Sermon Cloud

Who are you?  Are you a friend, a sister, a mom?  Are you a student, a businessman, a veteran?  Who are you? How you answer that question says a lot about you. To the government, you are an impersonal nine-digit code; to Madison Avenue, you are a consumer. To your employer, you are an asset. To your family, you’re a brother or sister, aunt or uncle, father or son, mother or daughter.  To your spouse, you’re a husband or wife, a widow or widower or you’re a divorcee.  Each of you wears many labels and takes on many roles, but when you can put those aside for a moment; when you get alone and stop long enough from running around and being this kind or that kind of person, and ask yourself the question: who are you? you begin to realize that at the core of your being is that you are a person – a person who longs to know and to be known, to love and be loved, a person with gifts and abilities, hope and dreams.

But sometimes we loose sight of who we really are.  Years ago, before God got a hold of me, I thought I knew who I was.  I was a guy who loved life.   I golfed 9 months out of the year, skied the other 3 and partied every weekend.  The persona I tried to portray to my friends was that I had my act together, that I was with it, I was cool! I lived for the moment and didn’t care what tomorrow might bring. But when I slowed down long enough to look at who I really was, I didn’t like what I saw:  I saw that I was shallow, selfish and insecure.  I had no purpose in life.  I was a poser, an imposter. I wore a mask that looked good on the outside, but inside I was dying.  I was lost. Like most everyone else of my generation – I was trying to find myself, but I didn’t know where to look.

And now after nearly 20 years of ministry, this is perhaps the number one thing I’ve observed: that most people struggle with their identity, they don’t know who they really are - they’ve never found themselves.  And because of this most people are going through life with an identity crisis and it’s crippling them.  It cripples their relationships, distorts their potential, and erodes their confidence. Let me give you an example. This letter comes from a woman who is 29 years old. She writes: “About six years ago I began a relationship with a man I truly believed I would marry.  After five years together, some good and some bad, the relationship ended abruptly.  My whole life changed in an instant, and I never saw it coming.  In one moment, I went from being happy, or so I thought, to feeling like my whole life had been taken from me. I was devastated.  During my relationship with this man, I lost my whole sense of self – I somehow ended up living my life not for me, but for him.  When he left, I felt deserted, like I’d been left in this lonely dark place with no light.”
Here’s what I see as Our Identity Crisis: Most of us go through life portraying an image that does not reflect our true self.   Others of us go through life handicapped by our insecurities, overwhelmed by our expectations or frozen by our failures.   All because we don’t live out of the core of our true identity.
 
So I ask again, who are you? When it comes to identifying the real you, what would you say? Today, I want to help us begin to answer that question. Today we are beginning a four part series designed to help you see who really are from God’s perspective: to see yourself as God sees you.  Not as you see you, not as the world wants to see you, but as God sees you.  Seeing yourself as God sees you has life changing implications.  What God has to say about your identity has the potential to free you from your insecurities, your cravings for acceptance and your fears of failure.  If you can see yourself as God sees you, you can walk through life with a profound sense joy, a confidence you never thought possible, and new sense of purpose and hope for living.

And it all begins with God’s Identity Restoration Plan:
The Good news is that you don’t have to seek new relationships or experiences to find yourself. You don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to better yourself.  No, the good news is that it’s not about finding yourself at all, but seeing yourself as God has always seen you, Finding my true self as the apple of God’s eye.  Listen to how the apostle Paul reveals this truth in the letter to the Ephesians.  As I read this, look at what God has already done for you: Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.  Ephesians 1:4-6

There are two profound facts I want us to see here from this text.  But before I unpack those truths for us, it’s important to understand, that both of these facts have everything to do with God’s view of you and nothing to do with what you or I have done or will ever do to get God to notice us.  Just look at the first phrase: He writes, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.”  In other words, before the ground you walk on was called into existence by the power of God’s Word, God’s love for you was a reality.  God knew you before you were born.  And that intimate and eternal knowledge of you was the basis of these two truths.  And the first truth is this:

You have been chosen for His glory!     He chose you to be holy and blameless in Christ.  In other words, He chose you for His purposes.  He chose to include you in Christ, not because you were somehow deserving, but because you didn’t deserve a thing.  He chose you so He could reveal through you, the goodness of His grace.

