What better day to present a lesson on the Saints! Thursdays were the nights I taught recovery ministry and initially launched the Community Freedom Ministry that led to me expanding my blog to the podcast and YouTube channel.
So I find it oddly appropriate and I am happy to announce that I have completed and uploaded Lesson 17 of “Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship” : an informal study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship – with Lesson 17 “The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship” – The Saints - Part 1
Here is a link to the video on the MT4Christ247 YouTube Channel:
It is my prayer that this series will encourage people to read
Bonhoeffer’s work but more importantly I hope the lessons encourage people to
deepen their faith in Christ by pursuing a life of Christian
Discipleship.
Today’s photo of a solitary flower in full bloom
declaring new life after it was mercilessly mowed down comes to us from yours
truly as I took the time to document this object lesson of hope and determination
that I witnessed on my property Down By the River on Sunday afternoon.
Well, it may be the second day of the work week but
it’s the first day on a new month in which everyone in our country will be
called to give thanks and it just happens to also be the day when the body of
Christ is called to remember the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ that
have gone before us and for us to give thanks to God that we will be in that
number when the saints go marching in! Happy All Saints Day.
That’s right ALL SAINTS, as in every man, woman, and
child who has ever “bowed the knee” in humble surrender and made Jesus Christ
the Lord and Savior of their lives.And
while anyone could read this message, I have to believe that YOU and ME!
We may have been sinners saved by grace when we
heard the call to repent and trust in Jesus, and we will always be less than
Christ’s sinless perfection,but after
we placed our faith in Jesus, we were adopted into God’s royal family, and
should thus claim and declare our identity as saints.
While yesterday’s Halloween Celebrations unwittingly
gave homage to the spiritual forces of darkness, today, along with every other
day, is a day that we should celebrate the fact that of all the people in the
world, the Creator of the universe chose us to know the truth about life and
death, sin and forgiveness, heaven and hell, and called us to life through
faith in His Son!
This morning during my work out Micah Tyler’s What
Mercy Did for Me came on and I have to tell you the words penetrated to my
heart as I remembered once again that I was once lost in darkness when the Lord
called me to know His love and His light and to experience a new life in Him!
The chorus to that song says:
“Lord
you found me
You
healed me
You
called me from the grave
You
gave me your real love
I
thank you Jesus
You
washed my sins away
Oh
now I'm living like I'm forgiven
You
came and set me free
That's
what your mercy did for me”
God’s mercy and grace gave me forgiveness, love, and
a new life filled with meaning and purpose.And the gift of His mercy and grace continues to shape and transform my
life and the lives of others that I encounter as I keep on walking and talking
with God.
Tonight I host the Freedomin Christ Course on Zoom and the lesson is
all about renewing the mind and breaking strongholds, a lesson that reminds Christians
that Christ came to set us free and to destroy the works of the enemy. It’s a
sad truth that many Christians have great joy at their salvation but stay
locked in chains by believing the lies that the world, the flesh, and the devil
have set up in their minds.
The course teaches that just because we believed lies
in the past doesn’t mean we have to live according to them now that we are in
Christ. God has given us the Holy Spirit and His Word to use to overcome all
the strongholds in our lives that have given the enemy a foothold and kept us
from living the life of freedom and victory that the Lord has called us
to.
Just like the flower in today’s photo , that was
dead, cut off mercilessly by my lawn mower, we can grow into the life God has
for us. Because there was life in it that plant, unseen in the dirt, it was
able to rise above its brokenness and fulfill its purpose to give God glory for
the life He had given it by rising up and blooming by reaching for the light of
the sun.We too can rise up and if we
abide in the Light of the Son of God and the truth of His Word, we can grow out
of our brokenness and give God the glory for the life He has put in us.
That’s what His mercy can do for all of us, so keep
on reaching out for the Lord, that’s right keep on walking and talking with God
because He has transformed us from sinners into saints and all we have to do is
believe it to receive it, by living it.
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
Psalm 33:18 (NLT2) 18 But the LORD watches over those who fear him, those
who rely on his unfailing love.
Today’s Bible verse reminds us that the Lord watches out for those
who fear Him and rely on His unfailing love.
And as a reminder, we should fear the Lord. His righteousness and holiness
calls us to repentance and if we don’t make peace with Him there will be hell
to pay.
