Knowing who we are in Christ is essential to receiving all the inheritance and kingdom privileges that Christ has purchased for us. A few of us prayed with a lady a few weeks ago who obviously loved Jesus with all her heart but who was failing to know who she was in Christ. She had been suffering with severe health issues for several years but they had taken another turn for the worse in the past few months. The doctors were uncertain of the cause of her recent symptoms of seizures and extreme fatigue but they were telling her she would never work again.
She is a very gifted person and her work has been a place where she was able to use her gifts as “her ministry.” The idea that she could not longer touch people with her gifts was emotionally devastating to her as well as the pain she was in. She had asked a small group from our church to come pray for her healing. She was not a member of our church but her church was not very confident in God’s willingness to heal in this day and age.
We began by asking about her illness – when it started, the symptoms, etc. She quickly began to download a litany of symptoms and suffering that began in her childhood. She spoke about her emotional brokenness and disappointments and even the struggles in her marriage. What struck me the most was how convinced she seemed to be that her suffering was God’s way of bringing her to a complete place of brokenness so that she was asking for more brokenness while she was wanting us to pray for healing. She went on about how undeserving she was and how she just wanted God to use her but she knew that she needed to be even more broken more so that he could use her in great ways. All the time she was weeping and wondering when God was going to answer her prayers for healing and restoration.
In her mind, God was humbling her so that at some point he could lift her up. In her mind she was trying to achieve humility by focusing on her insignificance, by devaluing herself, and by accepting this suffering as something she deserved because she was unworthy of anything God might do for her. At the same time her heart yearned for healing, God’s assurance of her significance to him, and release from her sense of isolation and despair.
Our friend had fallen prey to the misconception that humility is coming to the place of denying that you have any value or worth in the kingdom of God and that it is only by God’s grace that your are artificially assigned any value at all. You’ve heard the expression that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Many of us have been taught that God’s grace is the lipstick, but we are still just pigs. We have also been taught that once we accept our “pigness” then God can begin to use us and bless us. My experience has been, however, that once we accept our “pigness” we feel so unworthy of God’s love and blessings that we pray with little faith and lower our spiritual expectations to avoid more disappointment in our “piggy” lives.
Biblical humility is maintaining an objective view of who we are rather than denying that we have any value or capacity for achievement. But in that objective view we must know that we are, in fact, sons and daughters of the King, members of his royal priesthood, God’s anointed representatives on the earth, the vessels of God’s Holy Spirit, dispensers of his power on the earth, and that at all times we are his chosen ones and more than conquerors. Humility is not denying our value and significance but rather knowing who we are and being confident in that, while at the same time not feeling as if we are superior to all those around us.
Think about Jesus. Our goal is to be like him in everyway. Jesus walked on this earth being confident of who he was to the Father – the Son of God, the beloved, the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. When he commanded demons he did not question the authority the Father had given him. When he prayed over a little bread and a few fish to feed five thousand, he did not doubt his significance to the Father and so did not doubt that his prayers would be answered. We see Jesus having time for the lowliest of people and yet never denying his significance in the kingdom of God. Actually, knowing who we are and believing it releases us to be servants and to hang out with the lowly, the powerless, and the impoverished. Knowing who we are releases us from the need to be part of the “in crowd” because we are already part of God’s “in crowd” and you can’t get anymore “in” than that. Knowing who we are releases us from the need to appear to be significant because we are significant. Confidence in our significance in Christ allows us to walk in humility which is actually strength under control rather than denying our strength.
As our friend kept speaking about her brokenness and a desire for God to break her even more, I stopped her in mid-sentence. I began to remind her of who she was in Christ and the promises that were hers because of that. I began to remind her of the healing, provision and joy that had been purchased for her by the blood of Jesus. There is a time for brokenness but that is usually reserved for the prideful, the arrogant, and the self-sufficient of this world, not for the suffering and brokenhearted. As I began to remind her of what she had once known but had forgotten, her countenance changed and her prayers and declarations for healing changed. Instead of whimpering before the throne and pleading her lack of worth and value, she began to approach the throne of grace with boldness. That night she received freedom from the demonic and a significant amount of healing.
We always know that the source of our value, giftedness, and anointing is by grace and from God through Jesus. But when Jesus makes you an ambassador, you are an ambassador. You don’t deny your ambassadorship, but you exercise it with confidence because you know Jesus has made you that. To walk around declaring that Jesus gave you the post because of how amazing you have always been would be arrogance. But to accept the position as a reality is required before you can fulfill your calling. To think that Christ calls you an ambassador but that you really aren’t an ambassador undermines everything he appoints you to do because you will only act like his representative, conveying his power and authority, when you believe that you truly are his authorized representative on the earth.
So…today be humble. Know who you are in Christ, know your significance in the kingdom; know your significance on the earth. Be confident in who God has made you to be and live with that confidence. Faith is not just knowing who Christ is but also who you are in Christ. Pray with confidence and expectation because you have great standing in the courts of heaven. Believe it. Be blessed.
