"Not because of who I am, but because of what you've done, not because of what I've done, but because of who you are!" What an incredible realization to come to in understanding who we are in Christ! When we can begin to see the reflection in the mirror as the image of Christ's death and resurrection, we will begin to understand to the depths His love goes in reaching us! On the surface my mirror reflects the images of a wounded person who has struggled with self doubt and feelings of insecutrity, hopelessness, pain, and sin. But when I can begin to imagine how much God loved me on the day He chose to send His Son to the earth to die for mankind, those images begin to fade away!
I am overwhelmed at the thought that on that day when Christ stepped out of the Heaven and entered the world's atmosphere, God spoke my name! I could imagine Him saying, "Your journey will be painful and your suffering great, but I want my daughter Holly to spend eternity with me, so I need you to go to earth and then to hell and take back the keys from satan so that she can be set free from captivity and spend an eternity with Me!" Everyone know John 3:16 by heart but do people really grasp the enormity of the meaning behind it? Sometimes I think this is a verse that has been quoted so many times that its effect on the person who hears it may have lost some of its meaning.
For God so loved Holly that He gave His one and only Son, that if she will just believe in Me, she will not perish, but have eternal life! When I began to grasp the true meaning of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross at a personal level, my self- pity and feelings of self doubt began to fade away! I started believing the Word of God over my reality and the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection over my doubt! This began to do a work inside of me that has changed my life!
When feelings and thoughts of past failures begin to creep into my mind, I speak Romans 8:6, “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;” If my mind is wrapped up in the failures of my life, my mind will be consumed with thoughts of death and relational destruction. When my mind is controlled by the Spirit my thoughts are life and peace! When I remember the people I have wounded over the years and my heart begins to break, I remember Isaiah 53:5, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
I am constantly reminding myself that it is not because of who I am, but because of what He’s done and it’s not because of what I’ve done, but because of who He is! Without Him I am nothing and my life is just a vapor in the wind. The Lord always hears me when I call on Him and He always catches me when I am falling! I am no longer ever alone and nothing I have ever done can ever be used against me again because at the Cross Jesus took it on Himself so that I could be set free from it!
I hope you are beginning to understand the need to grasp the enormity of what Christ did for us on the Cross! I want to challenge you to begin writing down everything you have ever suffered, dealt with, or experienced that has ever left you feeling like you didn’t somehow measure up in the eyes of God. Then I want you to spend time investigating the true meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection so that you can be set free from everything that hinders you from walking in an intimate relationship with God, through your relationship with Jesus Christ! Write down John 3:16 and put your name in it. Speak it daily whenever you look in the mirror. I can guarantee that it will be a short time before your battle scars of past failures or memories begin to fade as mine have!
This is when God can begin to turn your pain into power, your hurt into help, your self- pity into acts of servant hood, and your failures into victories! To be continued…….
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