Have you ever wondered this to yourself? Who am I? I don’t know you, but God does. Have you ever thought about that? Why would God want to know me or love me? I’ll tell you why…because He LOVES you! He has loved you and me and everyone else who has ever lived with a love that we can’t understand. Because He is our Creator! He knit your molecules together in such a way that there is no other person nor has there ever been another person exactly like you!
Who are we? If you are a believer in Jesus as your Savior, then you are a child of God and an heir to everything that God wants to give you and He will give it to you. When it is His time to do so. We want it now, today, but God knows that much of His love and the blessings which He has prepared for you and me are not useful right now. Our heavenly home is waiting for us but we can’t live in it right now. The horse that we will ride behind Jesus is waiting in heaven for us but we can’t ride him or her right now. The city which has streets of gold is there but we can’t experience it until we are there. We are blessed and loved and highly favored in God’s sight but we won’t know how much until we get there.
We are blessed and loved and sanctified in Jesus and we are each part of God’s family and it will be a BIG family gathering one day. When that day comes, the world will mourn our disappearance but we will be in the most wonderful place in the universe! We will be with God! How amazing will that be? Living in heaven with our Father, our Creator and our Savior for eternity. Will we be doing anything? Of course we will. God doesn’t save you from the punishment of hell and then condemn you to a life of boredom. We will be working for Him in every capacity that He can give us the ability to do. Consider Who He is. Our Creator and our redeemer. We will have any ability that He wants us to have whether we lived that way in this life or not. Whether we have been a leader or a carpenter or a welder or a police person or a doctor, God can give each of us the knowledge and ability to do His will all through eternity and He will!
Who are you? We are whoever God says we are. We are able to be whatever He says we can be. We are able to do whatever He says we can because He loves us and He never leaves us. He is our Creator and our Redeemer and He is able to give us abilities which we would never have unless He gave them to us and gave us the knowledge to accomplish them. We are His children and we need to be grateful and thankful for each breath we take. Yes, we are loved and we are forgiven and we are His!
Who am I? I am in Christ!
Lord, I have made mistakes. I have messed up more than I know how to deal with. Please, Lord, come in to my heart and make me a new creation.
Lord, I thank you for listening to me and for saving me. Thank you in Jesus name, amen.
There are many people in the world today who are considering suicide because of depression or PTSD or any number of other mental illnesses. Now, I’m not going to write anything here that will give you the idea that praying to God or giving your heart to Jesus is going to cure you of your illness because it may happen but then it may not happen. God can use that illness to bring you closer to Him and cause you to depend upon Him more or He could cure you of it so you can give someone else hope.
If I dashed your hopes here, I’m sorry. But it is the truth. Sometimes God does use our “thorns”, whatever they may be, to bring us closer to Him. Sometimes, He will bring you to the edge of your tolerance and then give you relief from the illness. If this sounds discouraging, I do apologize but David was often depressed and hurting when he was writing the Psalms. Some of the prophets were depressed and asked God to strike them dead, I have done this myself.
Why do I write such a depressing post today? Because, I don’t want you to think that God will miraculously cure you of your problem, whatever it may be, if you give your life to Him. He may do exactly that, but it is His prerogative whether He will or will not cure you just because you have given your life and heart to Jesus. God isn’t required to cure you. He is God after all and He doesn’t have to do anything that we ask of Him unless it is His will to do so and it would bring Him glory.
It sounds as if I am making God out out to be jealous and petty but He is not. He created the universe and everything in it, including us and our world, so that we would want to know Him. I think it is an awesome honor to be able to know Him because He has known you since before the universe was made! He loves each of us with such a deep and abiding love that we really can’t imagine it…but He does so for our benefit and for His glory! We have His grace and His mercy given to us for the sole purpose of being drawn to Him for our salvation. His Son died on the cross to pay for our sins so that we don’t have to. Your life doesn’t have to end when this “shell” that we live in dies IF you will give your heart to Jesus and repent of your sins and follow Him!
It is not rocket science or some kind of physical game that God plays with us. All that is truly required is that we realize that we need Jesus in our life, confess your sins and ask Him to come in and give you a new heart for Him. When that truly happens, your life will never be the same again.
If you are a Christian then this is true. Satan is always trying to catch you in some way to say something out of character for a Christian or maybe even do something which would make someone think that you aren’t a Christian. It happens every day to those of us who are Christians or even claim to be. If you don’t believe it, look at the story about Jesus and His forty days in the desert fasting. At the end of it He was hungry just as any of us would be. Don’t tell me you can’t fast because I have done it. Granted, I did it with water and juice and Jesus didn’t have the juice but it is possible to do. Getting back to Jesus’ story…after forty days He was weak in his body and very likely He could imagine all kinds of food around Him. That was where Satan came to Him and began tempting Him with “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into bread to satisfy your hunger“.
Jesus countered that with “Man shall not live on bread alone but by every Word which comes from God“. Satan even had the audacity to say, “If you are the Son of God”! He knew Who Jesus was and he knew that Jesus could’ve done exactly the thing which he was tempting Him to do, but to do so would’ve been against the will of the Father. We are tempted every day with thoughts and feelings and other kinds of temptations from our past lives, the life we lived before the Holy Spirit took up His home in our heart. But, we have His Spirit and it is this Spirit that we should listen to every day because He can teach us more about our Savior and our position as His disciple.
Are we disciples of Jesus? If we are truly Christians and have asked Him to come into our heart and our life and cleanse us from our old ways and bring about a change in our life then we are His disciples. We also need to be walking with Him each and every day reading the Word of God and learning more about our Savior so that we can use His Word to counter any temptation that may be thrown at us during the day. Don’t be misled, Satan and his demons will send all kinds of thoughts and temptations your way to cause you to stumble or just make your witness for Jesus ineffective. It only takes one misstep that someone sees or hears to ruin any credibility that you had as a Christian and that credibility can be hard or even impossible to get back.
Pray that the temptation will be light and that your faith in Jesus is stronger. Read God’s Word and use it to counter any temptation that comes your way because in perseverance in your faith you can show that you are saved and sealed as a child of God in Jesus Christ.