But if we put our faith Jesus, we don’t have to be afraid of Him
anymore and our fear should be changed to an awe and respect that causes us to
obey Him and to rely on His unfailing love.
And this is a huge step that we have to make sure that we make
after we put our faith in Jesus. We have to develop our love relationship with
God.We have to interact with Him
relationally. We do that by thanking Him continually for the life He has given
us, for all He has provided for us, and for all that He is and for all that He
has done.
Today’s the first day of November, the month we celebrate
Thanksgiving, so if you aren’t already practicing gratitude and appreciation
for the Lord, give it a try.When we live
a life of thankfulness to God, out love for Him grows and we can get past any
false beliefs we may have had about Him as an angry judge and we can see Him as
just, holy, good, loving heavenly Father that made a way to save us when He didn’t
have to.
Start the practice of relying on God’s unfailing love today by
respecting Him enough to give Him your thanks and praise and by letting Him
know that you love Him for what He has done for you and for who He is.“I love you Lord” is probably the most
appropriate thing we can say to One who made us and who saved us. God is good
and if you know it you should remind yourself by relying on the love that never
fails.
___________________________________________
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
“Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
The
Sermon on the Mount
Matthew
5
On
the “Extraordinary” of Christian Life
The Enemy—the “Extraordinary” concludes
“Pray for those who
abuse and persecute you.” That is the most extreme. In prayer we go to our
enemies, to stand at their side. We are with them, near them, for them before
God. Jesus does not promise us that the enemy we love, we bless, to whom we do
good, will not abuse and persecute us. They will do so. But even in doing so,
they cannot harm and conquer us if we take this last step to them in
intercessory prayer. Now we are taking up their neediness and poverty, their
being guilty and lost, and interceding for them before God. We are doing for
them in vicarious representative action what they cannot do for themselves.
Every insult from our enemy will only bind us closer to God and to our enemy.
Every persecution can only serve to bring the enemy closer to reconciliation
with God, to make love more unconquerable.
How does love become
unconquerable? By never asking what the enemy is doing to it, and only asking
what Jesus has done. Loving one’s enemies leads disciples to the way of the
cross and into communion with the crucified one. But the more the disciples are
certain to have been forced onto this path, the greater the certainty that
their love remains unconquered, that love overcomes the hatred of the enemy;
for it is not their own love. It is solely the love of Jesus Christ, who went
to the cross for his enemies and prayed on the cross for them. Faced with the
way of the cross of Jesus Christ, however, the disciples themselves recognize
that they were among the enemies of Jesus who have been conquered by his love.
This love makes the disciples able to see, so that they can recognize an enemy
as a sister or brother and behave toward that person as they would toward a
sister or brother. Why? Because they live only from the love of him who behaved
toward them as toward brothers and sisters, who accepted them when they were
his enemies and brought them into communion with him as his neighbors. That is
how love makes disciples able to see, so that they can see the enemies included
in God’s love, that they can see the enemies under the cross of Jesus Christ.
God did not ask me about good and evil, because before God even my good was
godless. God’s love seeks the enemy who needs it, whom God considers to be
worthy of it. In the enemy, God magnifies divine love. Disciples know that.
They have participated in that love through Jesus. For God lets the sun shine
and the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. It is not only the
earth’s sun and earthly rain which descend on good and evil, but it is also the
“sun of righteousness,” Jesus Christ himself, and the rain of God’s word, which
reveal the grace of his Father in heaven toward sinners. Undivided, perfect
love is the act of the Father; it is also the act of the children of their
Father in heaven, just as it was the deed of God’s only begotten Son.
