For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10

Discontent  seems to be the prevailing emotional tenor of our day.  A great many people (at least on television and in the social media) seem angry all the time.  They feel as if life has treated them badly. They feel as if they have been cheated and are looking for someone to blame. Something is missing that they can’t quite put their finger on but it leaves them restless and unfulfilled.

Back in the “80’s and 90’s , a major theme of psychology and counseling was the idea of self-actualization.  Broadly, that term referred to a process in which men and women would discover who they were and what life was about for them.  Their goal was to become all that they could be and, in doing so, to find fulfillment in life. Predictably, since this was a concept derived from the world, it was very self-focused and placed personal happiness as the highest priority in the life of any person.  Even if that self-actualization meant the abandonment of marriage and family and other commitments, that could be justified if those responsibilities were getting in the way of the individual’s pursuit of fulfillment.

God is not opposed to us becoming all that we can be.  He is not opposed to us feeling fulfilled in life.  He is not opposed to us seeking excellence or finding great contentment in what we do. The difference is that God is wise enough to know that true fulfillment is never found in a self-focused pursuit of happiness that rejects our responsibilities towards others.  Remember that the two greatest commandments are love God and love others. It was not love yourself above all.

I think Paul’s words in Ephesians gives us some insight into the reality of fulfillment. He begins by saying that we are God’s workmanship.  The word translated as workmanship carry’s with it the idea that you are God’s creative work.  He had a direct hand in determining who you are, how you are wired, and what talents and gifts you possess.  He even had a direct hand in determining your destiny. That thought echoes Psalm 139 where David declared that we are fearfully and wonderfully madebecause God created our inmost being and knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. Knitting suggests design and purpose. I have a daughter who knits. She never just starts knitting yarn randomly without any thought to form or function.  She always has the end in mind at the beginning.  That is how you are made – with God’s purposes for you in mind.

Paul goes on to say that we are created in Christ Jesus.  The purposes God has for every individual will never be fully realized outside of Christ. God’s intent was for every man and every woman to be redeemed through his Son.  The potential for God’s purposes lies dormant within every human until sparked by the Holy Spirit.  Because man is made in God’s image, humans can do amazing things in their own strength and intellect.  But the truth is, they could be even more amazing in Christ where the Holy Spirit takes the natural and upgrades it to supernatural.

In addition, God designed us to do good workswhich he has prepared in advance for us to do.  Good works are any endeavor that reflects the goodness of God, the intellect of God, the redemptive purposes of God, and that draws men closer to their creator.  Those things include achievements in science, the arts, education, business, agriculture, and government, as well as in building great churches and evangelistic ministries. We too often think of the Kingdom of Heaven as something that is expressed on earth only within the confines of church buildings.  But God wants us to disciple nations.  To do so, the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit must be expressed in every part of society.

Who knows better how to heal the body than the one who created it.  Who better to reveal scientific breakthroughs to eliminate cancer and a thousand other things that kill people prematurely every day. God loves to do miracles but he also loves to work through his people to bring breakthroughs in the natural realm for feeding the hungry, eliminating war, educating the impoverished, providing energy to third world nations, and so forth.  God has created us in Christ with those things in mind.  Our prayer is that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. There is no sickness in heaven, no hunger, no war, no orphans, no dirty water, and so forth. That is God’s will and he wants his people to produce that environment of earth.  Of course, it will never be fully that way until Jesus returns, but we can make deep inroads in correcting the damage that sin and Satan have done on this earth before then.Those things, those opportunities, those good works have been prepared in advance for God’s people to engage in and discover.  They are all potentials waiting for us to embrace and produce by the anointing of the Holy Spirit.  God has placed within his people the answers the world is crying out for.

And here is the kicker.  Men and women will never be all they can be until they find God’s purposes for them. Self-actualization only occurs through God-actualization.  Real fulfillment only comes when we run tin he lane God has assigned us.  We are each uniquely designed for his purposes and there will always be something missing until we are in concert with our design.

One of my favorite moves of all time is Chariots of Fire, which was the true story of two English Olympians of the 1920’s.  One was a Presbyterian minister who competed to bring glory to God.  The other was a man looking for self-actualization – fame, money, accomplishment.  The sister of the minister thought his track career was a distraction from his ministry and a total waste of time.  Finally, in frustration, she asked him why he ran. He said something like, “I run because God made me fast.  And when I run, I feel God’s pleasure.”  That is self-actualization.  That is fulfillment. That is knowing your purpose for that particular season of your life.

