Who Am I

 No Longer a Slave to Fear

As I was reading this morning I was struck by several things. I want to first share with you what I was reading and then encourage you to read these passages yourself. They are Rom 4:6-10, Luke 20 and Ps 32. Each one of these passages had some profound insights for me. The song above was what the Lord brough to mind as I pondered the verses I was reading.

Rom 4:6-10 is Paul talking about how Abraham was justified by faith. Abraham didn't just believe what God said to and about him, but he walked towards it. He didn't let what his eyes saw, and the doubts his mind whispered turn him away from what God had promised him. My friend George Sisneros did an excellent job covering this yesterday in his blog Covered In His Dust. Follow the link to read it. The verses I read were just a few verses before what he wrote.

I realized that far too often, I place my identity in what I do and what I believe about myself. These verses point us to an active, involved, obedient faith that makes us righteous. Our faith is not a passive thing. We don't just acquiesce to a vague thing. We give ourselves fully to what God says is true about us. As we trust Him to bring our identity in line with His truth, He changes us and fulfills His purpose for us at the same time.  Abraham had to live many yeas with the name, Father of Many and then 25 more years with the name Father of Many Nations all while he remained childless. He tried to take matters into His own hands and make it happened, but that took him outside of the Lord's will. It didn't change his identity or his name. Even after he messed up, he kept believing God would fulfill his purposes. Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90 when God answered his prayers and began to fulfill his destiny. But, His identity had been fixed since birth, when he was born to pagan parents. Abraham was righteous because He believed God, even when believing was difficult, nearly impossible.

Then I move into Luke 20. Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath and He was challenged by all the religious leaders. They hated that they were losing their place in the Kingdom to a carpenter, a tax collector and some fishermen. They challenged Jesus' authority but we know that Jesus also taught with wisdom beyond His years. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. - Luk 2:46-47 ESV Jesus was hated by those who were being displaced as a new Kingdom was beginning to rub up against the one they thought they were in control of. As you read the chapter, you see that Jesus did not back down from the Pharisees or after from the Sadducees. He exposed both groups of religious leaders for the frauds they had become, while He was seen by many for who He was. Jesus did not let those who didn't know Him become the ones who defined Him. Jesus was secure in the identity the Father had given Him before the foundation of the world.

As I continued on into Ps 32, I see David clinging to the Lord's identity for him. David was well aware of his failures and suffered greatly with them. What kept him was that he also knew that the Lord had not rejected him or left him to rot in shame with the wicked. To David, the Lord was his rescuer, the one who set him apart from the sinful men. Just like Abraham, he had a sense of identity that superseded his failures. David would regularly throw himself onto the merch of the Lord and trust Him to deliver.

For me, all these thing spoke a new sense of identity this morning. Far too often, I let people that don't know me speak a false identity into me. I let my failures drive me into hiding and shame. I have spent way too much time deriving my identity from accomplishments or knowledge. I have let me failures plunge me into a defeatist mindset rather than run to Jesus, our rock and refuge. When I fall into these mindset traps, I see other people's successes much easier and begin to compare my failures with their success. This just reinforces the defeatist mindset. As I let myself be victimized by my own mindset, I feel distant from the Lord.

Jesus never had a failure, but He perfectly know how to shut down the enemy when His identity came under attack. We are more like David. We have hole in our armor. We have real weaknesses to attack, but we need to know how to sit in the promises God has spoken over our lives. We need to let His spoken identity in our lives become the one we embrace. We need to hide in the strong tower that is Jesus until the enemies fiery darts are quenched. Jesus has spoken and identity over us. He set it in motion before the foundation of the world. He knew us before we even formed.

