What's True Vs The Truth

When God called Ananias to go pray and restore Saul's sight (see Acts 9:10), Ananias had a better idea. “Lord,” he answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name!” (Acts 9:13-14 NIV)

Everything Ananias said was absolutely true! And God completely ignored it. He didn't respond, “Oops, gee you're right, Ananias. What was I thinking? Being God, running the universe and all, got a lot on my plate, you know? We try to keep it quiet but sometimes one slips through the cracks. Hey, don't tell anybody, ok? Anything I can bless for you while I'm here? Ok then, I'm out.”

God didn't respond that way because Ananias was just speaking what was true about Saul (soon to be called Paul) – Earth's truth. Nope, God responded with Heaven's truth because Heaven's truth, The Truth about the person not just about what they've done, trumps Earth's truth every time. You are not what you do.

What is true about you never disqualifies you from God's Truth about you – who you really are in Him and His calling on your life and your mission for His kingdom. God responds in verses 15-16, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to _____” and God gives Saul's mission.

Fill in the blank. What is God's truth about you? He has a mission for you; do you know what it is? You are his chosen instrument for…, what? That's the Journey of Discovery you get to go on with Him. If you don't know, start praying for that answer, start asking Him. Start the exciting Adventure!

Will you, like Bilbo the Hobbit, go on this Journey?

You Are Not What You Do

For so many of us our identity is in what we do or what we've done. But that's not who we are. God loves us based on position not accomplishment. Our position as His son or daughter. Nothing we ever accomplish (good or bad) can ever change that, nothing we do can make Him love us more or less than He does in this moment. In every moment. He's that consistent.

We all say we believe that, but many of us secretly don't. I say “secretly” because often it's secret even from ourselves. We can test ourselves to see if we inwardly believe we are what we do, though. When we get mad at someone for disagreeing with us, when we take someone's disagreement with what we said or did as a personal affront, it's often because we believe that we are what we do. “If you attack what I do or say, you're attacking me!” Do you see it?

You are special to God because you are you. You are valuable because you bear the image of God (see Genesis 1:26-27) whether you realize it or not. The trick is to understand who you really are, the unique person He made you to be.

Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (NIV) So before you were even born and had done anything good or bad, you were God's wonderful work. And nothing we do can ever undo His work.

So let's stop trying to be what we do. Let's discover and walk in who we really are. Ask Him to take you on a journey of discovery.

“That's Just the Way I Am”

This is my “favorite” ungodly belief. “Favorite” in quotes, because I absolutely hate it when people say this. “I'm just ____ and always will be.” Fill in the blank with your stuff. “Angry.” “Overweight.” “Controlled by out-of-control emotions”. “Addicted to alcohol, porn, drugs, sex, or TV.”

The next word out of my mouth is always, “No.” As kindly as possible, and in love, but “No.”

“No,” that's not who you are.

“No,” that's not how God made you.

“No,” that weakness is not stronger than the blood of Jesus and the work of His Spirit in your life.

Just plain, flat-out “No.”

No, that's not just the way you are. Well, it could be, that's a choice you make. But it doesn't have to be. Not by a long shot. Jesus died so it doesn't have to be.

Freedom is out there, if you want it. Getting free is simple, but it's not easy. It means dying to yourself. It means trusting God, and being willing to risk the consequences if He doesn't come through. Will you take the risk?

I Like Winning Banners

In Song of Solomon 6:4, the Lover (Jesus) calls his Beloved (you and me), “majestic as troops with banners.” Armies carry banners to celebrate battles they've won, and to show off to any potential future adversaries how BA they are.

In the next verse, Song of Songs 6:5, the Lover (Jesus) says to his Beloved (you and me), “Turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me.” The Lover is saying to his Beloved, “Don't look at me like that – the love in your eyes for me is overwhelming me with emotion and I might lose it,” while he smiles and looks away, so she can't see he's blushing. Jesus is blushing!

When you don't feel like you're winning at all, when life has the better of you, when you're sure you're going down for the last time, when you can't feel His presence, but you still choose His ways and choose to trust Him instead of give place to fear and anxiety – in those times when you felt Nothing but chose Him anyway, He felt Everything! You just won a majestic banner, and He blushed.

I like winning banners. Out of His overwhelmingly great love for us, He puts us in those situations where we feel overwhelmed and don't feel Him at all. So we can win a banner. So we can choose to trust Him instead of dwelling in fear, out of our love for Him, and it makes Him blush!

On that Day when we finally see him face-to-face, the walls of our mansion in Heaven will be decorated with the banners we won in this life in those moments when we trusted Him instead of ourselves or something else.  Wow.

