We go over far too much info for me to process and spit out every day, so I’ll just share one of the thoughts that hit me the hardest from the day. At least that’s what I plan on doing. Whatever. I apologize if this is difficult to understand, I’m too tired to make it pretty and easy to swallow. Enjoy your chewing.
My actions and decisions are shaped by and informed by my identity. It’s the belief in an identity that creates action (for example I’m never going to start serving people until I start believing that I am a servant). As Christians, our identity is found in the gospel. The gospel tells us who we are: God’s people, saved by God’s power, for God’s purpose. We need to ask ourselves if this is informing our actions and decisions. If it’s not, something else is. This means we’re adopting an identity outside of the gospel. That’s a form of idolatry, elevating something above God. We’re looking to something or someone other than him to declare our identity.
One of the interns told us that she had trouble explaining why she chose to remain a virgin until marriage when some of her friends questioned her. Praise God she has remained a virgin. It is a blessing. At the same time, however, that statement reveals a heart issue. She didn’t choose to remain a virgin because of the gospel. Her reasoning wasn’t because she was God’s child, saved by God’s power, for God’s purpose. God’s child obeys her father because he is her father and because he wants the best for her, God’s child obeys him because he loves her. The reason why she remained a virgin was informed by something else, some other identity. It could have been because her parents told her not to have sex before marriage, so she found her identity as a child of her parents, or because she was a “good kid,” and had to keep up her reputation. It could have been any one of a myriad of identities. The point is, her identity wasn’t founded in the gospel. This meant she was looking to someone or something else to tell her who she was, placing their word above God’s, idolizing whoever or whatever that was.
I don’t want that to leave you down or allow the Enemy to beat you up over it however. The proper response to realizing idolatry in our life is to understand what we’re not believing about God. In this case she wasn’t believing he was in control because she wasn’t believing that what he said about her was true. She also may not have been believing God was good, because she wasn’t trusting the identity he gave her as the best identity for her (this may or may not have been the reason, I’m just trying to take you through the mental process). Next, we need to understand how the gospel speaks into this issue. God knows we constantly try to find our identity in something other than him, but through Jesus’ death on the cross, he declared an irreversible identity over us. He rescued us and made us his own. We are his people, saved by his power, for his purpose. This leads us to a point of worship for what God has done for us, realizing he is God, and that other thing that we found our identity was not, and now we have the opportunity to walk in who he has made us.
Sorry that was so long, I was struggling to explain what was going on in my head. If you have any questions, please ask. And also please understand that I’m still new at this mental process, so if you spot holes in it, it’s because I’m still learning how to understand my sin in the correct way.