13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. - Psa 139:13-18 ESV

As  was reading this morning, I was convicted of how often I let my identity rest in what other people have said, in lies I have internalized and in emotions that have felt true but contradicted what the Lord has said. I am praying today to hear the Lord clearly, to let His promises and spoken identity purify and cleans the identities that I have held on to. I am asking Him to replace the lies with His truth. I know I can run to Him but have so often run away from Him in fear of His holiness until I can feel like I have gotten things right. I have let performance and failure shape my identity. This is the time to get real with the Lord. I know that I can never live up to His standards on my own. Now I have to hold fast to this verse from Rom 5.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. - Rom 5:6-9 ESV

When I feel weak, when I feel defeated, when I have fallen hard and feel hopeless, no matter how low I feel, I am right there in the place where I can claim that Christ died for the ungodly. The worst case scenario is that I have to humble myself and run to Jesus, because He died for the ungodly. I can't be much worse than that. In times of defeat, I call out to Jesus as the ungodly man that Jesus died for and I repent. That is the plan. That is the purpose of the cross because every time we run back to him in our sin and failure and repent, we find that who we are is no longer who He calls us. We recognize and acknowledge our ungodly behavior, feelings, emotions and reactions and that is where He picks us up and speaks His new identity into us and begins to sanctify us and our identity. He renews and restores all that the enemy has stolen from us. He makes us new. He cleanses our desires and purifies us. He moves us back into alignment with His will.

When I am feeling defeated and under shame, it is the perfect time to run back to the Father and let Him renew our minds and speak identity into us again, even if we have had to run back to Him numerous times.

A Good Cleaning

 I have been writing about who we come into bondage and get trapped in strongholds. Today, I want to look at something else. This will be a much shorter read and is just something for you to ponder and pray about.

When I know that I have really messed up, I have done something that is so wrong that there is no explanation, I tend to hide. That is the normal response. Shame will always first drive us away from the places that real help and freedom is. We become like Adam and Eve. We know. We are naked and we run to hide and cover ourselves. The reality is that our sin is shameful. Our heavenly Father would be fully justified in piling it on for some of our behavior. He is holy and we fall far short of His standard of righteousness. Most of the time, our sin is even a conscious choice or a practiced habit that we fall into easily. We deserve to be called out and shamed in front of everyone. For most of us, it is that knowledge and fear that hold us in bondage.

Today I began the yearly task of cleaning the dirt and mildew off the vinyl siding. Is is a huge undertaking, especially when I decide that the scrub brush and bucket do a better job than the power washer. It takes a lot of time and effort to scrub all the dirt and green growth away. I began just like I always do. I got my bucket out and filled it with soapy water and got out my extra stiff long handled scrub brush. The hard nylon bristles seemed to skim right over the dirt and mildew stains without taking much of anything off. After about a 10x15’ section, I was ready to quit. It seemed like I was not accomplishing anything but making the ground wet and having a streaked, dirty wall instead of a splotchy green and tan one.

I decided to get the soft scrub brush out of the garage. It has an even longer handle but very soft bristles. As I started scrubbing with the soft brush, I realized that everything was coming off much quicker and with less scrubbing. The softness of the brush allowed it to get into the cracks and grooves in the siding and the dirt and the green growth came right off. I hosed it after a brief scrub and it was clean. As I was celebrating this turn of events, the painfully slow job becoming faster and easier with the right tool for the job, the Lord said to me that is how I am.

When we see a problem, we tend to want to tackle it with everything we have. I was going to scrub that siding clean, even if it meant there would be holes where the dirt had been. That may seem like giving it our all, but in reality it just makes a mess and leaves a destructive trail. Jesus is like the soft scrub brush. He knows where the dirt is hiding and he starts removing it with a soft, fine brush. He does not try to take our skin off to get us clean. He gently uses just enough force and pressure to do the job without harming us in the process. He comes to us in our shame and brokenness. He wraps His arms around us tight just enough pressure to expose the dirt and the wounds and He gently begins to clean it away.

It took a lot of effort and force on His part to be able to clean us up, but He took the physical pain that our cleaning process required upon Himself. He stood between us and our sin. He suffered the blows that were required to make us whole and deliver us from our self imposed prison of shame. Jesus in great love and kindness made us clean. he didn’t let us feel the stiff scrub brush of the cleansing process. he came to us and cleaned us. The stiff brush was reserved for His skin. The chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him. He carried our sorrows and endured our shame. We get to sit back and look at clean, healthy skin without the marks of the scrubbing we needed. Jesus has paid it all.

I tell you this because we all need to know that Jesus is not looking for our penance. He does not desire that we would suffer for our sins and failures. His goal is not our humiliation, but our liberation from sin and He has already done the hard work. We receive His  freedom and goodness by faith. We receive it b surrendering to His love and then He comes in with the soft scrub brush and cleans all the nooks and crannies, the crevices where we buried our hidden sins. He thoroughly cleans it and makes us new.

