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Identity

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By Brian Sharpe

Fear can be debilitating. I hate failing. Sometimes I would rather not try than fail. This fear of failure is ultimately rooted in a proper placement of identity. As believers, we are given a new identity. We learn in 1 Peter 2:10 that we went from people with no identity to a people who have an identity in Christ. Our identity as believers is different from other people’s identity. For those who do not follow God, their identity has been placed in what they do. As believer, our identity must be in what God says about us.

As a kid, I just wanted to be liked. In junior high, I was the class clown, because it was a way my peers would respond to me. I remember one time I received a box of hand-me-downs from someone in our church. I wore them to school the next day, and people commented on how good I looked. I remember feeling accepted by my peers. From that point forward, I always wanted to dress nice. In fact, when I went into high school and got a job, I spent a lot of money on clothes that I thought would make me look and feel good about myself. My identity was wrapped up in what others thought of me.

As humans, our identity can be wrapped up in many things. It could be how much money we make or the job title we have in front of our name. It could be the friends we have or our family. Our identity could be wrapped in how good of a musician we are or how great a fan we are of our favorite team (Go Bills!). Our identity could be wrapped in so many things that when things aren’t going the way they should, we are led to debilitating fear.

Instead of having our identity wrapped in what other people think of us, our identity needs to be wrapped up in what God says about us. What does God say about us?

Who I Am in Christ

(originally compiled by Neil Anderson)

I Am Accepted

John 1:12 – I am God’s child.

John 15:15 – As a disciple, I am a friend of Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1 – I have been justified (declared righteous).

1 Corinthians 6:17 – I am united with the Lord, and I am one with Him in spirit.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 – I have been bought with a price and I belong to God.

1 Corinthians 12:27 – I am a member of Christ’s body.

Ephesians 1:3–8 – I have been chosen by God and adopted as His child.

Colossians 1:13–14 – I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins.

Colossians 2:9–10 – I am complete in Christ.

Hebrews 4:14–16 – I have direct access to the throne of grace through Jesus Christ.

I Am Secure

Romans 8:1–2 – I am free from condemnation.

Romans 8:28 – I am assured that God works for my good in all circumstances.

Romans 8:31–39 – I am free from any condemnation brought against me and I cannot be

separated from the love of God.

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 – I have been established, anointed, and sealed by God.

Colossians 3:1–4 – I am hidden with Christ in God.

Philippians 1:6 – I am confident that God will complete the good work He started in me.

Philippians 3:20 – I am a citizen of heaven.

2 Timothy 1:7 – I have been given a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and a sound mind.

1 John 5:18 – I am born of God and the evil one cannot touch me.

I Am Significant

John 15:5 – I am a branch of Jesus Christ, the true vine, and a channel of His life.

John 15:16 – I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit.

1 Corinthians 3:16 – I am God’s temple.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 – I am a minister of reconciliation for God.

Ephesians 2:6 – I am seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenly realm.

Ephesians 2:10 – I am God’s workmanship.

Ephesians 3:12 – I may approach God with freedom and confidence.

Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

As believers, we need to focus on what we know to be true about ourselves based on what God says. We do not need to be bound by our past sins and failures. Our family-of-origin issues can be overcome because of who Christ is and what He has done for us. We need to trust God with our identity and our life and surrender our life to Him. We do not have to live in fear, because perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18)!

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Bitterness

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By Brian Sharpe

This is going to have to take some imagination. Close your eyes and think of a very nice house on a couple of acres with perfectly manicured lawns. It has matured trees and flower beds throughout the front yard and backyard, with a beautiful water feature in the backyard by the large deck with seating area. The house has a Northwest cabin feel, with lots of exposed wood and cedar. This house has the prefect layout and has the feel of a very comfortable escape. Can you picture that in your mind?

            Healthy plants have good root systems. The better the root system is, the more mature the plants are. For me, roots have always carried the idea of maturity, until a couple of weeks ago. Steve preached on the idea of a root of bitterness. This reminded me of the VeggieTales movie called The Fib from Outer Space. A little vegetable tells a lie and then has to keep telling a lie, which creates this monster that gets larger and larger with every lie that he tells. A bitter root goes deeper and deeper and spreads out of control if not taken care of.

            This brings us back to the beautiful house on acreage. Now imagine that same house but overgrown and with rooms that are overrun with junk. What could be a beautiful house is overrun by junk that doesn’t need to be there.  The yard that was once so pristine is overrun with weeds, vines, and blackberry bushes and is just unkept.

