Who am I!

A few years ago, I had a dream of acres of those punching balloons that were about forty inches high. They sat on the floor and were shaped like bowling pins. When you would push them or punch them, they would bounce back. They usually had a clown figure on them. In this dream, I looked out over the acres of these balloons and their back was towards me. As I walked towards them, they turned to face me, but they had no faces. They were totally blank. When I woke up from the dream, I knew God was showing me, that God’s people don’t know who they are!”

When season in our lives change, we sometimes lose our identities. Why does this happen to us? The truth is you are still you. What has changed is our position.

Identity and Function

A way of looking at this is how a mother’s position changes with the growth of her child. As a baby, the mother has to be consumed with the care of this infant because they are helpless to defend and feed themselves. Then they become first graders, this is when children start to gain independence and have other adult influences in their lives. A mother needs to allow this separation for the child to develop in a healthy manner. Then they become teenagers and know more than their parents. This is when boundaries are tested. These boundaries can’t be so limiting that they cause the young people to not to take responsibility for their adult life ahead of them. Next, there is college or technical training. Now comes the empty nest that mothers have to face. They are still mothers (identity) but at each stage of life how they function changes.

A Different Type of Membership

In this season of transition and multiple changes, many of us have lost our way. We don’t know how we fit in or what we are to accomplish in the chaos of the world. As Christians, our identity is who we belong too. We belong to God because of the price Jesus paid for this membership. This membership is different than other worldly memberships because we get a new life that taps into resources from a different world. We enter a kingdom where this King love us and died for us. This concept for many is the first taste of a love so strong that it is almost unfathomable. Knowing that someone thinks we are so valuable that they would give up all they were to invest in a weak and broken mankind is hard to accept.

Here is the paradox. If we don’t understand we moved into a new kingdom, then we are dominated by the world’s ruling cultures. To understand how our thinking is programed to what the world dictates, see the blog on  Cultural Architect – Mind Blowing Information! The world has created search engines and advertising hooks that direct people’s thinking. They box you into a mindset by limiting what you see. Without the word of God to direct our thinking, we become trapped in the wrong mindsets.

Fight the Right War!

Jesus’s life showed us God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. We are in a war not with the world’s systems, but in not knowing who God created us to be in this world. You never saw Jesus fight political battles. He overcame the world by bring God’s kingdom to earth through healing, multiplying food, teaching parables of the kingdom of God, and supernatural provision (fish with coins to pay taxes). He used the word of God to release God’s will in his surrounding circumstances.

God’s kingdom is like living in a parallel universe. For non-Sci-Fi indoctrinated people, this means two worlds happening at the same time but functioning in different ways. Our fight, once we accept Jesus, is to learn to live in the kingdom of God and not in the world’s system. This is what being in the world but not of the world means. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world…” When he died and rose again, he left us here to bring God’s kingdom on earth. He overcame the world and gave us his peace to operate in his kingdom here on earth. The key to accomplishing this is knowing and using his kingdom manual, which is the Word of God.

Prayer

Father God,

Help! I have accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, but I am caught up in my old way of thinking. I need to see how you see. I want to walk in your power to overcome the worldly thinking patterns. I desire to bring your kingdom into my life and those around me. I ask for Holy Spirit to show me the path of life in all the circumstances of life. I am willing to change. I want to be the light you have created me to be. Remove the cobwebs of the world’s view and cause me to see your ways. In Jesus’ name and by His Blood. Amen!

Scriptures

Matthew 6:9-11; John 18:35-37; Matthew 8:16; 14:13-18; 13:18-31; 24:24-26; John 16