God is making you into His image and likeness. Not the likeness of a broken world.
If you have surrendered your life to Jesus, your real life is in Jesus. Why would you ever want to settle for a lesser identity than that?
You’re invited to join me and Graham Cooke LIVE THIS WEEK: https://challenge.grahamcooke.com/awareness
Transcript
Today, we are going to take a “Posture of Peace” by tuning into our real lives.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you, God is with you in everything. Together, we’re going to be emboldened to take a daily Posture of perfect peace.
All last week, we talked about making a lens change, choosing to view ourselves, our circumstances, the world around us, through the lens of God Himself, His nature, His ways, His perspective. Instead of the alternative, which is viewing God through the lens of all that may be happening to us and around us. So an example of that is when you choose to view God through the lens of your circumstances, you might be deceived into believing that bad things are happening in the world right now, because God is angry with us, and He’s punishing us.
But when the nature of God is your greatest reality, then you know and you trust that He has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s 1 Thessalonians 5:9 by the way. And with that awareness, you can then partner with His nature and see the world through a redemptive, restorative lens and be empowered to bring hope and solution. Your freedom in Christ, it’s not confined to just what you have been freed from. Your freedom in Christ must be seen in light of who you are now free to become. Everything about this nature of freedom is learning how to live with a constant and consistent awareness of the life of Christ in you. It is wrong.
We would say in the Southern United States, it ain’t right. It is wrong as a Christian to look at this broken world and be consumed by how its brokenness is affecting you, to live your life obsessed with this question of, what is all this brokenness gonna mean for me and my future? No, instead you have been empowered and equipped to live out the answer to this question. What does my life in Christ mean for this broken world? What is now possible because I’m present and the presence of God is in me? Colossians 2:9 and 10, it says, “For in Christ, all the fullness of the Godhead lives in bodily form and in Christ, you have been brought to fullness.” Are you even aware of just how full a life of fullness in Christ really is? One page over in Colossians 3:3, it says, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” You died. Your old sinful nature is dead, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God, and this is such good news, because it means your real life is not hidden in a place you can’t find it. It’s with Christ, and Christ lives in you, and He’s always with you, and He’s never gonna leave you or forsake you.
So you and I, we can never lose our real life in Christ, but we can lose our awareness of it, and this often happens when we become more enamored by or more overwhelmed by what is happening around us than by the one who is living within us. God has offered us His unchanging self, so that we too can become unchanging in our nature and character, no matter what is occurring. Genesis 1:26, God’s primary purpose is to make you into His image and likeness. You are being made into His image and likeness. You’re not being made into the likeness of a broken world. You’re not being made into the likeness of your political party, not the likeness of your favorite girl boss or social media influencer, not the likeness of your Pastor, however wonderful he or she may be. You’re not being made into the likeness of your parents, however, wonderful or chaotic your relationship with them may be. You are not made in the image and likeness of your family’s generational dysfunction. You’re not made in the likeness of your worldview, not in the likeness of your mistakes or your accomplishments, and praise the Lord, you and I have not been made into the likeness of other people’s opinions of us.
God is making you and me into His image and likeness, and if you have surrendered your life to Jesus, and I hope you have, your real life is in Jesus. Why would you ever want to settle for a lesser identity than that? Don’t. We will adhere most to whatever identity we choose to be most aware of, most tuned into. The life that we choose to tune into everyday, either our old dead sinful selves or our new life in Christ, whichever life we choose to tune into, that determines whether we are going to live more than conquerors or whether we’re going to live conquered by negative circumstances or vain pursuits. What we choose to live aware of, who we choose to live aware of, is a very big deal. So that’s why this week, starting on Wednesday, my friend and mentor Graham Cooke and I, we are tackling this, because we have both been so radically transformed by tuning into our real lives in Christ, and we want to share it with you.
We want to share what we’ve learned. We want to share what we practice, and we want to share how you can cultivate a lifestyle of sensitivity and awareness to the presence of God in your daily life. Because it will not only just transform you, it’ll transform the world around you, and so we’re doing this by hosting a three-day live challenge. It’s like an equipping, and it’s happening in a private Facebook group, starting this Wednesday, October 27th, the year 2020, just in case you’re watching this like a year from now, and I’m gonna put the registration link with all the details in the description of this episode. I hope you can join us, because, because you haven’t been placed into this world to be broken by it. You have been born into this world for such a time as this to bring kingdom hope and kingdom solutions, and it starts with an awareness of the life you have in Christ.
The promise of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26:3. In Hebrew, it is “shalom, shalom”, meaning complete wholeness. Nothing missing, nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus. Because of Jesus, you are a living testimony of Jesus’s ultimate win. With every step you take today you’re putting Jesus’s victory on display and satan’s defeat on replay.