A lot of people get hung up here.  Because they think this passage is talking about God going around in picking this person and not picking that person.  They then accuse God of not being fair… But that’s not what’s being taught here.  What’s being taught here is that God decided in eternity to choose a people who would take on the family resemblance – that’s why anyone who is chosen is chosen to be included in Christ.  If you are chosen, that means God wanted you to be part of His unique people – that’s what it means to be holy – it’s means to be distinct from the rest of the world – to be a people who resemble Jesus: that we would be “a people” characterized by compassionate hearts, generous spirits and humble ways – a people who would love one another and live in peace together – a people who would treat each other with dignity and grace.  That we would be a people who resemble God.
 
And as we live out God’s purpose for our lives the world would look at us and see that somehow we are different then them, and say, “Wow, look at how they love each other!” “Wow, there’s something different about them!” They will see that we’re not any better than they are, they’ll just see that God has changed us: that we are no longer live like we’re lost, that we belong to Jesus, and not only live for Him, but live like Him – and how we live brings God glory.  

As Rick Warren said it in the Purpose Driven Life: “God was thinking of you long before you ever thought about Him.  His purpose for your life predates your conception.  He had designs for you before you ever existed.  His plans for you were and are far greater than those plans you choose for your self.  You may choose your career, your spouse, your hobbies, and many other parts of your life, but you don’t get to choose your purpose.” YOU WERE CHOSEN FOR GOD’S GLORY!  That’s the first truth, now the second:

You have been adopted for His delight!  Not only do we get Christ’s character, but we get every privilege of Jesus Christ.  God loved us so much that He didn’t just make sure that Jesus would die for our sins.  No, Jesus died for our sins, so that we could be known and loved by God, and so that we could know and love God as His children.  

Now if you and I can really begin to grasp this truth, it will change you.  Anyone who puts their faith in Jesus Christ is immediately transferred into God’s family.  It’s an eternal and legal reality.  God makes us His own.  God chooses us for Himself. He sings over us, He takes great delight in us.  He loves us in every ways He loves Jesus:  God calls Jesus His beloved Son.  And if you’ve been adopted into His family that means He sees you the very same way.  You are His beloved.  Your Sonship is a lock.  It is grounded in his eternal will. You are and forever will be the apple of His eye.  

That’s why Paul writes in Romans 8, So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves.  Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.  Now we call him, “Abba Father.”  Romans 8:15

This is the truth that will free you from all fear. This is the reality that will give you confidence.  This is how God sees you – your true identity.  You are His beloved – the apple of His eye!

Listen to how Brennan Manning states this: “Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our existence.  It is not merely a lofty thought, an inspiring idea, or a name among many.  It is the name by which God knows us and the way he relates to us.” - Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child   You are His beloved, the apple of His eye!

But sadly, not too many people live out of this reality.  We don’t really believe or see ourselves the way God does.  We continue to let our family or our work or our past or our insecurities shape how we see ourselves.  But the Good News is that we no longer have to live in that reality.  God has made it possible to embrace your identity as the apple of His eye.  How?

Have you ever seen the movie where Matt Damon’s character is found floating face down in the sea?  Some fishermen pull him out of the water, They treat his gunshot wound, revive him, and care for him.  Then they drop him off at a dock in a city he’s never seen.  He doesn’t know who he is.  He doesn’t know who anybody else is.  But he puts together the few clues he has, and eventually those clues lead him to a bank.  He fakes his way in and discovers that they remember him there and somehow accesses his safe deposit box.  Opening it up, he finds a stack of money, a gun, and about a dozen passports – each with his picture on it, but all with different names.  Do you remember the name of the movie?  It was The Bourne Identity and it was all about a guy trying to find out who he is.  The Good News for every person here today is that God has made a way for anyone to find your true self – by restoring your identity And the first step to restoring your identity is to

Step One: Embrace your “born” identity!  The Bible says: “To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”  John 1:12-13 The Bible gives us a simple way to become God’s beloved: to enter into the reality that you are the apple of God’s eye.

First believe then receive, and you will become God’s child.