We are covered in the world’s filth. We have even participated in getting ourselves that way. Jesus is nt looking to assign blame. He is looking to bring freedom and transformation. he is coming for you and me and He has the soft scrub brush to clean us, He uses the gentlest means needed for the job. He used the violence of His death at the cross to defeat the enemy, but now He is using the s light pressure of His leading if we will just submit to Him.If not, He has a stiff brush and we deserve to feel the pain of His cleansing, but He is asking us to agree with Him today that we need a good and thorough cleansing and He will do it.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and lowly in heart.

                A Strong Tower or a Stronghold?

I love the Lord of the Rings books and the movies too. I think Tolkien learned a lot

about the nature of the battle we are in for our eternities as he wrote such deep, meaningful

books based on his WWI experiences. He lost friends along the way. He saw victories and

defeats and all these things helped shape how he saw the nature of the spiritual battle we

are in. In the second book, the Two Towers, there is a huge battle that takes place and it

almost has a catastrophic ending, The armies have retreated to Helms Deep, a place

Theoden tells them has never been breached or defeated. As they retreat there and await

the arrival of Sauron’s forces, there is tension in the air for the coming battle.

The truth is that many of us have retreated into a stronghold. We have withdrawn to

a place where we feel untouchable by the forces of the world and our enemies. These

strongholds feel like safety and security to us. They seem to be impenetrable. For the most

part, we feel that they have kept us safe and so we retreat to them often. As you read, or

watch the movies, you find out that the stronghold held for a while but that they were

breached at just the time the armies were feeling tired and ready to give in to despair. It was

at this point that Gandolf showed up with reinforcements and an army of Huorns, walking

trees, who herded the Ents, also showed up. It was only at this point that the Orcs and

Uruk- Hai were overwhelmed and defeated. Helms deep alone was not enough of a fortress

to keep them safe against overwhelming odds. They needed rescue and it came just in

time.

We are the Rohirrim. We have our stronghold that we retreat to because we have

always felt safe and secure there. That is the thing about a stronghold. We build them to

keep ourselves from feeling past pain again. They are not built to ensnare us but as our

attempt to protect ourselves. They are a place we run to for comfort and tranquility, but

they are built around us with our limited understanding of the nature of the battle and they

have weaknesses. Our attempt to preserve them involves just making the walls thicker.

Unfortunately, even the most impenetrable walls are not thick enough to protect us when

we invite the enemy inside with us. We do this because we have not properly identified who

the enemy is. The enemy is the one who tricked us into thinking that we needed a

stronghold to run to in the first place. He seemed like a friend, but he has ulterior motives

for our destruction because we represent something he can never be.

14 "And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 'The words of the Amen, the

faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. 15 "'I know your works: you are

neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! 16 So, because you are

lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 17 For you say, "I am

rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing," not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable,

poor, blind, and naked. - Rev 3:14-17 ESV

A Strong Tower Instead of a Stronghold

It is the times we think we are good, we are strongly tucked inside our stronghold

that we are most exposed. We begin to get comfortable within and we are exposed for who

we are. The Church at Laodicea seemed to have it all together on the outside. They seemed

secure and confident until they were shown to have nothing of value. They had

compromised and let themselves be polluted, corrupted by the world around them. While

they had pursued the worldly pleasures of wealth and comfort, they lost the edge that once

marked them as Children of the Father. They traded their inheritance for something that

would soon be burned. They were trapped within the prison of worldliness they built to

protect themselves. They needed a rescuer.

It is at this point that Jesus gives them an amazing invitation.

18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and

white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not

be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. 19 Those whom I love, I reprove

and discipline, so be zealous and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If

anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he

with me. - Rev 3:18-20 ESV

Jesus has seen them. He knows where they are and how they got there. He offers

them true riches, clean clothes to cover their shame and salve so they can see things

clearly. He wants to show them how they have fallen so far and invites them into

restoration. When Jesus says the He is standing at the door and knocking, this is not just an

invitation to salvation as many would suppose. It is an invitation to these who know Jesus

and have compromised their identity and integrity for worldly wealth, comfort, or

satisfaction. I suspect that most of us can identify with that description at times. We live

surrounded by many strong draws to become worldly. We live in a time where they are put

in front of us constantly. The pull is real. Often it is based on real needs but is offered with

shortcuts to the Lord’s plans for us.

