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Let’s try what Peter did and personally observe and experience what happens when we abide in life-union with Christ. You see, a person doesn’t learn to abide. A person abides and then learns what happens as a result of
abiding.
The enemy’s goal is to limit and narrow our thinking so that we can’t see anything new but continue to tell ourselves why things cannot or will not work. We have an enemy who daily says to us, Here’s why that’s not going to work. Plenty of other people will tell us the same thing.
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.
You want the false things you’re believing to come into the light. Don’t live your life in secret. The fingerprint of Satan on your life is secrecy and shame.
Writing down thoughts and impressions
gets them out of your mind and in...
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Confessing to one another is the greatest way to form true community because it draws people together. They never forget one another because they’ve been with each other in their fear. And they’ve worked through their fear into victory. Confession makes communities function together well.
The enemy has no authority over you. But if you think he does, in that way he does. That’s sort of his game. He asks you to give him permission to run your life, and you say yes by believing his deceptions: “I’m not good enough,” “Nothing will ever change,” “I’m stuck in this situation,”
“God will never use me,” “I’m alone in this mess,” and so on. The enemy is ruling your life, and you become what you believe.
So we’re going to silence the room. We’re going to silence the negative voices that disrupt our lives. Doing so puts the room and everything in it back in its rightful order. As we silence the room, your mind is going to open. As your mind begins to unlock, sta...
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This is why Jesus came, to destroy the works of the enemy and to make people well.
If your identity is based in guilt, you will struggle with a negative sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Guilt leads to an identity of unworthiness. If your identity is unworthiness, you will act like an unworthy person. It doesn’t matter where you are or whom you are with. You’ll still act to prove your worth and value.
Only God makes you worthy. Only God removes shame and replaces it with value. On the cross, Jesus canceled all guilt and its resulting shame.
The Spirit is leading you to the source of your sense of unworthiness. 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. Then your mind will begin focusing on your true identity and who it is you were always meant to be, which will then inform what you are supposed to do. Then even the mundane daily tasks will fill you with joy, and you won’t have the time or desire for distracting and destructive coping mechanisms—they are just not worth it anymore.
If I want to know how to pay attention to what God is doing, how to be aware of him in my life, I have to speak and live in truth. That does not mean I’m perfect. Living in truth does not mean I am without flaw; it simply means I am in the transformation process.
What Satan fears is truth. He can’t tolerate truth or truth tellers. That’s how Jesus beats him every time.
Jesus speaks only truth to the Liar, and the Liar can speak only deception back. Deception cannot exist in the place where truth shines.
Do you know what a leader is? It is anyone who wants to see something changed for the better.
God loves leaders because every person God creates is made to be part of an eternal transformation process. As leaders are being transformed by the constant renewing of their hearts and minds, they are bringing transformation to the world around them.
This is David. This is his true identity—shepherd-poet-warrior-king.
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.
Self-protection and self-preservation are always the strategy of a fearful person and an indicator of the false self taking charge.
Jesus makes us this cautionary promise: “All who are obsessed with being secure in life will lose it all—including their lives. But those who let go of their lives and surrender them to me will discover true life” (Luke 17:33 TPT).
Our false identity is a trash pile that invites wrong belief in a myriad of lies. Trying to eliminate every lie we believe is time consuming and difficult. What is more effective is eliminating the false identity that attracts the lies and allows Satan a foothold into our spiritual life.
Think of it from this perspective: Jesus isn’t so much teaching people what to do in a given situation as he is teaching them how to know what to do in every situation—ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking.5
There’s your prayer life. If the Father knows what you need before you ask him, why don’t you ask him what you need? If you ask him what you need and he tells you what you need, then pray for that. Your prayer will always be answered—without fail.
You cannot know God in any deep way from a false identity. You just can’t. Satan’s desire, whether you believe in Satan or not, is that you live your life making guesses, mostly wrong, about who you are, who God is, and who your neighbor is. You end up guessing your way through life and doing the best you can.
There is, however, an alternative way of knowing, in which you can know at a much higher level the things about this world and beyond. You can make decisions in the present, knowing more than you can see right at this moment. That’s what Jesus teaches.
She, like many of us today, exists within a separation worldview, sourced in scarcity, and thereby committed to a life of self-protection.
Do we separate people into categories? The word category is from the Greek word kategoros that means “to accuse.” Revelation 12:10 names Satan as “the accuser of our brethren.” Do we categorize people rather than affirm the beauty and uniqueness of God’s creation?
