Grace secures my identity!
This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace! (WATCH HERE)
Who are you?
Really. Who are you?
The question of identity is one that is front and center in the culture dialogue today. We have identity politics that takes a certain skin color or gender or ideology and assumes that everyone of that “identity” will vote a certain way. We have gender identity issues which leave very young children questioning whether they are male, female, cat, dog or dinosaur. To be sure, these are not issues to be made light of, but to recognize are very real in our society today.
At the heart of them? What is my identity and who gives it to me?
Identity has shifted away from some objective reality (Example: I am male – because I have the male chromosomes and body parts.) to personal feelings. Identity has become more what you feel about yourself than objectively who you are. Identity can become what others put on you to try to create a “group think” on a particular issue. Identity is complicated.
Listening to a leadership podcast (sorry can’t remember which one), identity issues were highlighted as a key struggle for young people. The issue is compounded by social media and the image that one feels they must portray on those platforms to have the “likes” and “followers.”
In fact, even in spiritual matters, identity has become a leading issue people are wrestling with. Why? Because identity goes down to the core of our being. We may “identify” with some surface issue, but identity is really who we are or who we believe we are.
So how can we take an unsettled, confused, misguided culture about identity and begin to establish truly godly perspective on the issue of identity at large, but most importantly for our own hearts?
We look to the one who really matters. Not to friends or family, but we look to the Lord God who created us. What does he say about our identity? Here’s just two passages:
Ephesians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
1 John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
By faith in Jesus, we ARE children of God. This is an identity statement. You ARE a child of God. We don’t just “identify with” children of God…we ARE children of God. Why does this matter?
I can stop looking for an identity outside of God’s reality. When we came to faith in Jesus at baptism or later in life, God GAVE us the identity as his child. Embrace this reality to your core because here is the consequence (in a very positive way.)
As a child of God, I am loved, accepted, and forgiven…regardless of what other people say.
As a child of God, my identity is settled in Christ…not my social media platform.
As a child of God, I know he doesn’t make mistakes and he made me male or female.
As a child of God, I am not identified by my sins and mistakes, but by the blood of Jesus who made me perfect.
As a child of God, I am defined by the riches of God’s grace, not the riches of my bank account.
As a child of God, I am free to love others without need for them to fill in my identity by how they respond.
As a child of God, my identity is settled.
As a child of God, I live in the reality of grace that God so lavishly spread on me!
Grace settles my identity because grace makes me a child of God!
Apply: You are a child of God. How does that change how you show up in life today?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for lavishing your grace and love on me to make me your child. Let my soul always be settled in the identity you gave me, “I am a child of God!”
For additional reflection today: Listen to this song: I’m no longer a slave to fear (LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8TkUMJtK5k)
Grace settles my soul!
This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace! (WATCH HERE)
Do you ever have moments where your past comes back to haunt you? When you consider thoughts, decisions, and actions of the past and whether they measure up to godly standards, do you break out in a cold sweat?
Maybe it’s not a cold sweat, but Satan loves to take our past and make it a worrisome reality in our present. What are we worried about? Does God still love me? Will God forgive me? Will he ever let me into heaven?
God has placed inside of us a conscience that is our inner moral compass that directs us toward things that are right and away from things that are wrong. But, to be honest, we are good at overriding our conscience with justification as to why something that is wrong is OK in this instance. We can dull our conscience by telling ourselves, “I could be doing worse things.”
But then it hits us.
We have that moment when we are faced with our own mortality and the reality of standing before a perfect, holy God who has clearly laid out the standard that we are to be perfect as he is perfect.
But we don’t want to even deal with that reality.
So we put words in God’s mouth and say, “He just wants us to do our best.” We tweak the standard of perfection and think, “Just do a bit more good than bad.” We can look at what others are doing and tell ourselves that we are better than most and at least we haven’t done the “big” sins.
But we are not being honest and Satan is getting us to believe lies about our current reality and our status before God.
Why do we do these things? Because we want to have peace with God and when we do things that are outside of his will, it creates unrest, division, and discord that is not fun, not comfortable, and honestly, we just don’t want to deal with.
But if we don’t we are never at peace in our souls.
