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July 24 - August 4, 2025
Peter, at least in this moment, understands that being with Jesus is not a contractual, transactional, quid pro quo that is worthwhile as long as it’s working to his advantage.
Jesus tells us simply, “Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:4 NKJV).
First John 4:13 tells us, “By this we know [with confident assurance] that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us His [Holy] Spirit” (AMP). In other words, if we abide in Christ, the entire kingdom of God is not only with us, it’s within us.
The gates of hell cannot stand against us moving in our true identity. But if we take one step outside of that identity, we’re done, we’re finished. It’s over.
You cannot give to another person something you yourself do not possess. The journey in discovering your true identity in the kingdom of God is an eternal journey. There is no end to the depths of who God made you to be.
There are ideas inside your mind, heart, and spirit that no one has ever thought of before. And the beauty is that these ideas want to come out of you. The sad part is that for most of you, it’s not going to happen because your false self—your fear, guilt, and shame—will shut down your creative and imaginative true self.
the Bible narrative is all about creativity bursting forth from the true self, the true you.
When we pray, God tells us how things do work, and we need to be able to hear him above the voices that tell us how things don’t. Prayer is this place, up and out of ourselves, where nothing is impossible.
God never comes to you in a formula, and he never will. You know why? He respects and loves you too much to talk to you that way. He’s creative in how he talks. He’s mysterious.
Each day, try to understand more of the mystery of you: “God, teach me something about myself that I do not know.”
Once the false self is gone, you are free to become more than you can ask or imagine.
Each day, try to understand more of the mystery of others: “God, teach me something about someone else that I do not know.”
unseen by the rational mind. If you endeavor to love God with your heart, you engage the emotional intelligence center of your being. Both negative and positive emotions become invitations from God into transformation.
If you endeavor to love God with your soul, life becomes nearly unimaginable—the impossible moves into the sphere of possibility.
Pay attention, be aware, listen for the annunciations. When God starts to talk to you, you will know how to act. You will know what to do, uniquely, in your life. You will start doing things gradually, testing what you sense from God. Resist the fear and the doubt, and you will look back in a month, then a year, and say, “This life is amazing!”
Attention, awareness, annunciation, action. These are what we’ll be doing.
The word confession just means to tell the truth.
about what you really believe about him, yourself, and others.
He will respond to truth. Jesus says, “For if you embrace the truth, it will release true freedom into your lives” (John 8:32 TPT).
If you will not tell the truth, you’re in bondage to the lie, the deception, and the rationalization. Don’t apologize for your perceived reality; tell the truth about it.
Confession activates repentance. Repentance is changing the way you think, turning and going a new way. God tells you the truth about who he really is, who you really are, and who your neighbor really is. God’s truth empowers you to believe in a new way, which leads to thinking in a new way, which leads to acting in a new way. This is transformation. Confession, repentance, transformation.
When you live in continuous confession and repentance, your life is transformed in every area: professionally, spiritually, physically. In every way, you begin to ascend.
This is why Jesus came, to destroy the works of the enemy and to make people well.
God, what is the most important thing you want to say to me right now?
Lord, would you tell me or reveal to me one place in my life where I’m not living in truth?
We’re not in a counseling session; we’re in a truth-telling session.
Confession is not telling all your moral failures to somebody. That’s not particularly helpful. When we confess, we are telling the truth about where we have deviated or moved away from what is true about God, ourselves, and others. Moral failures are the result of this deviation.
Everything from “I look at pornography,” “I eat too much,” “I drink too much,” “I don’t do this,” “I need to do that,” and so on makes me feel one of three things: fear, guilt, or shame. Fear, guilt, and shame are false identities.
If you live in fear, you are still going to try to control things in order to cope with your anxiety. Your identity is fear.
ask God, “What do you want me to know about the way I talk to my wife?” “You talk to your wife like a man who is ashamed of his past. A person ashamed of their past is defensive; their feelings are hurt easily, and they respond from woundedness.”
think Eve eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because she fears that she isn’t enough.
Are you ever tempted to think to yourself, separate from God, and chase after things, so you feel good about who you are? You already possess deep within you everything you will ever need.
This realization we are not living out our true identity is what God is moving us toward in times of confession.
God is redeeming and reconciling your belief systems, and when they are in alignment with his love, the doubt and fear will transform into security and faith.
when we start truth telling with God, our relationship with him becomes more alive. We can pay attention to him because God will only speak to us in truth.
There are three ways to think of the mystery of myself—the real self, the true self, and the false self. The
The enemy does not want you to live from the heart. He wants you to live from the rational mind, because the rational mind is limited.
Once the heart and mind are brought into balance, with the mind serving the heart, we can live with an unconflicted mind. Can you imagine living with an unconflicted mind where your heart and mind are always in sync? And even greater, your heart and mind are in sync with each other and they’re in sync with God? Imagine living like that!
I can do anything in my true identity.
Truth telling moves us from what is real to what is true. This is important because what is real to me isn’t always true, but what is true is always real.
identity. That’s the true David. The real David can kill lions and write poetry but only the true David is a shepherd-poet-warrior-king filled with the Spirit of God.
In the same way, the real you can accomplish things. But the true you can do . . . well, you don’t even know. You have no idea. Whatever level you find yourself within this world, you can go higher.
Pay attention to this stunning progression of truth: “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NKJV, emphasis added). How do we know this to be true? Because “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners”—separated enemies of God—“Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8 NIV, emphasis added). Why? Because “we are his workmanship”—his master work—“created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10 ESV).
How do you stand firm? In the truth of who you are in the kingdom of God. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the true you. But most of us aren’t living in our true identity. We’re drifting in between the false and the real.
the number one exhortation in Scripture is, “Do not be afraid.” We can only become fearless as we follow God in our true identity and experience in real life the truth of God’s promises to us.
This is a great lesson in conflict resolution. You want to end a conflict? Let the enemy know that their life is valuable in your eyes. Love them. Doing so ends conflict. But we won’t do that if we think it is a position of weakness. Yet, it is what David does, and Saul and his army walk away.
David, rather than “inquiring of the Lord,” which is his usual and successful modus operandi, tries human introspection instead.
Trusting God in his true identity of shepherd-poet-warrior-king, David is invincible. When he switches to asking himself for advice, he becomes fearful and decides to run. Self-protection and self-preservation are always the strategy of a fearful person and an indicator of the false self taking charge.
Suddenly, David’s not so invincible anymore. Why? Because he stepped out of the identity that God gave him into a false identity of self-protection and self-promotion.
it never takes faith to believe what’s false.