When we find God’s design for our lives, we are running in our lane and will feel the pleasure of God.  The world is in desperate search of that feeling. Countless men and women have given up on finding that place and now use all kinds of things to medicate the emptiness.  Solomon said that God has placed eternity in the hearts of men.  He has placed heaven there and it is a longing for such a place that drives men.  What they don’t know, is that there is only one door to heaven and that is Jesus. Purpose, belonging, fulfillment, and feeling the pleasure of a Father is on the other side of that door.

Unfortunately, many believers do not yet know that truth either.  They are in Christ but still think their fulfillment is to be found in the things of the world rather than in the full embrace of God’s purposes for their lives. They are still trying to run in the lanes assigned to others rather than the one assigned to them before the foundation of the world. As the old T.V. sitcom says, “Father Knows Best.” When the world and the church discover that truth, whole nations will become disciples.

I’m reading a book right now by Zack Neese, entitled How to Worship a King. I’ve never been great at worship, so I am trying to grow in that area.  In the opening pages of the book, the author stated his belief that the modern church doesn’t worship God very well…or even at all sometimes.   To make his case, he gave an interesting historical view that I think has merit. Let me quote some of what he wrote.

“How do I know that biblical worship is not commonly in operation in the church? First, we haven’t redeemed what is ours. Almost two thousand years ago Lucifer pulled off the greatest heist in history.  He stole Scripture, worship, and the priesthood from the people of God. Sadly, the leaders of the early church were his unwitting accomplices. This is how he did it: by inspiring well-meaning clergy with a really bad idea. He made them think they had to protect what is Holy (Scripture, worship, priesthood) from what is common (people).”

Neese goes on to talk about how the great divide between clergy and laity became standard practice in the church…first with Catholicism but later with the Reformation churches as well.  With this mindset of protecting the sacred from the common, the regular church member has become a spectator while the “trained professionals” preach and worship with the congregation providing applause.  God’s design, however, is that every member is to be a priest offering up spiritual sacrifices to God on a regular basis. To do less, leaves us with the notion that only a chosen few actually hear from God or have spiritual authority when, in fact, God speaks to all of us and Christ has delegated his authority to every believer.  Our congregations assume their role as spectators and are surprised and even resistant when we ask them to get in the game.

Neese writes about his feelings as a new Christian. “When I was alone with God, I was an important part of the equation.  I ministered to God and he ministered to me, and then we went out and ministered to people together. When I was in church, I felt like I just didn’t matter. Whether I showed up or not made little difference. Someone else did all the ministering, and I just sat there fidgeting. It was as if the congregation’s main role was to provide an audience for the preacher’s performance…He has called us all to be ministers of his grace. And any church setting that does not place a demand on that calling will either cripple us with an ennui and complacency or frustrate us by underutilizing us. That is why many people have fallen asleep in regard to their callings. They have become spectators – watching as other people live God’s dreams for them.” I know this observation is not true for every church, but I believe it is true for many.

I am reminded of Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth when he wrote, “What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor.14:21). In the early church, the members ministered to one another on Sundays as well as to God.  What they had heard or learned from the Lord during the week they shared. They fulfilled their roles as priests. It is in the moments that we offer a sacrifice of praise to God, pray with others, teach others, serve others, bless others, share Christ with them, prophecy over them, deliver them from evil, and touch them for healing that we truly feel like an extension of God and, as a result, draw closer to him and his heart.

If we are part of a church that restricts our function as a priest to a great extent, it is hard to draw near.  I do not advocate leaving our churches when they are imperfect or starting little house churches.  I have not seen good fruit from sealing ourselves off from the greater church.  But I would encourage you to become part of a small group somewhere that meets weekly in which everyone can bring a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a prophetic word, a healing prayer, a delivering command, and so forth and minister to one another as God intended.