“The prayers of
neighborly love and of nonrevenge will be especially important in the struggle
fought by God toward which we are moving, and in which to some extent we have
already been engaged for years. On one side, hatred is fighting, and on the
other, love. Every Christian soul must seriously prepare for this. The time is
coming in which everyone who confesses the living
God will become, for the sake of that
confession, not only an object of hatred and fury. Indeed, already we are
nearly that far along now. The time is coming when Christians, for the sake of
their confession, will be excluded from ‘human society,’ as it is called,
hounded from place to place, subjected to physical attack, abused, and under
some circumstances even killed. The time
of a widespread persecution of Christians is coming, and that is actually
the real meaning of all the movements and struggles of our time. Those
opponents intent upon destroying the Christian church and Christian faith
cannot live together with us, because they see in all of our words and all of
our actions that their own words and deeds are condemned, even if ours are not
directed against them. And they are not wrong in seeing this and feeling that
we are indifferent to their condemnation of us. They have to admit that their
condemnation is completely powerless and negligible. They sense that we do not
relate to them at all, as would be quite all right with them, on the basis of
mutual blaming and quarreling. And how are we supposed to fight this fight? The
time is approaching when we—no longer as isolated individuals, but together as congregations, as the
church—shall lift our hands in prayer. The time is coming when we—as crowds of
people, even if they are relatively small crowds among the many
thousands-times-thousands of people who have fallen away—will loudly confess
and praise the crucified and resurrected Lord, and his coming again. And what
prayer, what confession, what song of praise is this? It is a prayer of most intimate love for those who are lost,
who stand around us and glare at us with eyes rolling with hatred, some of whom
have already even conspired to kill us. It is a prayer for peace for these
distraught and shaken, disturbed and destroyed souls, a prayer for the same
love and peace that we ourselves enjoy. It is a prayer which will penetrate
deeply into their souls and will tug at their hearts with a much stronger grip
than they can manage to tug at our hearts, despite their strongest efforts to
hate. Yes, the church which is truly waiting for its Lord, which really grasps
the signs of the time of final separation, such a church must fling itself into
this prayer of love, using all the
powers of its soul and the total powers of its holy life” (A. F. C. Vilmar,
1880).
What is undivided
love? Love which does not show special favor to those who return our love with
their own. In loving those who love us, our kindred, our people, our friends,
yes, even our Christian community, we are no different than the Gentiles and
the tax collectors. That kind of love is self-evident, regular, natural, but
not distinctly Christian. Yes, in this case it really is “the same” thing that
non-Christians[151] and Christians do. Loving those who belong to me
through blood, history, or friendship is the same for non-Christians and
Christians. Jesus does not have a lot to say about that kind of love. People
know all by themselves what it is. He does not need to light its flame, to
emphasize it or exalt it. Natural circumstances alone force it to be
recognized, for non-Christians and for Christians. Jesus does not need to say
that people should love their sisters and brothers, their people, their
friends. That goes without saying. But by simply acknowledging that and not wasting
any further words on it, and, in contrast to all that, commanding only love for
enemies, he shows what he means by love and what they are to think about the
other sort of love.
How are disciples
different from nonbelievers? What does “being Christian” consist of? At this
point the word appears toward which the whole fifth chapter is pointed, in
which everything already said is summarized: what is Christian is what is “peculiar,” περισσόν,
the extraordinary, irregular, not self-evident. This is the “better
righteousness” which “outdoes” that of the Pharisees, towers over them, that
which is more, beyond all else. What is natural is τὸ αύτὸ
(one and the same) for non-Christians and Christians. What is distinctly
Christian begins with the περισσόν, and that is what
finally places what is natural in the proper light. When this specialness, this
extraordinariness, is absent, then what is Christian is absent. What is
Christian does not take place in naturally given circumstances, but in stepping
beyond them. The περισσόν never dissolves into τὸ αύτὸ.
It is the great mistake of a false Protestant ethic to assume that loving
Christ can be the same as loving one’s native country, or friendship or
profession, that the better righteousness and justitia civilis are the same.
Jesus does not talk that way. What is Christian depends on the “extraordinary.”
That is why Christians cannot conform to the world, because their concern is
the περισσόν.
What does the περισσόν,
the extraordinary, consist of? It is the existence of those blessed in the
Beatitudes, the life of the disciples. It is the shining light, the city on the
hill. It is the way of self-denial, perfect love, perfect purity, perfect
truthfulness, perfect nonviolence. Here is undivided love for one’s enemies, loving
those who love no one and whom no one loves. It is love for one’s religious,
political, or personal enemy. In all of this it is the way which found its
fulfillment in the cross of Jesus Christ. What is the περισσόν?
It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, who goes to the cross in suffering and
obedience. It is the cross. What is unique in Christianity is the cross, which
allows Christians to step beyond the world in order to receive victory over the
world. The passio in the love of the crucified one—that is the “extraordinary”
mark of Christian existence.