The Apostle Paul had a past he was not proud of. He relates to Timothy:
1 Timothy 1:13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.
How could someone with this past EVER have peace with God and have a soul that was settled in its status before God. How could God EVER forgive Saul for persecuting believers, blaspheming his name and violently acting against other people. There’s no amount of good that could overcome that, right? He should burn in hell, don’t you think?
One would think. But that’s not what changed Paul’s status before God. Here’s what did:
1 Timothy 1:14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
Grace settles our soul. Grace settles my status before God. I am forgiven. My past is covered in the blood of Jesus. The perfect life of Jesus is applied to my account. I have peace with God because GRACE has been given to me.
Grace puts our souls at rest…no matter what our past the lies of Satan cannot overcome the truth of Grace. You are forgiven. You are loved.
Apply: How does Satan work in your heart to unsettle it with sins of the past? How can you use the truth of grace to rebuke Satan’s lies and allow your soul to be settled?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for your grace which settles my soul. I am at peace with you because of Jesus. AMEN.
The Key to Life and Leadership is Grace!
This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace! (WATCH HERE)
1 Timothy 1:2 To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
With these words, the Apostle Paul addresses Timothy, a young missionary with the Apostle Paul and a young leader in the New Testament Church. He was left in the city of Ephesus with the church that met there. Paul wanted to come to Ephesus, but until he did, he trusted Timothy to give direction and instruction to the believers.
At first glance, one could look at the book of 1 Timothy and just see a book written to the leaders of a church and dismiss it without much relevance for the average Christian.
Let’s not do that.
Like with any other book of Scripture, God’s Spirit wrote it and preserved it so we could be blessed by it.
The blessing of the first letter to Timothy is that it gives us great insights into life and leadership. Over the next six weeks we will unpack six key realities about life and leadership, all connected to the one foundational reality for every Christian: Grace.
When Paul opens his letter, he communicates grace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Just a few verses into the letter he recognizes that it is pure grace that he was even serving as an apostle and missionary of the Lord Jesus.
1 Timothy 1:12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. 13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
There was no way from a standard of spiritual performance that the Apostle Paul should have been used as a communicator of the Gospel. In his early years, although he was a student of Scripture and zealot for obeying God’s law, he stood opposed to everything that breathed of Christ.
He gave his approval to the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr in the Christian faith:
Acts 7:57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
He breathed out murderous threats to all who professed faith in Jesus:
Acts 9:1-2 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
How in the world could you explain the fact that God would use Paul to proclaim the Gospel, the very thing he stood opposed to?
“I was shown mercy.” “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly…”
When God uses sinners for his purpose, it is purely a testimony to the grace of God. When God changed Paul’s heart, grace began to define every aspect of his being, his purpose, his identity and his status before God. The burden of guilt and lack of perfection fell from his heart and was replaced by the overwhelming grace, mercy and peace of God.
Paul realized that the key to life truly is grace…God’s grace.
The same is true for us today.
Apply: Consider all the reasons you SHOULDN”T be a follower of Jesus or on a mission for him. Then just cross them all off and write “grace.” Grace is the key for it all.
Prayer: Lord, thank you for loving me enough to call me out of my sin to the safety of your love and forgiveness…not because I have earned it, but simply because of your grace. AMEN.
Why Church? SHARE God’s love!
This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: Let Easter Change you: Godly Community! (WATCH HERE)
We started this week with the truth that the church is not a man-made idea, but it’s God’s idea to be a blessing to each of us and for us to be a blessing to each other. But there’s more. There is a focus to this gathering that is bigger than any individual, but includes every individual. There is a purpose that surpasses a temporal entity to become an eternal reality.
God has given his people, his church, the purpose to bring the Gospel of God’s love and grace to the world.
The first New Testament church that gathered on the hill with Jesus was told this:
Matthew 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The church was not just to gather for the blessing for the people already there, but to GO into the world around and bring the message of grace to all people.
Jesus simply wanted them to share what they had already experienced.
He wanted them to share who he was and the importance of his life, death, and resurrection.
He wanted them to share how grace overcomes guilt and gives peace, joy and hope.
He wanted them to tell their story of the impact of God’s love in their lives.
In doing so, the Spirit of God would use their words and witness to bring the message of God’s love to another heart and change the eternal destiny of another soul.
Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
The great thing about Jesus direction to share God’s love with the world is that he empowers us to do the very thing he asks us to do. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.” “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go…”
As members of God’s church, we all carry the same overarching mission: Make disciples. There is no “Plan B.” God has chosen to use you and me. We are his “Plan A.”
The great thing about this mission is that sharing God’s love is not limited to one person or one time and place. God can and will use you wherever you show up today.
Doctor’s appointment? Maybe God has someone in the waiting room that needs his love through you today.
Going to a school class? Maybe God has a classmate that will sit next to you or walk next to you in the hall that needs an expression of his love today.
Have a spouse or children? Maybe today God is going to use you to forgiven and extend grace in a situation you could choose to get angry and upset.
Headed into work? Could it be that your purpose at your company isn’t to just help the financial bottom line, but to engage a coworker in an eternal bottom line?
Have a day off? Perhaps there is a neighbor who will ask for help and you will be able to head over and give your time to show God’s love to them.
Have to go grocery shopping? Don’t just look for the items on your shopping list. Notice the people around you…God may have someone there that needs a word of hope or promise.
Do you get the point? When we each embrace God’s mission for us to share his love with the world, we begin to notice opportunities we may have missed in the past. Perhaps today our simple prayer is to have God open our eyes to see the opportunities around me to share his love today.
Apply: Look at your schedule today. Ask God to orchestrate and opportunity to share his love with someone!
Prayer: Lord, thank you for making me part of your church. Lead me today and everyday to embrace your mission for the church as your mission for me: Make disciples…share your love. Will you orchestrate a clear opportunity today to do just that? AMEN.
Why Church? SERVE with your gifts!
This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: Let Easter Change you: Godly Community! (WATCH HERE)
Everyone wants to do something significant. They want their life to matter and leave a legacy of impact. One of the causes of depression can be a loss of purpose, a sense of insignificance or a feeling that we have value.
If one finds purpose, significance and value, it heightens one’s self-confidence and self-confidence, but they are also able to find a higher sense of joy and satisfaction with life.
There are lots of arenas in life that seek to fill these realities for you. We can seek this significance in our career. We look for value in the people with whom we socialize. We can believe we have value if we have added value to people in some way.
All of this is good.
So why do I need the church?
Anything outside the mission of the kingdom of God has impact for time. Serving in the kingdom of God has an impact for eternity. When we use our gifts, abilities and interests in service to the Gospel ministry and bringing God’s grace to others we have brought something of eternal significance, value and purpose to another person.
The cool thing is that God has gifted you for this very purpose. When he brought you into his family by faith, he also gave you his Spirit to give you gifts that are to be used for the blessing of others in the church, but also to impact the world for Christ. Consider what is said in Romans 12:4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Or in 1 Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 12:4-6, 27 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. … Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
YOU are part of the body of Christ! YOU have gifts that God has given to you to be a blessing in the work of God’s kingdom.
Perhaps it’s like this. At some point in our lives we have evaluated our gifts and abilities, our education and our experiences. We take these and put them on a resume and send that resume off to companies hoping that they will see our resume and make an offer of employment to add our abilities to their company. It’s hard when resumes are returned or rejected. It’s exciting when someone wants YOU for the job. They want YOUR gifts. They want YOUR interests. They want YOUR personality. They believe YOU can add value to their company and so they hire you.
100x that and you have God’s passion for YOU to be part of his team. He doesn’t wait for you to develop the skills, have the right experience or change your personality. He CREATES you for the work that he has for you to do and we get to discover it. He GIVES you the gifts that he wants you to have to do the work he has “prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). He “hires” us not because of our performance, but because of his grace and gives us a spot on the team to bring the eternal truth of the Gospel to the world. And when we work for God and serve with our gifts, there is nothing more significant, more important, more valued, more impactful than being part of the church and doing the work of God together!
Apply: Are you plugged in with your gifts? Do you struggle to know how to contribute to Gospel ministry? If so, reach out to pastorgeiger@gmail.com and we will help you discover the unique gifting God has given to you to serve in his kingdom through the local church.
Prayer: Spirit of God, thank you for gifting me with the gifts you want me to have to do the work you have prepared for me to do. Give me confidence and conviction to show up for God’s work every day and maximize the use of the gifts you have given to me. AMEN.