It is in those settings that we often find our gifts and our passion.  It is in those settings that the presence of God is often thick.  It is in those settings that the Holy Spirit can have his way and not be bound by a pre-planned agenda that must be adhered to. In large churches with multiple services, some of that is unavoidable but we must find ways in which we can regularly fulfill our roles as priests of the most high God.  I want to encourage you to evaluate your spiritual life.  Are you living as a priest?  Are you passionate about your faith?  Are you impacting the lives of other people.  Or have you become a spectator by default.  If so…change it.  The Christian life is not meant to be lived from the stands but out on the field. Blessings in Him.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light .  1 Peter 2:9

Many of us find it hard to identify ourselves as priests. If we grew up in mainline evangelical churches such as the Baptists, Churches of Christ, Methodists, Bible Churches, Nazarenes, etc. there were pastors,  but they were not designated as priests.  That kind of distinction between “clergy” and “laity” was minimized.  Pastors did not wear distinct garb marking them as priests and churches where there were distinct roles and dress for priest were probably viewed as “unbiblical” in that regard.

If you grew up Catholic or Episcopalian, you would be familiar with the idea of priests but would still find it difficult to view yourself in that role.  In those churches, the priesthood was reserved for those who had been through rigorous training in seminaries and who knew all the nuances of sacred rituals and church procedures for everything.  These men and women were seen as the spiritually elite who had a unique call on their lives that few could aspire to.

And yet, the New Testament identifies all believers as priests in the kingdom of God. The priests of the Old Testament – Aaron and his sons – were chosen by God and anointed with a holy oil that consecrated them and set them apart for sacred service.  We too have been chosen by God and anointed with the Holy Spirit, who consecrates us and sets us apart for sacred service. The Old Testament priests served in the temple, but now we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Only the priests could come into the presence of God on behalf of the people with fear and trembling, but we can come before the throne of grace at anytime with confidence for the presence of God remains with us. We literally live in his presence because we carry his presence. In a sense, each of us is a living ark of the covenantcarrying his law and his presence within us. The priests were tasked with teaching God’s people the will and the ways of God by making the written word understandable to them.  We are commanded to teach one another but, more than that, we are to present the word of God to those who are not yet his people.

Aaron and his sons dressed in white linen garments that marked them as priests. The white linen symbolized purity. We are clothed with Christ (Gal.3:27) and sealed by the Spirit.  We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

All of this is to say that you possess great standing in the kingdom of God and are set apart from every person on earth who is not a follower of Jesus.  As priests we are authorized to offer up worship, to offer sacrifices, to make the word of God understandable to the world around us, and to represent men before God in our prayers.  Only we can enter the presence of God to do so.

In addition to that, priests were those designated to bestow blessings on men.  In the Book of Numbers we read, “TheLordsaid to Moses, Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: The Lordbless you and keep you; the Lordmake his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lordturn his face toward you and give you peace.’ ‘So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.’”

As the priests declared a blessing over Israel, God would release the blessing.  We are instructed throughout the New Testament to bless men and not curse them…even our enemies.  We are to bless because it is the Father’s heart to bless and we can bless because we are priests.  Because you are a priest, you may direct the blessings of heaven and God will honor your direction. He has given you authority to bless. Because God always desires to work in partnership with his people, he often waits on us to bless, before he releases the blessing. As priests, it is our privilege and responsibility to pray for people, to bless them, to give them an understanding of God’s word,and to administer the sacraments of the church – communion and baptism.  Because we are all priests, we all have the authority to do those things.

More than anything, as his priests, we are to faithfully represent God before men. In the same sense that ambassadors represent the King, priests represent the Father to men as well as men to the Father. We have a great high priest, Jesus Christ, who will live forever while we serve under him.  Our priesthood is not the Aaronic Priesthood of the Old Testament but, according to Hebrews, we serve under Jesus who is of the eternal order of Melchizedek, a much greater priesthood than that of Aaron  (see Heb. 7:1-21). We also will be priests forever serving with Jesus.  Remember that priests are anointed, consecrated, and set apart from the world for sacred service.  We should live as those who are always about our father’s business and as those who lives are dedicated to those things that are sacred.

Again, you have great standing in the Kingdom of Heaven if you can receive that by faith.  You are made in the image of God and are a child of the King, royalty in the courts of heaven, an ambassador of Christ, and a priest clothed in Christ who is anointed with the Holy Spirit and appointed to represent God to men and men to God. Because of who you are, Christ has given you power and authority over the enemy to do the works that he did and to destroy the works of the devil.

