Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 183
TRANSCRIPT
Who do you believe more: God or the devil? That is such an outrageous question. Of course, we believe God more than the devil. Or do we? In this podcast, I am going to address a concern I have for many in the body of Christ. I see many believers trying to become something that they already are. They are trying to get something that has already been given to them. Or said another way, they are trying to earn what God has already freely given them. Come along with me as we talk about who we are as children of God and how to walk it out.
I’m Lee Whitman from Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. As this new year is getting underway, I am going to talk about something that has concerned me for some time now. I received some encouragement from listening to a message given by my pastor Jarod Smith, at New Tribe Church here in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. If you would like to hear his entire message, it can be found on the New Tribe website at https://newtribe.church. The title of the message is Greater Than.
Many people who have accepted Christ as their savior have only received forgiveness of sins. Then they proceed to live their lives as if they have to achieve or earn all of the blessings of God. As Pastor Jarod said in his sermon, we give the highest playback to our lowest performance. We judge ourselves by our mistakes. God looks at us through his amazing grace, and His grace is greater than all your failures.
We listen to the condemnation of the enemy more than we listen to the voice of God. We are trying by our own efforts to become something that we have already become. Let me use two other examples of what I am talking about as an illustration. On June 16, 1979, I stood at an altar in Longmont, Colorado, and took Cindi as my wife. From that moment forward, I was a husband. Did I always feel like a husband? No. Was I the best husband from that moment on? No. Have I learned and grown as a husband over the last 46 years? I sure have. But the moment that ceremony was concluded, I was a married man. My identity changed from being a carefree single dude to a husband of one wife. The more I accepted the reality of being a married man, the quicker my behavior changed from single living to seeing myself now as a couple. Over the years we have worked to develop our relationship with each other. We have learned how to communicate better. How to deal with conflict better. How to give each other physical pleasure better. But none of those things we have learned have changed the fact that we were married that day in 1979. I don’t have to try to be more married.
Another example of what I am talking about is when I became a father. The moment my son was conceived, I became a father. I did not experience being a father until he was born, but I was a father from the moment of conception because I helped create a new human life. That day in January of 1983 when my son was born, the reality of being a father became evident. Even though I did not know what in the world I was doing, I was now a father. Have I grown and developed as a father over the years? I definitely have. But what I am pointing out is that I was a father long before I was able to grow into being the father I have become.
When we accept Christ as our savior, our identity changes immediately. This is where we sometimes believe the devil more than we believe God. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” This is something that is done the moment we receive Christ. Romans 6:6-11 says, “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for the one who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all time; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This is a truth that has already been completed. You are dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. However, when the devil comes and says you need to do this or do that, we often believe him over the truth of God.
Friend, you are doing better than you think you are.
I know right now that the religious spirit is causing many to have a hard time with that statement. A religious spirit is all about your performance and what you are supposed to be doing to become a better Christian. The relationship we have with Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is not based on performance; it is based on intimacy. Religion would take something that is meant to be based on relationship and turn it into a list of do’s and don’t that must be performed. God sees you in a much different way than you see yourself. We measure ourselves by our worst performance. God has already paid the price for every sin we have ever committed, or will ever commit, by sending Jesus to the cross. The moment we accept Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, we have completely met God’s standard. In fact, the bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” God is already done thinking about this. It is a done deal with God. What happens is that the devil gets us to focus on our worst moments and then he gets us to beat up on ourselves, and then he gets us to believe that is how God sees us. Then the devil gets us to focus on how we can become something by our best efforts.
The devil uses comparison to cause us to look at ourselves rather than looking at Jesus. How often do you find yourself comparing yourself to either a real person in your church, or more often than not, we compare ourselves to the imaginary perfect Christian. I remember looking at guys in my church and comparing myself to them. In my mind they were doing everything right, and of course I was not. In my mind they were perfect husbands, they had the perfect kids, they must be on God’s honor roll, and their hair was not falling out like mine. The devil used these comparisons to beat me up. What I realized by getting to know some of these perfect guys is they had issues of their own. They were fighting some of the same battles that I was, and honestly, they were not winning every battle. The devil used comparison to blind me to reality. That is part of that religious spirit that wants us to take our eyes off of our relationship with Jesus and beat ourselves up for all of the ways we believe we are failing. The truth is that you are doing better than you think.
Think about this. The moment you accepted Christ, Romans 10:9-10 was true about you. It says, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” Look at that verse again. We become a child of God the moment we accept Jesus. It is not a progressive thing; it happens instantly. You are the righteousness of God in Christ. You don’t have to keep trying to become more of what you already are. By accepting who you are as a child of God, it will start to flow out of you. When you receive Christ, He comes to live in you. You are mixed with Jesus. When you mix cream into your coffee, you look into your coffee cup and what do you see? You don’t see the coffee and the cream, you now see one new element, that unless you use that cheap powdered cream, and then you might see chunks of cream. But when you mix good cream into the coffee, it turns the whole cup a beautiful light brown color. From that moment, you cannot separate the cream from the coffee. They become one new element. That is what happens to you the moment you get saved. Christ is mixed with you, and you are mixed with Christ, so that you can’t separate the two. In John 17, Jesus prays that we would be one just as He and the Father are one. In verses 22-23 it says, “The glory which You have given Me I also have given to them, so that they may be one, just as We are one;I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and You loved them, just as You loved Me.” When the Father sees you, he sees Christ in you. He doesn’t see a sinner saved by grace, because, quite frankly, sinners will not make it into heaven. Only those who have been changed from a sinner into a child of God, whom the bible calls saints, will enter into heaven. Tradition and religion focus on our worst performance. God focuses on your birth in Christ.
So does God no longer care about our behavior? He does care about our behavior, but not as a grade card to determine our acceptance. He has many gifts and blessings to give us, but those gifts and blessings come out of our trusting Him and walking in His commandments. When I was a kid my Dad would give my brother and I a list of chores that needed to be completed before we could go and play. My brother would jump on his list and get them done quickly. I, on the other hand, would drag my feet because I wanted to play more than do the chores. So instead of not taking very long, my chores took most of the day, and I would often miss my play time. Was my dad being mean for making me do these chores? Of course not. He was trying to teach me responsibility. The blessing of being able to go and play with my friends came out of obeying what he told me to do. The quicker I obeyed, the quicker the blessing came. Obeying God is a vital part of our relationship with Him if we want life to go well with us. He is a very good Father who only has good things to give to us, but we have to trust Him in order to receive His goodness. In Hebrews 11, it says, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
Stop trying to become what you already are. Accept that in Christ you are a new creation, that old things are new, and totally new things have become of you. Believe that you have already received this newness. Quit spending so much time disqualifying yourself because of your mistakes and failures. God’s grace is greater than all your failures.
PRAYER
Father God, Your grace is really hard for us to understand because it is almost too good to be true. Would you help us receive everything that is already true of us today? Would You show us how You view us, because it is very different from how we view ourselves. Help us recognize when we are believing the devil instead of believing You.