The extraordinary is
doubtless that which is visible, which magnifies the Father in heaven. It
cannot remain hidden. The people have to see it. The community of Jesus’
disciples, the community of better righteousness, is the visible community,
that took the step beyond the orders of the world. It has left everything
behind to gain the cross of Christ.
What are you doing that is special? The
extraordinary—and that is what is most offensive—is a deed the disciples do. It has to be done—like the better
righteousness—and done visibly! Not in ethical rigor, not in the eccentricity
of Christian ways of life, but in the simplicity of Christian obedience to the
will of Jesus. This deed will prove to be what is “special” by leading
Christians to the passio of Christ. Such action itself is continuous suffering.
In this action Christ is his disciples’ passio. If it is not that, then this is not the deed which Jesus
intends.
The περισσόν
is, thus, the fulfillment of the law, the keeping of the commandments. In
Christ the Crucified and his community, the “extraordinary” occurs.
Here are those who
are perfect, perfect in undivided love, just as their Father in heaven is. It
was the undivided, perfect love of the Father which gave the divine Son up to
die on the cross for us. Likewise, the passio of the communion with this cross
is the perfection of the followers of Jesus. The perfect are none other than
those who, in the Beatitudes, are called blessed.[1]
Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship,
ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 140–145.
Today’s photo of a glimmering
sunrise at Hillsboro Beach, Florida comes to us from my personal photo archives
and was taken 10 days after Valentine’s Day in 2015.A lot has changed in my life since that time
and I share it today because I find myself in a very reflective mood as I had a
pretty eventful weekend and luckily decided last week to take today off from
work.
Last Monday I decided to take off today
because I realized that it was not only going to be “Super Bowl Monday” but it
was also going to be the first Valentine’s Day that my wife TammyLyn and I
would celebrate as a couple!
In case you are wondering, enjoying Valentine’s
Day in my wife’s company and the love we share is the focus today.While I did stay up to see the game last
night and 10pm is late for me, Super Bowl Monday will not be the recuperative holiday
for me as it was in the past.
I don’t drink anymore so it will not be a
day of hangovers, or continued day drinking, as it had been in my past when I
was in bondage to my many addictions. But
I have to admit that the end of the NFL football season is still somewhat of an
event and a milestone each year for me as I see it as somewhat of a seasonal
marker for our nearing “mid-winter”, as President’s Day is next week and after that
our hopes for spring arriving are not so distant, or unrealistic, anymore!As we go through what can be challenging
winters in upstate NY, every milestone we can reach that brings us closer to
the season of green is to be considered a victory and should be celebrated!
But today, beyond seasonal milestones, I am
thanking God in heaven above for the gift of His love that has not only
empowered me to leave the darkness of my past behind but for staying with me
and guiding me to help me to find the love of my life here on earth in my wife,
TammyLyn!
My wife and I were brought together through
our seeking to serve and know God more and I know that God brought TammyLyn
into my life as a partner for life and as an expression of His love for both of
us.Valentine’s Day is the holiday where
we remember the love in our life and I am filled with joy at the prospect of just
spending the day with TammyLyn in each other’s presence.
And of course if we are to celebrate love
today, we have to remember that God is love and how He showed His love for all
of us in Jesus Christ.
1 John 4:7-11 (NKJV) 7 Beloved, let us love one
another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and
knows God. 8 He who does not love does
not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God
was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the
world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not
that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so
loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Yeah, God showed His love for us all by
sending Jesus to pay for our sins and by giving eternal life to those who put
their faith in Him.And Jesus’s simple
commandments tell us that we are to love God and love our neighbors as
ourselves.
God wants us to have a love relationship
with Him and share the love He pours into us with the people in our lives.
The problem with this possible “love
connection” with God, isn’t God. It’s us.Like Peter in Luke 5, when he got the idea that Jesus was the Messiah,
we think we are not worthy because we are sinful men and when we think about
the holiness of God we wonder if there is any way that God could possibly love
us.
My mind goes to strange places sometimes
and this morning I thought about that Contour’s R&B Hit “Do you love me..(Now
that I can Dance).
When we think of God, we think we have to
earn His love by being good or holy. We wrongly get the idea that our
performance will be the only thing that will make us right with Him and that we
have to make Him love us.
But the thing is that we don’t have to “really
move”, or “really groove”, we don’t have to “mash potatoes” (whatever that is),
or “do the twist” to make God love us.