All this has come to us by grace and not by any efforts of our own.  Because of that we should live a life of thankfulness and humility.  We should walk with great confidence but not arrogance. We should be a source of blessing to all those around us and our goal should be to always be about the Father’s business because that is what we were born to do  when we were born again.

To know who you are and to receive that by faith is a great gift and is the key to living the abundant life that Jesus promised. There are many amazing things in heaven with your name on them.  Those things were purchased by the blood of Jesus and he wants you to receive each of those things as your inheritance, but they come to you only by faith – faith in who Jesus is and who you are in Jesus.  Ask the Lord to give you a revelation of who you are in Christ because to know that is about the most essential thing you can discover because you will only become who you believe you are.  Blessings in Him.

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

2 Corinthians 5:20

Part of our identity in Christ is that we represent him to the world. To represent a person is to re-present that individual by conveying what he or she would say in the same situation or by doing what he or she would do if physically present. Ambassadors and representatives do not pursue their personal agendas but present, in some official capacity, the will of the one they represent.

Jesus was the perfect representative of the Father. He said that anyone who had seen him had seen the Father. He said in other places that he only did what he saw the Father doing and only spoke what the Father was speaking to him.  That is perfect representation.  We are to be the same kind of representative and should want to be able to say, “If you have seen me, you have seen Jesus.”

It’s important to know that we are not just unofficial representatives like someone in a fan club, but are appointed to represent Jesus and to be his witnesses to a lost world. Jesus told his disciples, “’As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (Jn.20:21-22). They were given the Holy Spirit that they might represent him faithfully.  We are not just to tell people about Jesus as some historical figure, but are to say and do what he would do if he were physically present. Remember his declaration regarding those who follow him. “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (Jn.14:12-14). Notice that Jesus did not say that those who had faith in him could do what he had been doing, but that they woulddo what he had been doing. Not only would they duplicate what he had been doing but would do even greater things.  Jesus said that doing those things is a mark of faith.  Too much of the church today says that doing those things makes your faith suspect.

To do what he had been doing is again the idea of re-presenting him to the world.  When his followers preach the gospel, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons, and raise the dead they are re-presenting him because those things are done in his name.  He said that anyone who had faith would do those things because he was sending the Spirit. He insisted that the first apostles stay in Jerusalem until they received power from the Holy Spirit so that they could be effective witnesses on his behalf.  He gave power and authority to his followers then, and if we are to do the same things, he must give us power and authority now.

We are a people, then, who walk in the power and authority of heaven as Christ’s duly authorized representatives on the earth. Of course, we must have faith for that privilege and responsibility, but it is what every believer is called to be. As his children, others should be able to see the Father in us.  As ambassadors of Christ, others should clearly see him though our representation. As we carry out kingdom business, heaven has our back.  God will resource us as we faithfully represent his Son and Jesus is willing to do mighty, supernatural things through us because it brings glory to the Father.

So, as we build on our identity in Christ we should know that we are made in his image, that we are sons and daughter of the king and royalty in the spiritual realm.  We are also appointed and anointed to be his ambassadors or representatives.  Power and authority is available to those who will walk in their position through faith. Because of your position, you are already known in heaven.  Paul tells us that we are currently citizens of heaven and that we are currently seated with Christ in heavenly realms. That means we now have positions of authority in the courts of heaven because of our position in Christ.

How would it change us and change the church if we saw ourselves as God sees us and walked in the confident security of citizens of heaven, official representatives of the king, and children in the household of God?  Instead, Satan tries continually to convince us that we are weak, broken, insignificant, and barely tolerated by the Father.  He tries to convince us that we have no real value in the kingdom and are no different from those who are not in Christ other than being forgiven.

The truth is that we have been born again and are new creations in Christ. We are incredibly  different from the world with a destiny we can’t even imagine. The world is dark; we are light.  The world is dead; we possess eternal life.  The world is alienated from God; we are his children. The world is empty; we have the Holy Spirit living within us. The world resides in the dominion of darkness; we are citizens of heaven and reign now in the kingdom of his dear Son. Again, the first step in fulfilling our destiny is to accept by faith who we are in Christ and to begin to say what God says about us.  Why don’t you actively begin to do that?