To complain (Hebrew, אָנַן—“to murmur; debate”) results in negative outcomes because complaining is sourced in falsehood and deception. Typically, complaining is the result of a victim identity that is impatient and self-absorbed. Complaining ultimately leads to death. In Numbers 11:1 we see what God thinks of complainers: “Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp” (NIV).
I love the way Ann Voskamp, in her book One Thousand Gifts, summarizes the difference between lament and complaint: “Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father’s heart.”31
Take a moment and ask God, “What do I do when I’m in pain? Holy Spirit, teach me to lament and not complain.”
You can give yourself the same reminder: Why are you looking down here? Why are you looking at the ground? Why are you looking at other people? Look up! Up where Christ is seated above all. He’s not under anybody. He’s above all your enemies. A down-and-out person is looking inward. A person filled with hope is looking up and out. Where are you looking today?
Scripturally speaking, true identity is received from God in community through the intuitive mind in prayer. The counterfeit of Christ-centered identity is radical individualism. Radical individualism is self-generated and subjective and leads only to internal and external conflict. Contrarily, true identity is the essence of who you are, gifted to you by God and meant to be discovered in relationship with him. It’s the “I” you carry deep inside of you and secured in love, value, and worth. Your unique and true identity is meant to bless the world.
Here are the two alternative strategies and their results: David thought to himself = false identity, down to defeat. David inquired of the Lord = true identity, up to victory. The difference between these two strategies is dramatic. When we’re in a situation, what should we do? We shouldn’t say, “Lord God, do this and that for me . . .” Rather, we should ask, “God, what do you want me to know? What do you want me to do?”
Your mind is powerful. If you lay in bed at night and think about exercising, your mind will make your body prepare to exercise. That’s its power. Your mind will believe the real and the unreal just as quickly, depending on what you want to focus on. Your imagination doesn’t distinguish between real and unreal. If you fix your imagination on the things of God, you can be joyful no matter what’s going on.
Issues of forgiveness and unforgiveness are a first significant block to hearing God. The second reason people don’t hear or sense God speaking during the prayer exercises has to do with anger. If you’re mad at somebody, your anger has to be resolved before you can receive anything from the Lord. You can’t hear God through anger. It’s attached to unforgiveness. Anger and unforgiveness are the two big blocks to hearing God.
Listening to God produces internal peace that results in external peace. Paying attention, being aware, and receiving the annunciations of divine love and truth resolve conflict in your inner world and then overflow to the people of the world. You can’t give away what you don’t have. Let’s agree to stop reacting in fear, guilt, and shame and begin exchanging our reality for God’s truth so that we can effortlessly and fearlessly give away the peace that we receive.
When we are young, God is building into us identity. You don’t have to be a Christian; it’s what God does for all people because God knit together each of us in our mother’s womb. God built identity into each of us. God wants us to understand our identity, but the enemy, the world, and the flesh work to crush it out of us. That’s the way this fallen world works—replacing truth with falsehood.
God never stops communicating with us—never. If we go outside and the sunrise or the mountains cause us to say, “Wow,” that is God. Every part of us that is moved by beauty and truth is God speaking within us. We sometimes miss the beauty and truth of the kingdom of God that surrounds us. We think if we’re not actively participating in some cause for God that God isn’t around.
Let him speak to you and then you’ll know what to do in your true identity; you’ll know the action steps you need to take. Remember: attention, awareness, annunciation, and then action.
We’re going to ask the Lord, “In relation to my identity, what do you want me to know and what do you want me to do?”
That’s what happens when you are aligned with the Spirit. The Spirit activates in you your unique identity and gifts.
Each day, as you’re growing and learning, keep asking the Lord these questions: “What do you want me to know today to live into my true identity? And what do you want me to do?” Your being, your true self, will always inform your doing.
Here is our simple question to God right now: “God, what do you want me to know and what do you want me to do based on my identity?” After you do what you sense from him, you just keep asking, “And now what? What do you want me to do now?” Continue moving in your identity, and it will grow. God will start saying things to you that are more and more profound and life changing. This is faith. It’s taking risks. This is transformation. It’s acting on what you believe to be true.
God, help me to pay attention to who you say I am. Help me to stop believing the lies and accusations as you exchange them for your truth. Help me to be aware of what you’re doing in my life and what the enemy is doing in my life. Help me to hear from you, the true Lord God. Then, Lord, would you help me to develop action steps in the direction of those things you have for me? This is what it means to abide in life-giving union with Christ as he abides in life-giving union with you.
