Child of God
Pastor David
I don’t watch NASCAR. If it’s on the TV I usually flip through the channel pretty quickly… unless it’s a replay of a crash. I know I am not alone in this interest. For some reason a crash, the most dangerous and life-threatening part of NASCAR is also the one that grabs our attention the most.
The same thing can happen when we look at our own lives. The most dangerous and life-threatening part of our lives is our sin. And we can focus on that. Even though in our minds we tell ourselves we are forgiven… there are times when the enemy will bring up past sins to discourage us, to cause us to question our faith: “am I truly in a right relationship with God?”
We can get so hyper-focused on the sin in our lives and think that is all God sees in us that we forget our identity.
1 John 3:1- See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!
Our Identity (if we have started a relationship with Jesus) is a child of God. That is how God sees us. So, God doesn’t look at the bad and focus on that like we can sometimes do. God looks at the good. And the good in us was not done by us, but by what Jesus did for us. The good was given to us, not earned by us. Which might be the root cause of the issue. We can focus on the sin in our lives because we’ve earned it, we worked at it (by giving into our temptations which led to those sins). And the reason we might not be able to focus on our God-given identity is because we did nothing to earn it. And one of the reasons we might be stuck in sin is because our focus is on our sin rather than on what God has given us. It’s like you’re on a diet and you shouldn’t eat donuts, but someone brings donuts to the office…then you continue to repeat to yourself: “don’t eat those donuts, don’t eat those donuts”. But eventually, you do because you're so focused on them by focusing on not eating them.
So, my encouragement for you today is to remind you that you have been bought from your slavery to sin through the blood of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:18-20). And because of that, your title is no longer sinner, but child of God. So, instead of focusing on what you were (a sinner), focus on what you are (a child of God). Stop looking at the crashes that have happened in your life (the sin) and start looking at the good God has given you.
Psalm 103:12-He has removed our sins as far from us
as the east is from the west.
I’ll leave you with one of the sayings I heard growing up: “We did nothing to earn God’s love so we can do nothing to lose it”.
-Pastor David
P.S. When I talk about how we can be focused on the past sins in our lives, I am talking about the sin that we have repented from. But if you continue to be reminded of a sin in your life that you haven’t repented of, that may be the Holy Spirit convicting you of your sin so that you will take action and get back to a right relationship with God. So, if that’s the case, be quick to repent and then put that sin in the rearview mirror and focus on how you have the chance to repent in the first place, which is through the actions of Jesus Christ.