To believe means to place all your trust in Him.  Put your full weight on Him.  It’s not an intellectual belief. This belief is more like what you do when you put your trust in someone to get you home.  Like the time Becky and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary snowmobiling in the mountains.  We’d been following our guide for a couple of miles through old logging roads until we reached a plateau in the middle of no where. It was there our guide showed us where the lodge was - a little wisp of smoke miles away.  It was right then that we realized there was no way we’d be able to find our way back without him.  Without our guide we’d be lost. We had to believe he knew the way back.  So we put our trust in him and he got us back.  That’s what it means to believe in Jesus.  

To receive, simply means what it says: to receive Jesus just like you would a gift. God offers Jesus to you as a gift.  So when you receive Him as God’s free gift, the Bible says you become His child. You take on your new identity, you become His beloved – the apple of His eye.  That’s the first step.  To embrace your true self – the person God created you to be, you must believe in Jesus, receive Him by faith. If you have never taken that step you can do so today.  God sent His Son to show you the way home.  If God has made that clear to you, then you can receive him today and become His beloved child forever.  That’s the first step, now the second:  

Step Two:  Live as His Beloved!  Many of you have taken that first step, but you’re not living as His beloved.  You’re crippled by your insecurities, frozen by your failures, and you’re wondering, how do I do that?  Well, simple really.  To live as His beloved, you need to Cease shaping your identity by your false self.  Cease living for the applause of men.  Stop listening to the lies of your past and start seeing your self the way God does.  And the best way to do that is to Create space in your life to let God shape your true self.   As long as you are occupied with so much business, even in doing good things, you will never cultivate the most important relationship of your life.

If you go back to that very first verse in Ephesians 1, let me remind you of what it says: Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.  Literally, God adopted you as His child so you can might enjoy a face to face relationship with Him.  He adopted you to delight in you.  And yet, we spend so little time in His presence that we give ourselves no time for us to experience His love.

Let me illustrate this from Mike Yanconelli, former head of Youth Specialties,   as he tells how he learned to live as the beloved. Years ago he went to Toronto for a five-day retreat to draw inspiration from the mentally and physically handicapped of the L’Arche Community.  These are his words:

“It took only a few hours of silence before I began to hear my soul speaking.  It only took being alone for a short period of time to discover I wasn’t alone.  God had been trying to shout over the noisiness of my life, and I couldn’t hear him.  But in the stillness and solitude, his whispers shouted from my soul, “Michael, I am here.  I have been calling you, but you haven’t been listening.  Can you hear me Michael? I love you.  I have always loved you.  And I have been waiting for you to hear me say that to you.  But you have been so busy trying to prove to yourself you are loved that you have not heard me.”
   I heard him, and my slumbering soul was filled with the joy of the prodigal son.  My soul was awakened by a loving Father who had been looking and waiting for me.  Finally, I accepted my brokenness… I had never come to terms with that.  I knew I was broken.  I knew I was a sinner.  I knew I continually disappointed God, but I could never accept that part of me.  It was a part of me that embarrassed me.  I continually felt the need to apologize, to run from my weaknesses, to deny who I was and concentrate on what I should be.  
      At L’Arche, it became clear to me that I had totally misunderstood the Christian faith.  I came to see that it was in my brokenness, in my powerlessness that Jesus was made strong.  It was in the acceptance of my lack of faith that God could give me faith. It was in the embracing of my brokenness that I could identify with others’ brokenness. It was my role to identify with others’ pain, not relieve it.  Ministry was sharing, not dominating, understanding, not theologizing, caring, not fixing.
   What does all this mean?  I don’t know… and to be quite blunt, that’s the wrong question.  I only know that at certain times in all of our lives, we make an adjustment in the course of our lives.  This was one of those times for me.  If you were to look at a map of my life, you would not be aware of any noticeable difference other than a slight change of direction.  I can only tell you that it feels different now.  There’s an anticipation, an electricity about God’s presence in my life that I have never experienced before.  I can only tell you that for the first time in my life I can hear Jesus whisper to me everyday, “Michael, I love you.  You are beloved.”  And for some strange reason, that seems to be enough.”

“See yourself as the Apple of His Eye” 

Let’s pray.