When I Forget Who I am in Christ

This is an adapted personal insight:.  Please, do not forget who you are in Christ!

When I Forget Who I Am In Christ

by Joanne Jung

When I forget who I am in Christ I doubt myself 

and I don’t always act with the characteristics of Christ.

I compare myself to my Christian friends and their relationships.

I get angry easier and I don’t forgive, as I should.

My relationships end up strained especially with my family 

and I hide things from my friends.

And because of the strain on my relationships I get upset,

which doesn’t help at all 

and I don’t want to admit my feelings or my wrong actions.

I essentially turn inward and “self – destruct”…

I have realized that when I forget who I am in Christ, 

I am a darker person.

I am angrier, and I feel all alone…

My relationships are fragile when I forget who I am in Christ,

I am short with people, I brush them aside.

When I forget who I am in Christ, I am ugly.

I can’t control my emotions and I seek to find temporary

and unneeded satisfaction in unnecessary things…

I close up my insides and lock it so no one can come in.

My relationships barely hold on by a thread. 

I am seriously and ultimately empty.

Low, down in the pits, a dull nagging that everything is never enough,

and just overall lost in what I am supposed to do.

Most of my relationships will also decline 

or become “me” or “sin” centered.

I tend to be frustrated and in a perpetual hectic mode 

in order to please my own selfish desires.

My relationships with people are bad.

I tend to be more selfish 

and less considerate of other people’s feelings.

I begin to be judgmental of things that are minor 

and try to challenge people in unhealthy ways.

When I forget who I am in Christ, I’m easily irritated with my family.

When I forget that I am complete in Christ, 

I seek fulfillment from the wrong things,

I seek to define my identity based on how I perceive myself, 

which is never satisfying.

 I am a lot more depressed, a lot angrier, more solitary, 

and definitely more confused. I look dead.

I don’t want to open up or become transparent with my friends.

I fight and argue with my friends. I hold grudges more and longer.

When I forget who I am in Christ, 

it brings out the worst in me (it brings out me).

I have a short fuse. I put myself first.

I am too proud to admit that I have issues that need to be addressed.

I fail to trust the Lord.

Then when I go out, 

I put on a mask to hide the reality of my struggles. 

I am like a tomb.

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God,

but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Romans 7:24-25

For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,

and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;

Colossians 2:9-10

Who Likes to Wait? (Part 2)

As a continuation of what I started yesterday, here is the pondering about WAITING on the LORD:

Waiting on the Lord is trusting in God alone. 

In order to wait on the Lord, we must cast off all other objects of trust and rest in Him alone. Psalm 62:5 says, “My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him.” God has His way of stripping idols out of our lives so that He alone receives our attention. He is the God who will not share His glory with another. It might be trust in finances, people, good health, or our own plans, but waiting on the Lord means we must willingly abandon those things, or anything which replace trust in God.

Waiting on the Lord is the key to discerning God’s will. 

Psalm 25:4-5 says, “Make me know Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day.” David knew that in order to know the will of God he must desire His guidance and wait for His leading with a teachable and submissive heart. Often times, God does not bring about what we believe to be His will until our hearts are completely surrendered and content in Him alone. As long as our determination is fixed upon what we want, God’s will remains a mystery. If we are not OBEDIENT to the truth that He has already revealed, why should He reveal more?

Waiting on the Lord is a confident expectation of His mercy and grace. 

Psalm 123:2 says, “Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress; so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until He shall be gracious to us.” When things are crazy and seemingly out of control, we must know and live in light of the character of God as being GRACIOUS and COMPASSIONATE and FULL OF MERCY. By WAITING on the LORD we can be confident that He will manifest His mercy because He is the God who has promised to never leave or forsake His own. We find REST in the sufficiency and fulness of His grace even when we cannot see His plan.

Who Likes to Wait?

WHO LIKES TO WAIT?  
I don’t…and if we are honest, most of us would agree; waiting is the pits! And the truth is, we are born with an innate tendency to do what we want to do when we want to do it. Our flesh recoils at the thought of having to wait, and yet God’s Word commands us to wait on the Lord. Sometimes we think of waiting as sitting back, doing nothing until we are giving some kind of direction or sign from God as to what to do. However, biblically speaking, waiting is NOT a passive event.  In fact to WAIT requires a lot of EFFORT.  To wait requires the discipline of saying “no” to our impulsive, “got to have it now” natures and rather STRIVING to live in ACTIVE submission to the revealed WORD and WILL of GOD.  To wait on the LORD is an act of OBEDIENCE to Him.  Thus, not waiting on the LORD is disobedience.  

I have been forced to meditate or consider this discipline of WAITING on the LORD.  Over the next few days, I will post some of what I have found and thus have been pondering, praying over, struggling through and, hopefully finding victory with by the grace of God.  If this helps you, praise the LORD!  So here is my first devotional pondering about WAITING on the LORD.

Waiting on the Lord is HARD 

In Psalm 27:14 David wrote, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord.” Waiting on the Lord requires self-discipline. Rushing ahead to fulfill our own will is not difficult at all, it comes naturally, easily. However, surrendering to the will and ways of God, submitting to the authority of the Word, requires a constant resistance to the flesh. Self-denial is the daily duty of all those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. 

In Luke 9:23 Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” We must, therefore, be realistic and approach the concept of waiting on the Lord with a great deal of vigilance lest we usurp God’s timetable. At the same time, we must be careful not to use, “I am waiting on the Lord,” as an excuse for delayed obedience or a lack of self-discipline.  I shared this working definition of obedience with the youth group recently; doing God’s will; God’s way; right away!  Thus, waiting on the LORD is an act of obedience whereby I ACTIVELY pursue God and His ways, right away rather than default to me and my ways.  That is not easy, but it is my prayer!