January 26th – Your New Identity

Taking It to Work:

I heard a story years ago, and I think I heard it as a true story, of a high school boy who was known for his ability to eat. At parties, friend’s homes, and out on the town, this boy amazed everyone with the amount of food he could put down. Extremely overweight, and secretly shunned, unless showing off his eating ability, he found his only value in his ability to eat. Knowing about the boy, and knowing that he felt sort of like a circus act, a running coach approached him to join the running team.

Now, knowing how ridiculous that idea was, the boy declined, but at the insistence of this caring coach, he joined the running team. And with the constant personal commitment of that same coach, the young man lost over a hundred pounds. With that pair of powerful legs used to carrying around all that excess weight, by his senior year he was winning hurdles at a state level, and went to college on a running scholarship. As I recall the story, he ran into some of his old high school friends one evening at a college grill. They, remembering the amount of food they could get him to eat, pushed and pushed for one more show. Finally the young man looked up into the pressure, and said simply, “Guys, that’s not me anymore; I’m a runner”. He had a new identity. He saw himself differently, with a different purpose, and that translated into a different way of life.

How do you live out your new identity? How do you live out your new identity in Christ, especially when we go back into the world with the same job, the same people, and many of the same problems and challenges?

Like that young man, we have to see ourselves as new creations, renewed and reborn in Christ. Once we understand and believe that, we act as who we believe we are. That is one of the reasons faith, faith in what Jesus did for us, needs to go so deep. If we don’t believe, it will be very difficult to live or act any differently than we always have.

If you are a redeemed child of God, you can say to yourself and to the world, “That’s not me anymore! I am a new creation, a child of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords; I live, work, speak and act according to that new identity,” as His Word works to remind you who you truly are, today.

1 John 3:1 (ESV) – See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are . . .

2Cor 5:17 (ESV) – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Eph 4:22-24 (ESV) – to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Rev 3:11 (ESV) – I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown.  The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.

Listening to the Holy Spirit (Rhema):

You are mine. As a wife – the name of her husband, as a son – the name of his father, so I give you a new name, created anew in My blood; the old name crushed under My heel, and the brand of sin replaced with the banner of the called and forgiven. Live this new life, offered at great price to you who have responded to the call of My Father. My Spirit beckons, that you would abandon the ways of the lost. In newness of life, strength and name, rise to your new identity, for the old has passed, and the new dawns My light in you.