            When we allow bitterness to take root as believers, this transformed, beautifully forgiven body becomes overrun with sin, and it starts to eat us alive. If we are believers, this should lead us to repentance, but it often leads to further bitterness, because we are not willing to deal with offenses. This is toxic to the church and to the individual.

            I know in my life I need to constantly ask God to search me and let me know if there is bitterness in me (Psalm 139:23-24). The Spirit will convict us of sin (John 16:8); we need to listen and seek to forgive those we have bitterness against. We also need to go to those who have hurt us and seek to reconcile the relationship (Matthew 5:23-24). God desires the church to be united, and it is hard to be united when we have bitterness taking root in our lives (Philippians 2:1-2).

            This is my prayer: “Jesus, where there is bitterness taking root, please convict me. Help me have the courage to have the conversation that will lead to unity and peace in the family of God. Amen.”

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Measure of Success

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By Brian Sharpe

The measure of success is not about who you know or what you have accomplished in life—it is our faithfulness to live out the ways of God.

Solomon, in terms of accomplishing many things during his life span, was not very successful. He came to the end of his life and wrote that everything he had accomplished was “meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” He was a man who didn’t say no too often to his personal desires, and that ultimately was meaningless. At the end of his life, he wrote these words: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). All that matters is our faithfulness to God. We cannot control the outcomes, but what we do control is our faithfulness to live out the ways of the Lord.

            Now contrast Paul with Solomon. Paul was told when he came to Christ that he was going to have to suffer, and that is what happened. In 2 Corinthians 11:23-27, he says:

Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.

Paul suffered a lot, but he was faithful to live as God has asked him to live.

            When we look at our life, how do we define success? How do we define what matters most? Do we have the same definition as God does? God has called all of us to be faithful to live in obedience to Him, and He will take care of the rest. We are called to faithfulness with no backup plan. What I mean by that is that we live out the ways of God without concern for the outcomes. We give of our time, money, and talents, allowing them to be used by God without expectation of what we will get in return. We already know the outcome: we get to spend eternity with Christ in Heaven. We may not know how God is going to use us and our faithfulness on this earth, but what we do know is that He calls us all to be faithful. We need to spend some time and ask ourselves if we are being faithful to the call God has placed on our lives. Success in the Christian is measured by faithfulness, so let’s be faithful. We are all seeking to hear God say, “Well done, good and faithful servant”!

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A New Year

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By Brian Sharpe

It’s 2019!!! Think about that for a moment. What is the earliest New Year’s you can remember? One of the most memorable for me was 2000. Leading up to Y2K, people were getting extra supplies so they could still function just in case all the computers stopped working. Tomina and I spent Y2K in Anchorage, Alaska, with my sister and her husband. On New Year’s Eve we were hanging out at a house that overlooked Anchorage. When midnight hit there was a brief second of anticipation, wondering if anything was going to happen. Ultimately, nothing happened. We had a fun night of playing cards in a beautiful house.

As we think about a new year starting, it should move us all to evaluate what matters and what we want to see happen in 2019. When we aim for nothing, we hit nothing. When we aim at something, it helps us see if we hit the bull’s-eye or not. What is our aim based on what we value most for 2019?

This makes me think of Paul in Philippians 3:7–14. I love this passage. I believe it is a passage that we should all read when we are evaluating what matters and what we want to aim for.

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

            I love this passage. Forgetting the past and looking forward is what everyone is trying to do during the new year. Paul was doing this close to the end of his life. He wanted to forget where he had been and all he had done and focus solely on reaching the end of the race and receiving the heavenly prize. Is that what we are aiming at? When we set our resolutions and goals, are they focused on who Christ desires us to be as we are conformed to His image? Or are they focused on bettering ourselves, our family, or financial situation? These focuses aren’t bad, but if they are not rooted in who Christ wants us to be, I believe they are missing the mark.

            My prayer for us is that 2019 would be about the things of Christ, that we would aim for being conformed to the image of Christ, valuing what He values and aiming at what He has called us to aim at, which is to be a disciple who makes disciples. When we get to the end of 2019, may we look back and be able to count the number of people we have an influence toward Christ as we build His kingdom until He comes again.

