. The second amendment. He conducts his campaign in churches, refusing to participate in a debate or answer questions from the media. Why should he? There are too many people who support him, refusing to believe the facts.

It’s no different than when he loudly protested his Ten Commandments monument, insisting that it belonged in front of the Judicial Building. He neglected to mention that the Ten Commandments were already on display inside. News reports pointed that out but his followers didn’t pay attention.

I wonder how many of them have read the Old Testament. How many recall the snakes and how God had said anyone who was bitten could look to the bronze snake he’d had Moses make. (Numbers 21) Later God ordered that it be destroyed because the people were burning incense to it. (2 Kings 18)

It was never about the bronze snake. It was about God. And it was never about the Ten Commandments. It was about a politician using God’s people to make a name for himself.

This same politician has been accused by numerous women of improper conduct. When they were teens and the politician was in his 30s, he would come on to them. He would have inappropriate contact with them. He would warn them that no one would believe a teen over a District Attorney.

Now they have come forward, speaking loudly. He denies knowing any of them, despite evidence that says he did. Still, his followers stand supporting him as though he is one of God’s chosen people instead of an imposter enjoying his moment of fame.

We have an obligation to look beyond party lines and really pray about the candidates. A political party affiliation doesn’t mean one person is a better Christian than another, nor does it mean that a person who claims Jesus really knows Him.

How can we be so blind? It is a pattern with us all. God’s people have always allowed ourselves to be deceived by those who would use us to gain glory for themselves. Will we ever learn? Probably not.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Replace Lies With God’s Words

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is -- his good, pleasing and perfect will. -- Romans 12:2

What are you not doing today because someone said you couldn’t do it? What are you doing today because of past labels that turned you into who they wanted you to be?

We are the products of our own desires, yes, but also we are influenced and directed by the many opinions of those around us. Someone decides while we are young that we are brainy or athletic or not too bright. And so we become because someone older and “wiser” said we were.

By the time we’re old enough to have dreams and aspirations for ourselves, the past labels are ingrained in us and those around us. So we follow the predicable path. We let others tell us how to live our lives. We quash our dreams in favor of more “realistic” goals, which is just another word for what others want us to do.

Where is God in all this? Is He in the labels others have pinned on us? Is He in favor of following the path others laid out for us? And do we even bother to ask God what He wants us to do with our lives?

Somehow it just seems easier to go along to get along, as the old cliché goes. But if God gave us a desire for something more, something different, something else than where we’ve been, then who are we to take a different path? And who are those around us to think that they know better than God?

It gets back to each of us having unique and special gifts that we are intended to use for God’s glory. No two people are exactly alike, including my identical twin cousins who were as different as they were similar. God has touched the heart of each of us, drawing us down a path of His choosing.

So how do we fight the expectations of others? How do we withstand the criticisms and putdowns that come when you select a different course? By renewing your mind so that God’s Words replace the criticisms and judgments of those around you.

Easy? Not even close. Psychologists call it “cognitive therapy.” We are called to confront the lies of our past and replace them with God’s truth. When we turn away from the world’s hold on our lives, God lights a path that clearly reflects His will for our lives.

Stop limiting yourself to the expectations of others. Your Heavenly Father created everything and He will help you do anything He calls you to do. What has He called you to do? Follow Him and let yourself soar to unimaginable heights.