Click & Visit the devotional Blog!
Encouragement for the Frontline
This is a letter of encouragment to all of us: Look to your foundations, consider the core of your lives as you endeavor to walk in love and unity. Often the reason we get “off track” in life is because we forget the simple, core truths of the faith. A topic that God has been bringing to mind recently is “identity”.
In ministry or work or even home life, people are constantly living out of their current grasp of their identity. Whenever there is strife among people - the core issue is blindness regarding identity. The reason we get trapped by fear or greed or worry is that we tend to forget who we are or better said,“Who’s” we are. When our sense of identity is misplaced - away from Christ we waver. Longing for stability, we cling to things like: what we possess or what we do. Our title, our opinions, our "stuff" become the fiber of who we are and then we cling to those things - as if to loose them would be to loose ourselves.
We are not our own – we belong to Christ. I know I will spend the rest of my life learning and experiencing that truth. We all will. When our hearts have settled on the fact that we belong to Him and that His nature and purposes are invested in us – we see differently; we feel differently; we act differently. Not by our own efforts but by the power of His Spirit at work within us.
By His Spirit we grow in awareness of His presence. We cannot be afraid when we know God is with us. How can we get offended when His love possesses us? The more we meditate on His presence in our lives - the more confident and caring and compassionate we become. He heals our identity and gives us the ability to love freely and richly.
I am confident of this – that He who began the good work in us is faithful to complete it.
Do you not discern and understand that you [the whole church at Corinth] are God's temple (His sanctuary), and that God's Spirit has His permanent dwelling in you [to be at home in you, [a]collectively as a church and also individually]?
- 1 Cor 3:16
http://johnmaxwellteam.com/identity/
God is with us; Christ within us. We're not our own; we belong to God.
