It’s not about finding ways to avoid God’s judgment and feeling like a failure if you don’t do everything perfectly. It’s about fully experiencing God’s love and letting it perfect you. It’s not about being somebody you are not. It’s about becoming who you really are.
Identity in Christ
Jerry Bridges
As Christians, our identity is to be found in our relationship with Christ, not in our subjective and often negative life experiences in our life.
Tom Crandall
As we embrace our identity, we will no longer be tossed to and fro by the culture we were actually called to transform. Knowing who we are is the foundation of everything we do! We are saved because we believe in Jesus, but we are free when we believe like Jesus. By renewing our minds to align with the truths of God’s thoughts for us, we will be fully equipped to transform our realms of influence and bring about change for His glory.
Miguel de Unamuno
Cure yourself of the condition of bothering about how you look to other people. Be concerned only with the idea God has of you.
Dan McCollam
Slaves only obey their masters, but sons act on what has been modeled in their household. Sometimes we can live like a slave waiting to be commanded rather than like a son who understands the values and vision of a healthy, holy household. As believers, we are called to be about our Father’s business!
Steven Furtick
What event happened just before Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness? He was baptized in the affirmation of His Father in the Jordan River. The last event before Jesus’s first showdown with Satan was the remarkable scene we studied in the last chapter—when the voice of God pronounced the words that have always been and would always be true about the Father’s affection for and acceptance of Jesus: This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. (Matthew 3:17) It was as if the Father was preparing Him for the temptation He was about to face. So not only did Jesus know what was true: It is written. He also knew it was true for Him: I am the Son of God.
John Piper
Long looking with admiration produces change. From your heroes you pick up mannerisms and phrases and tones of voice and facial expressions and habits and demeanors and convictions and beliefs. The more admirable the hero is and the more intense your admiration is, the more profound will be your transformation. In the case of Jesus, he is infinitely admirable, and our admiration rises to the most absolute worship. Therefore, when we behold him as we should, the change is profound.
Author Unknown
God’s hearing of our prayers does not depend upon what we are in ourselves, but what we are in Christ Jesus; both our person and our prayers are acceptable in the Beloved.
John G Lake
Many Christians thinks it’s all right if they pattern after Jesus in a sort of way. They imitate Him, and they do the things which He did; that is, they outwardly do them. They perform kind acts, and they do other things which Jesus did. But the secret of Christianity is not in doing, the secret is in being. Real Christianity is in being a possessor of the nature of Jesus Christ. In other words, it is being Christ in character. Christ in demonstration. Christ in agency of transmission. When one gives himself to the Lord and becomes a child of God, a Christian, he is a Christ man. All that he does, and all that he says from that time on, should be the will and the words and the doings of Jesus just as absolutely. just as entirely, as he spoke, and did the will of the Father.
James Bryan Smith
The caterpillar, a worm, goes into the cocoon — a chrysallis, in which the root word, appropriately, is “Christ.” And it emerges a butterfly, completely transformed. The old has passed. The new has arrived. It was once weighed down by gravity; now it can fly. Christians are once under the reign of sin, but now we can live in freedom. And you can also see why it’s so painful to me that so many Christians don’t understand this? When I hear a Christian say, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace,” I want to say, “that makes as much as a butterfly saying, “I’m just a worm with wings.”