What if you lived as I see you? Your responses to daily life would be different. You would seek, above all else, to delight Me.
As we look at identification cards such as a driver’s license or passport, it reveals specific details about ourselves to ensure anyone can recognize who we are. Often we identify with who we were before we accepted Christ. If we took God’s name years ago, we may have forgotten who we really are or maybe we never really understood. We might have begun identifying with our mistakes, missteps, and struggles we wrestle with in our flesh. We might have also identified with the limitations man has spoken over us in saying who we are or what we can become. Let us expand our minds by reasoning with our magnificent God and walk each day in our true identity and what He says is possible.
Jesus bore our infirmities and sins upon His own body through the lashes He received and the suffering He endured on the cross. Because we are new creations, the following attributes will be evident in us as we take hold to our true identity in Christ and trust Him: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5). These fruits of the Holy Spirit will surface in our reactions to life as we at last trust what He says about us is true. As the Lord decides, our gifts and positioning in the body could include any He desires to work in us to prepare those in the body of Christ to serve (I Corinthians 12).
Often we are tempted to live below our identity in Christ, but let us no longer be what we were but what He has created us to be and do as He works through us. Such an artifact would indicate how He saw us when we took on Christ’s righteousness. Rather than responding in fear, walking in stress, continuing with habits that tear ourselves down, responding in anger, or even reacting in ways that cause strife, we must look at our ID card to remind ourselves that we do not have to respond out of our flesh or live in a lower way. This is no longer our identity. We are now the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us consider what our ID Card in Christ looks like and how He desires to populate each category, Let us live how Christ sees us, walking in the purpose He has for us, serving in the position He has called us to, and being expectant for what He is preparing us to fill. In all we do, let us do it all for God’s glory, in His strength, and for His delight.
If God issued an identification card when we believed in Christ, what would it say?
- Member of Christ’s Body: Yes
- Birthday: Day we accepted Christ
- No Expiration Date: Eternal Creation
- Attributes: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control
- Operations: Faith, Healing, Miraculous Powers, Message of Wisdom, Message of Knowledge, Prophecy, Discerning of Spirits, Speaking in Tongues, or Interpretation of Tongues
- Position: Apostle, Prophet, Pastor, Teacher, Providing Help, Giving Guidance, or other role to build up the Body
II Corinthians 5:16-21
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Romans 6:1-14
“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
I Corinthians 12:4-7
“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
YouTube Video: Building the Right Mindset by Graham Cooke