Getting Past the Savior to the Lover

We really gotta get past the Savior thing. Yes, Jesus is totally our Savior, and we love Him for that – while we were yet sinners and hated Him, He demonstrated His love for us in this – Christ died for us (my paraphrase of Romans 5:8).

But for some people, that's it. That sums up their whole relationship with him. God become human and he did this really spectacular thing for them a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, and it's great because now they have this great life insurance policy -- "salvation" and they get to go to heaven, sometime, in the sweet by-and-by. But it all seems very distant and impersonal and far away and, well, just not very relative to their day-to-day life in survival mode.

Jesus didn't die for you so He could be your insurance salesman. He died for you to be your lover. Salvation is just the tip of the iceberg! There is So. Much. More! We can know Him so deep, and with such ferocious intimacy.

Think about this today. Jesus didn't die for you to give you salvation, although that's a byproduct. Salvation was never the point; it was a necessary prerequisite. Jesus died to give you Himself.

The Lover-King

Finding your identity – the Real You – letting God introduce you to Yourself – it all starts with Passion. Your first Passion needs to be for Him. God plays many roles in our lives – by which do you know Him best?

Just as each of us fill many roles – we're a child to our parents, a parent to our children, maybe a sibling, a cousin, an employee, a customer – and different people know us by different roles – so God fills many roles to us. By which do you know Him best? Savior? Redeemer? General? Commander-in-Chief? Judge? King? Healer? Best friend? Confidant? Lover? A combination thereof?

To me, he's my Lover-King. Like in the Song of Songs. Best. Book. Ever. It's all about this King who's all passionate for this woman, and he shows up in the middle of the night and at these goofy times when she's not expecting him, and he invites her to come into a wild and miraculous lifestyle with him. It's mostly from her point-of-view, and she goes through a couple identity crises and some pretty rough spots along the way.

It's written like a play, with two main parts. Most Bibles label the male part “Lover” or some such – that's Jesus – and the female part “Beloved” or something like that – that's you. I highly encourage you to read Song of Songs. We'll go through a lot of it in this blog.

He is so passionate for you it hurts. Think about that today.

Let's Get This Boat in the Water!

A boat tied to the dock is safe but useless. That's not where the boat was designed to be. It was created to be out there. In the ocean. Where it's deep and dangerous. Free and risky.

Too many of us have the boats of our lives tied to the dock, safe but useless. Drudging through life doing the same old same old. That's not where we were created to be.

What's your passion? Do you remember? Or has it been so long since you were passionate about anything?

The first step in meeting yourself and identifying what God's called you to is identifying your passion. God has a calling for you connected with your passion. If you don't do it, no one will. And the world misses the impact it so desperately needed that you would have made.

So what's you passion? What's the first step you would take if you were to actually do it? Take the risk. Take the step. God's in there somewhere, but you'll only find out where if you take the step.

Two People You Must Meet

The first person is Jesus. Duh. Without Him, it's all over, baby. Jesus is the In All and Through All, the All and All, the Ultimate One. He's everything, and it's all about Him.

But who's this second person? Even if we know Jesus, if we don't meet this second person, we will never live the satisfying, full life He meant us to live. Not knowing this second person will cripple our ministry. It will neutralize our giftings, and make our life as blah and boring as plain oatmeal on cold toast. It is absolutely essential that we meet this second person.

So who is it already?

It's you. You are the second person.

Well, that's weird – I think I know myself.

Do you? Do you really know who God says you are? It's different from the ungodly beliefs the world's pounded into our heads since childhood. We're gonna be debunking a lot of those.

The “Meet Yourself” Blog

Pop the cork, baby, the blog's online! This boat is in the water. For me, this blog is an adventure of following God to only He knows where.

For you, this blog is all about Identity. Yours. Not the fake one given to you by the world that's been pounded into our heads from infancy. All those ungodly beliefs about ourselves – they gotta go. Along with all the negativity that goes with them.

I'm talking about the real one, your true God-created identity. The one given to you by God, his gift to you. The one that if you don't live it – no one will. And the Kingdom of God will suffer for it, losing your giftings and the impact God created you to make.

This blog is a really, friendly format. My goal is to make it seem like you're chatting with friends over coffee rather than reading a blog. And each entry will be short enough that it's a quick, easy read. Hey, I respect your time.

Here's the deal. I'll post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Comments are 100% moderated by me, so you'll never see bogus spam links, bad language, fights between commenters, or anything else that's not edifying. You'll see comments on the previous day's post go up on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

So grab some coffee and pull up a chair. Let's chat a bit!