Our confusion about the whole “sinner/saint
paradox” can drive us away from God when we think we have to earn His love. But
God is love, He loves sinners like you and me, and wants us to know His love
and the new eternal life He offers us in Christ.
And I know, you may be saying did: “M.T.
Clark, a vocal advocate for knowing that we are saints and for experiencing our
freedom in Christ just call himself, and me, a sinner?
Yes, we are saints who sin.We sinned before Christ and because we are
not perfect like Christ, we will sin after we make Him our Lord and Savior, after
He gives us a new and everlasting spiritual life and our new identity as
saints.
This saint/sinner paradox reminds me of the
scene in the film, “Chinatown” where Jack Nicholson slaps Faye Dunaway
repeatedly demanding the truth until she shamefully has to admit that due to an
incestuous encounter with her father, “her sister” was in fact “her daughter”!,
proving that two seemingly contradictory things can be simultaneously
true.
And that’s what a paradox is – a situation like
our Christian identity where we are truly born again adopted children of God,saints, who unfortunately will sin by either
the things we do or the things we fail to do. Unfortunately this paradox can really confuse us.
Our guilt, shame, and the devil is there to
slap us around with his temptations, accusations, and condemnations that tell us
we are a sinner and God can’t love us.
But Christ is there to tell us, like the
woman caught in adultery, that we are truly are forgiven, we are not condemned,
we are new creations, and He encourages us to experience the peace and joy of
being a saint by “sinning no more”.
This sinner/saint paradox can drive us
absolutely batty and may make us want to smack ourselves!
But we don’t have to slap ourselves or dance
to earn God’s love, and as James 1 indicates, we shouldn’t doubt the love of
God, and the forgiveness and sainthood we receive when we put our faith in
Jesus, because if we do doubt we will tend to be double minded and be unstable
in all our ways.
Christ wants us to know the love of God and
to give us rest.
In 2015 when I took today’s photo, I was a
Christian but man did I have a lot of the sinful habits in my life that made me
feel unworthy. But even though I was living in sinful patterns; I knew that God’s
word was true and told me that I was forgiven and was a new creation.Because of my continual failures and dark
ways, I rejoiced over my salvation because I knew I “couldn’t dance” and earn
my place in God’s kingdom.
But I didn’t need to dance. I just needed
to abide in Christ to know His presence and love and to walk with Him. So I walked.I rejoiced that I was “just a sinner saved by grace” all through the
wild days of my mad existence as a double minded unstable carnal Christian.
At the time I took today’s photo, I had
been living this tumultuous life of a Christian living in the condemnation of a
life of the flesh for about 5 years. But I kept walking and talking with God
and about a month after I took this photo,I walked into a Christian recovery program and put down the booze and
the condemnation that came with it for good.
God gives us His love and encourages us to walk
toward Him. Our relationship with Him isn’t based on our performance, but God
does encourage us to walk like His Son Jesus Christ walked, because He knows of
the peace, love, and joy that we can experience when we walk in the Spirit.
I used to identify myself as a sinner saved
by grace (and I am one) but when I did that, I made the mistake of identifying
with my sin more than with the new creation that God made me to be, a saint, when
I put my faith in Christ.
And when I realized that my identity as a
saint, who admittedly sins, was not just a theological concept but was a
spiritual and existential reality that I could live in, I decided to believe it
and live it out.
And I can tell you that, when I started identifying
myself with who I am in Christ, the chains of “the sinner” were loosened and I
was able to break free and walk away from them.
I am still far from being perfect, but I am
experiencing a victorious life of freedom from many of my past sins and habits
because I have drawn closer to the One who is perfect and identify with God
more than the things that would separate me from Him.
So as we celebrate the love we have today
on Valentine’s Day, remember that God is love and that His love for you and the
gift of salvation and a new life in Christ are free.He loves you just the way you are, but He would
encourage you to stop slapping yourself around and instead agree to embrace the
new life He has for you.
The greatest love of all can be happening
to you.When you accept God’s love, you
can learn to love yourself and then take the love God has given you to love the
other people in your life.
Today’s Bible verses come to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
Psalm 38:9 (NLT2) 9 You know what I long for,
Lord; you hear my every sigh.
Today’s Bible
verses tells us that God knows what we long for and that He hears us as we lament
and walk through life.