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Grasshopper

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By Brian Sharpe

Personal care is something we all need to work on, but I am not sure we always understand what that means. I know when I am living in my head, it usually doesn’t end well. I didn’t understand why until this past week. Tomina and I were sitting in some teaching sessions while at our district’s pastors and wives retreat. The speaker was Dr. Gary Oliver, and he was talking about fear and anxiety during one of the sessions. He gave us four easy steps to worry. First, observe a situation. Then, interpret the situation. The next step is to exaggerate the situation. The fourth is grasshopper.

He used the example of the spies going from the desert to Canaan. God had told them in Numbers 13 to go to the land that “He would give them.” The spies didn’t trust what God said. They went into the land, observed the people, and then exaggerated the situation and told everyone that there is no way they could go into the land God that God promised them because the people would devour them. They said they were like grasshoppers compared to the people in the promised land, which led them to worry and not trust what God told them.

I see this happening so often in my life. I won’t ask questions about something because I believe I already know the answer. I will assume the worst because I have observed the situation, interpreted it, exaggerated it—and then grasshopper. When we go down this path of worry, it tears us up inside. It hinders our ability to have relationships with others and leads us to loneliness. How I—and ultimately all of us—can combat this is by doing the following:

  • Giving people the benefit of the doubt
  • Not assuming the outcome
  • Having conversation where there are hurts
  • Trusting what we know to be true from the Word of God

When I do these things, worry will melt away and freedom comes. It is when I am not willing to deal with the exaggerations in my life that I am in bondage to circumstances. God has given us freedom through the work of Christ on the cross. He has given us the truth we can live by in the Word of God. One of those truths is that we need to live in unity with one another. Philippians 2:1-4 says,

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Let’s choose to deal with the grasshopper effect by dealing with the exaggeration that comes in our minds while going through life. We need to choose to give people the benefit of the doubt, not assuming we know the outcomes, dealing with hurts between us and others, trusting what we know to be true about God from Scripture. If we do this, we can limit the effect worry has on our lives as well as build up our community of faith and, ultimately, our faith in the Lord. Let’s pursue emotional and relational health together. Grasshopper.

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Stop

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By Brian Sharpe

Arriving in the evening before the big hike, we set up camp for the night. Early morning came, and we prepared for the hike. I had never led a trip up the side of a mountain before, but the guys wanted to do it. We started out, and it took about three hours to get to the top of Mt. St. Helens. I was hot and tired. Not knowing what to expect, I had brought too many clothes up the mountain, which made my pack heavy. Here I was at the top of Mount St. Helens, peering over the edge into the bowl, thinking to myself, “I could have just seen this in a postcard.” I was at the top of a mountain that had erupted just over 20 years ago, and I was not in awe of God’s creation. I was focused on the fact that I was tired and still had to hike back down. Tomina likes to comment how I am not good at living in the moment. I am very quick at wanting to move on to the next thing. Which means I miss a lot.

I almost missed out on something huge that God was doing at Challenge this year, but God didn’t let me. If it was up to me, I would have moved too quickly toward bed, because I was so tired. But instead, God intervened and showed me that I need to stop moving so quickly and live in the moment, because he was working in that moment. I had been on this trip before. I had seen God do the normal things on this trip in years past. I expected him to do the same things on this trip. He had different plans. He wanted to show me that he works in crazy ways still. Being in youth ministry for over 20 years has given me a veteran cynicism that isn’t healthy. God took my cynicism and turned it into wonder. God showed up in a way that I had not seen in 20 years of ministry. This past trip to Challenge reminded me why I went into ministry. God still works in crazy ways. I got to see that firsthand, and I would have missed it if it was left up to me.

I feel like this happens every Sunday. We show up to church because it is what we are supposed to do, but do we expect God to do anything on Sunday? I want to change the way I view Sunday. I want to encourage us to view Sundays differently. God is active, and I want to see what He is doing, so I want us to come every Sunday expecting to see God do something amazing. I want to wake up every morning, seeking God and watching for Him to do something crazy. It may not happen every day, but it does happen, and I don’t want to miss it because I am too busy going from one thing to the next, going through the motions of my life.

And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. (Acts 2:44-47, NLT)

I want to see this happen at Elim, where God is adding to our fellowship those who are being saved because we are actively seeking Him and expecting Him to show up in crazy ways, which will lead to people coming to the saving knowledge of Christ. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that God is always at work. He wants to do crazy things in our church and community if we are actively seeking Him. I am not sure what He is going to do, but I don’t want to miss out because I was to busy going through the motions.

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