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Yesterday we read from 1 Corinthians 15. There was a line in there that has stuck with me. It goes like this, "...by the grace of God I am what I am..." There is something powerful about that verse that I think we need to consider in order for victor living to play the role it is suppose to in our lives.
That line speaks of acceptance. It takes guts to accept who we are. The world is always telling us we aren't enough. The church is often guilty of echoing the worldly message. All the rules and regulations religion loves to hold up as proof of something about their walk with their god does nothing when it comes to the grace of God making us what we are.
I am what I am and God seems to be OK with that. This doesn't mean that I won't be something different tomorrow. It just means that I need to lighten up on bad mouthing myself because I fall short in some way or another. This doesn't give me a license to do whatever I want to do and reason away bad behavior with the easy grace that cosmes with God's forgiveness. He does forgive. For me to use the fact that he forgives to act in ways that challenge my identity in worldly ways is akin to manipulation the likes of which would offend us to no end were the table turned.
This grace that makes me what I am isn't a cheap grace. It cost God everything. For me to cheapen that grace in ways that flippantly excuse my victim making ways is something that seems totally unforgivable. Yet, even this sin is forgiven by God. His grace goes way beyond anything I have ever seen offered up in this world.
That's why I have spent the better part of this last year talking about identity. We spend so much time doing things to try and prove something about ourselves. It is when we fail to achieve all that we think we need in this world that identity becomes something that threatens to crush our souls. God wants things to be so different for us.
Victor living is all about knowing who we are no matter what might be happening in our lives. It is when we can look in the mirror on our worst day and muster up the strength to say, "God loves me!" that the power of victor living starts to take hold in our lives. If God's grace is there when things are going our way, I have to believe that same grace is there when the world turns against us. Grace is the basis of identity that makes victor living a possibility in a world so adept at making victims of us all.
When things are bad, the line from 1 Corinthians isn't saying that we deserved the badness that came our way. It is as we accept that we are still the loved child of God in the good times as well as the bad that identity plays the role in our lives God intended it to be. That's what the Corinthians verse is saying to me. It is saying that God's grace makes me worthy of being called His Child. My circumstances have nothing to do with this status. When I look to what I do to prove who I am, I turn my back on the power of God's grace in my life.
I have shared in my book and several times in these podcasts the fact that I hate any question asked pertaining to identity. It is when I meet new people in my life and they ask, "What I do for a living?" or any kind of question used to try and identify me, I am at a loss as to what to say. Those questions use to scare and frustrate me to no end.
I have to be honest with you, I'm still not good at answering those questions. What this past year has done for me is to help me see that I'm OK with myself in the fact that I still don't know how to answer the, "Who are you?" kinds of questions I will face. Maybe I'll have the guts to say one day, "I am who I am because of God's grace in my life." I really don't know how to describe who I am outside of the vague and religious sounding "Child of God" answer. Maybe God will give me a finely worded answer in the future. For now, I'm at peace with being able to accept that I am who I am.
I think what brings that peace is the fact that God knows who I am. He knew me before I was even born. He knows my beginning. He sees my end. There is something strangely comforting to me about those facts. I'm so much more at ease with simply being who I am because God is there every step of the way as I discover more and more of what that identity means in a world so identity conscious and identity confused.
Our Victim-Based Society is one that wants what we see, what we do and what others think of us to be the foundation for who we are. Though this strategy may work for some people some of the time, I have yet to see anyone make this way of approaching identity work for the long haul. There comes a time when what we see, what we do and what others think of us falls short in ways that challenge us to the core. That's when victim thinking is waiting to rush right in.
Our society likes to talk a big game when it comes to acceptance. We demand to be accepted but are quick to reject anyone who thinks even the slightest bit differently than we do. That kind of hypocritical thinking has made our Victim-Based Society something that turns just about any cause into another victim making proposition. Acceptance is so hard to understand, let alone apply in our lives when we look to who we think we should be as the foundation for what we think are our righteous ways.
Our Bible reading ends with a promise that is so lacking in how we have allowed our society to evolve. Take a look at today's reading with me now.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:29 (ESV)
Peace or rest for our souls. That's what we aren't seeing to the extent needed in today's world. I believe it is because the yoke we have elected to carry is way to onerous for us to maintain. Whether that yoke be social justice, identity politics, sexual equality, race relations or any number of hot button issues that we use to define who we are, the burden is too great for us to carry. As we are weighed down by the overwhelming burden of these and other important issues, it is so easy to fail to accept others and eventually fail at accepting ourselves.
By the grace of God I am who I am. What a powerful way to live. I want to be able to live this way even with people who choose to not see the power of living this way. Fact is, God's grace made them who they are right at this moment as well. When I take the time to realize that they too are just as loved as I am, the frustration and the anger that I might feel at how people react in our Victim-Based Society tends to diminish quickly in my life.
It all gets pretty simple when I trust what God says about me for an identity that has power in this world. That power might not make all my dreams for a good life come true. That power will make God's dreams for my life happen. I'm starting to realize and accept that this is the best for me, even when that best isn't the good I really want.
As you go after all you will in your world today, remember who you are. You are who God says you are. His grace has made you exactly what you need to be at this moment for God's presence to be seen and felt in and through you. Make your victor status have meaning in a world seeking victimization as part of their identity. Let God's grace flow through you and watch things change in your world today.
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