Part of the
problem we can have with our experiencing the love of God is that we may have
idea that God is somehow distant or uncaring.
But the truth
is that God is all knowing and that He is love.God’s love is demonstrated through the advent of Christ on the earth to reconcile
us to Him.
As our Creator,
God made us. He knows us inside and out! His omniscience is testified about in His word
and today’s verse indicates that He knows the desire of our hearts!
He knows us! He
loves us! And as today’s verse tells us He even hears our every sigh!
So as today is
Valentine’s and the enemy may seek to torment those of us who don’t have a perfect
romantic love relationship in our lives, let me remind you and encourage you
that God’s love is the greatest love of all and that you can receive comfort
from it always and have the assurance that, no matter what, God will never leave
you or forsake you.
God’s love has
carried me through the toughest trials of my life, and I know that in the
darkest days of my soul that He heard my every sigh, wiped away every one of my
tears, and gave me hope.
So whether you are
actively enjoying the benefits of loving relationships in your life or not, remember
that God loves for you is real and powerful and when you abide in it you can
feel it and the peace and joy of having Him forever in your life.
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org
where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors
to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue to share from Dr. Neil Anderson’s
. “Restored: Experience Life with Jesus”. Today, we conclude sharing from
Chapter 8.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase Dr. Neil Anderson’s books for your own private
study and to support his work.
Paul prays in Ephesians 1:18, “I pray the eyes of your heart
may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what
are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the
surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.” Jesus has met your
needs for acceptance, security, and significance. Read the following list
aloud, morning and evening, for the next few weeks. Think about what you are
reading and let the truth of who you are in Christ renew your mind. This is
your inheritance in Christ.
IN CHRIST
I renounce the lie that I am rejected, unloved, or shameful.
In Christ I am accepted.
God says:
·I am God’s child. (John 1:12)
·I am Christ’s friend. (John 15:5)
·I have been justified. (Romans 5:1)
·I am united with the Lord and I am one spirit
with Him. (1 Corinthians 6:17)
·I have been bought with a price: I belong to
God. (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20)
·I am a member of Christ’s body. (1 Corinthians
12:27)
·I am a saint, a holy one. (Ephesians 1:1)
·I have been adopted as God’s child. (Ephesians
1:5)
·I have direct access to God through the Holy
Spirit. (Ephesians 2:18)
·I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my
sins. (Colossians 1:14)
·I am complete in Christ. (Colossians 2:10)
·I renounce the lie that I am guilty,
unprotected, alone, or abandoned.
In Christ I am secure.
God says:
·I am free from condemnation. (Romans 8:1, 2)
·I am assured that all things work together for
good. (Romans 8:28)
·I am free from any condemning charges against
me. (Romans 8:31-34)
·I cannot be separated from the love of God.
(Romans 8:35-39)
·I have been established, anointed, and sealed by
God. (2 Corinthians 1:21, 22)
·I am confident that the good work God has begun
in me will be perfected. (Philippians 1:6)
·I am a citizen of heaven. (Philippians 3:20)
·I am hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)
·I have not been given a spirit of fear, but of
power, love, and discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7)
·I can find grace and mercy to help in time of
need. (Hebrews 4:16)
·I am born of God and the evil one cannot touch
me. (1 John 5:18)
I renounce the lie that I am worthless, inadequate,
helpless, or hopeless.
In Christ I am significant.
God says:
·I am the salt of the earth and the light of the
world. (Matthew 5:13, 14)
·I am a branch of the true vine, Jesus, a channel
of His life. (John 15:1,5)
·I have been chosen and appointed by God to bear
fruit. (John 15:16)
·I am a personal, Spirit-empowered witness of
Christ’s. (Acts 1:8)
·I am a temple of God. (1 Corinthians 3:16)
·I am a minister of reconciliation for God. (2
Corinthians 5:17-21)
·I am God’s coworker. (2 Corinthians 6:1)
·I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realm.
(Ephesians 2:6)
·I am God’s workmanship, created for good works.
(Ephesians 2:10)
·I may approach God with freedom and confidence.
(Ephesians 3:12)
·I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me! (Philippians 4:13)
I am not the great “I Am,” but by the grace of God I am what
I am.
(See Exodus 3:14; John 8:24, 28, 58; 1 Corinthians 15:10.)
