This past Wednesday night I had the awesome privilege to kick-off our "Identity in Christ" series at Cornerstone Campus Ministries. The message was entitled "Displacing Ignorance with the Life of God".
NOTE: If you live in the area and are free on Wednesday nights at 7pm, I would strongly encourage you to come as I believe you will be both encouraged and strengthened in the truth about who you are in Christ - a topic we all need more understanding on!
I just want to repeat a few of the key things I taught through the other night, and then make a few comments that I hopefully will bring home the message. The passage I referred to often during that teaching was Ephesians 4:17-24. I would strongly encourage meditation on this particular scripture in light of the gulf that exists between our positional identity in Christ and our day-to-day experience of it.
Ignorance is the primary enemy of walking day-by-day in the fulness of your identity in Christ.
The Knowledge of God is central to everything in life. Yes, God has chosen to reveal Himself through a number of ways - but He has chosen to do so primarily through His Word. The Word of God is the lens through which we see God rightly. This is important when considering our identity in Christ, because to the degree that we see God rightly we will see ourselves rightly. It cannot work any other way. As long as we walk in ignorance of the knowledge of God, we will be "alienated [separated] from the life of God"(Eph. 4:18). If you have never realized the importance of the Word of God, I hope you are beginning to see it now! It is essential to our life with Christ. (Mt. 4:4, Lk. 4:4)
The Knowledge of God will displace ignorance in us. Faith will bring the life of God into our day-to-day experience.
Faith is crucial to receiving your identity in Christ. To be sure, faith cannot earn something, rather faith receives something (it operates where a gift is present). Christ died for you to freely receive the gift of His life. Faith describes what freely receiving looks like. Through faith, we exchange our life (which was worth nothing because of our sin) for the life of God (which has infinite worth because of Christ's righteousness).
Faith is also crucial in living according to your identity in Christ - to live in the fulness of the life of God. Hebrews 11:6 actually says that "without faith it is impossible to please God." This is important to understand because God wants us to relate to Him every moment of every day - to do so requires faith. Faith brings unseen realities into the realm of our experience. For example, God says "do not be anxious about anything.. but let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God.. will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:6,7 paraphrased). By faith we make our requests known to God instead of being anxious about them, and by faith we can actually experience the peace of God where anxiety would have been. Our faith is not based on our experience, but it most certainly helps it! The whole concept of faith was never meant to be complicated.
Faith brings the factual knowledge of God into our experience. It is the bridge that connects spiritual truths that cannot be seen or measured, to our everyday experience. Faith is the avenue through which the life of God is released into my life, and it is available this very moment for all of us who are in Christ!
In light of Paul's warning to the Ephesians, I'm going to go hard after the knowledge of God in His Word, and I am going to walk by faith in order to experience all that God has for me! Will you join me?
Be Blessed!
Andrew
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