Hey everyone! First off I’d love to thank you for reading my blogs. You totally don’t have to and you do, so thank you, truly. This blog is a little bit more serious than my typical updates. It will highlight what God has been doing in my heart the past 10 days and what He’s currently teaching me. Every Thursday we have a discipleship lesson from the AIM team here in Guatemala and this past Thursday we talked about Identity. Growing up in the church, identity is a topic that has been talked about a lot, but never has it hit so personally as it did this week. We talked about our Body, Spirit, and Soul and what the bible says about them all. Our body is broken up into 2 parts, our soma, which is greek and means your physical body, the house for your soul (our leader referred to it as our “earth suit”) and the second part being our sarx, also greek, meaning the fall of man, carnal nature, the sinful part of us. Our soul, is what makes us, us. The greek term is psyche. Our personality, mind, will, emotions, and disposition. The final part was our spirit which is God in us, the greek word being pneuma, which directly translates to, “breath of God.” so literally our spirit is what God breathed into us. It is whole, perfect, blameless, spotless, perfect.
We then went to the Word. I encourage you to read it on your own and take it to The Father but for the sake of the blog, I will summarize. Romans 6:1-17 says that our sin died with Jesus on the cross. “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:6-11 ESV) Let’s break that down. Our sin is dead, and we now get to be alive to God. I’ve heard this 1000 times probably, but think about it. Our sin is dead. Like actually dead. The thing that got me the most is that we, as believers in Christ, don’t seem to get that. We live in the sin and the shame that is NOT from our Father. We say things like, “Well, if you only knew what I’ve done…” and, “God, how can you use me (or love me even) with all my sin.” and what we fail to realize is that our sarx died with Jesus on the cross. Do you know what that means?? Your evilness, and sinful nature is dead to God. He only sees your Spirit, which is blameless, whole, pure, spotless, untainted, perfect, righteous, untouched by sin. “For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.” (verse 10) YOUR LIFE IS INCLUDED IN THAT ALL. Jesus doesn’t see your sarx so stop reminding Him of it. You do not have the power to resurrect it so stop trying to, and who are you to say that the blood of Jesus Christ is not enough for your sins? Because that’s what we’re telling Him every time we say, “God how could you love me?” so when Jesus said it was finished, He meant it. Forever. No ifs, ands or buts. IT. IS. FINISHED. Period. The cross doesn’t symbolize our guilt and shame. It does not expose how terrible we are, but how loved we are. In that one moment we were no longer our mistakes, but Jesus’ mistakes, and He doesn’t have any. And we refuse to believe that. We listen to the enemy when he tells us we are our sarx. So stop letting him win. The enemy has robbed us of our place in the Kingdom for too long. He tells us we’re worthless, that we can’t do anything right. Well, you must be worth something if the devil is telling you otherwise.
The only way we have access to this grace is through faith in Jesus Christ. When God told Sarah she was going to have a child, she laughed in His face. And then lied about it. Yet she is considered a woman of great faith. Same goes for David. David made some really bad decisions, and he is still remembered as a “Man after God’s own heart” I’m pretty sure God’s heart wouldn’t have a man put on the front lines of battle so He could have his wife, But God doesn’t see that. And we get the same thing. God’s sees a different version of our story. Man, isn’t that good news???
Through this message I was reminded of a sermon that I heard before I left for the race. In Mark chapter 9 Jesus teaches that if your hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off. Same with your eye, if it causes you to sin, pluck it out. What we see here is that if you cut off your hand or pluck out your eye you are attempting to achieve greatness in the kingdom of heaven. What we miss is that when He says all this He is holding a child in His lap. Greatness is freely received in the Kingdom. We aren’t the person Jesus is saying “cut off your hand” to, we are the child in His lap. Man, God is good.
Our spirit is already at the place where God sees us, but our mind and body have been trained in the way of the world, and that’s where grace steps in. Thanks God! We are all learning to live in the spirit, there’s an adjustment period and that’s okay. 4 days later I’m still processing this message, and everyday I think about it I am reminded about how loved I am by our Father. So just sit in His presence. And thank Him. Man, yes! That’s GOOD NEWS.
“If the wind goes where you send it, so will I…”