1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and

said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

4 But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that

comes from the mouth of God.'" - Mat 4:1-4 ESV

Our greatest temptations come in the ways that feel the most necessary to

surrender to. This is how strongholds are built. They offer security, provision, peace,

comfort, love or one hundred other things that feel like we will die without. Strongholds are

not built to provide inconsequential things. They are built to guard what we treasure.

A Strong Tower Instead of a Stronghold

Unfortunately, they are prisons of our own making and in the end steal the very things we

thought that they guarded.

It is not until we realize we are in bondage that we can hear the knock and the call

that offer us true freedom. It comes as an invitation to friendship with the One we feel has

let us down, who we have been told has forgotten us. The difference is that He is the only

one who has ever been our real source of security. He does not reside in a cave, hidden

away. He lives in a tower, and when we open ourselves to His offer, He raises us up to sit

with Him in the only secure 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. -

Mat 6:21 ESV

34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. - Luk 12:34 ESVplace that

exists.

10 The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is

safe. - Pro 18:10 ESV

As you read Proverbs 18, there is much wisdom. This verse points us to our true safe

place, but much of the rest of the chapter points out the strongholds we are used to

running to. It shows us how we can build our lives around things that disappoint and bring

destruction. This verse is the place we are invited into the Lord to sit with Him on His

throne. Rev 3 closes with the same invitation for those who have blown it and chased after

the wrong treasures.

21 The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also

conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22 He who has an ear, let him hear

what the Spirit says to the churches.'" - Rev 3:21-22 ESV

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Mat 6:21 ESV

34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. - Luk 12:34 ESV

We have been invited to the Strong Tower. Minas Tirith was the place that the King

was going to be enthroned. It was the Tower that he would rule Gondor from. We have been

invited to sit with the King on His throne. To get there we must walk out of our stronghold.

We may even have to tear down walls to get out. We have built them to keep our enemies

out, but they have become a cage around us. They need to come down so they cannot

easily be rebuilt. Once out, we need to run to the strong tower. We will find that there may

be sieges there too, but we are safe within. The King is there with us and He is guarding us.

I have come to believe that most of us return to our sinful patterns out of a desire for

comfort or a sense of need. We do not believe that Jesus is as good, kind and loving toward

us. I also believe that we often see how this plays out in our relationship with authority. If

A Strong Tower Instead of a Stronghold

we struggle with being close to authority figures, I will bet that we are used to living in our

own stronghold. In this place we are cut off from all the things we truly need. It is time to

stop and listen for the knock at the door, the knock of the one who genuinely loves us and

wants to sit and enjoy an intimate moment of fellowship with us. But, even more than a

moment, He wants to invite us into His strong tower and sit with Him on His throne.

There are battles on the way, the challenge is to keep moving forward with Jesus

until we are in the place He is inviting us to. Even Minas Tirith came under siege and there

was a huge battle before it once again became the royal city of Gondor. It became the place

when Strider was revealed as Aragorn II, son of Arathorn II, and Gilraen, who was the 16th

Chieftain of the Dunedain, descendant of Isildur, and rightful heir to the thrones of Arnor

and Gondor. What a title. It has history and a future. It conveys something old onto

someone young. Can you feel the weight of it? In the movie, right after his coronation,

Aragorn comes over to Sam, Frodo, Merry and Pippen. They bow down to the new king, and

he tells them they do not bow to anyone.

The King has conveyed the weight of his authority and his majesty onto those who

have stood by his side in the battle. He recognized their sacrifices for His kingdom. While

they are still subjected to the king, he honored them. He recognized them and held them

up before all the other attendants at his coronation. This is the same invitation that Jesus

gives at the end of the letters to the seven Churches. He desires that we overcome because

He wants us seated with Him throughout eternity. He is calling us to overcome and to live in

a place of intimacy and honor, by His side. To do this, we must tear down our strongholds

and follow Him where it may not necessarily feel safe. We must enter the fray, by His side.

Are you ready to move out of the stronghold so you can live in the Strong Tower?