We are continuing to consider who we are in Christ.  As I have said in previous segments, our identity is, perhaps, the single most important thing about us.  Who we believe we are and what we think about who we are touches every part of our life. Our Heavenly Father has gone to great lengths to reveal our identity in Christ, so it must be very important.

In the Gospel of John, the apostle begins with a great deal to say about Jesus. He identifies him as the Word of God and the one through whom and for whom all things were made. He speaks of his incarnation and then wraps up this amazing section of scripture by saying, “Yet, to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (Jn.1:13).

In this section, John reveals that the very reason Jesus came was so that we might become children of God.  In the beginning, God determined to make man and to give him a position of a son or daughter of God.  In Luke 3, we are given a genealogical record from Jesus back to Adam. He ends that genealogy by saying, “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (Lk. 3:38). Adam was not a son in the sense that Jesus was the Son,  as fully God and fully man, but was given the position of a son who yet knew no sin.  Satan’s temptation and
Adam’s moral failure in the Garden cost us our position as sons and daughters of the King, but through Jesus, that opportunity has been offered to us again.

Although mankind has been made in the image of God, only those who believe in Jesus have been given a position of sonshipor daughtershipagain.  This is not just a matter of legality.  It is true that we have been adopted, but something more has happened.  Each of us who have been declared sons and daughters in the household of God were born again.  Our very nature, our DNA,  has been changed by a work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul tells us that before we knew Christ, we were slaves to sin.  We had no ability to resist our fallen nature.  However, since being born again, we still have the capacity to sin but we also have the capacity to choose righteousness.  He says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6). Not only has our very nature been changed, but we have also been given a position of righteousness before our Father.  We are told, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God (2  Cor. 5:21).

The amazing thing about being born again as children of God is that we have a capacity for righteousness that the remainder of mankind does not have.  Not only that, but your heavenly  father relates to you on the basis of your sinless position in Christ rather than your inconsistent performance.  Too many of us think that God sees us as saved, but still rebellious sinners.  We may see him as an angry father punishing us for every stumble and every misdeed.  When life doesn’t go our way, we think God is withholding his blessing from us because of past deeds or our imperfection. We may see him as a father who only tolerates us and only grudgingly answers our prayers from time to time. Many of us take the template of our own earthly fathers who were broken, angry, controlling, and selfish and lay that template on a heavenly father who isn’t broken; who is totally unselfish; who loves us unconditionally; and does not hold our sins against us – love keeps no record of wrongs.  In fact, what he does see when he looks at us is the righteousness of Christ.

As children of the King, we carry the royal seal in the spiritual realm (Eph.1:13).  Because of that status we have authority, privilege, and responsibilities in the kingdom. First of all, we are to represent our Father well and live in a way that honors his name. As children of the king, we are to be courageous, confident but not arrogant, and kind.  We are to have integrity in everything we do and should be marked by faithfulness since our father is faithful.  We are also to be about our Father’s business of making disciples and destroying the works of the devil.

Secondly, we have the resources of heaven to meet our personal needs and to meet the challenge of those things we are involved in that are kingdom business…missions, caring for the poor, ministry to the hurting,  redeeming culture, and so forth. As children of the king, we should jettison any since of being an orphan and have a mindset that there will always be enough.  When Jesus fed the 5000, his reference point was the resources of heaven because he was a child in the household of God.  The apostles looked at their own resources and concluded there was no way to feed the crowd. Jesus gave thanks for what he could access in heaven and fed everyone with twelve full baskets left over. Jesus did that to demonstrate that there is no shortage in heaven and that the king will provide for every good work of his children.

As children of God we are promised provision, protection, and victory in our battles.  We always have the ear of our Father. We have angels to assist us.  We have the direction of the Holy Spirit and the same power that raised Jesus from the dead working in us. We are loved, forgiven, provided for, anointed, and given a great destiny in Christ.  The only thing that limits us is a lack of faith that these things are true for us.

When I first became a Christian, I knew that God loved his children.  However, I understood  that as a generalized statement in which God loved “all his children” as a class, but not as individuals.  I still felt like just a face in the crowd.  And yet that is not the witness of scripture. Because his Spirit lives in us, he knows us each by name.  He knows our every need and even knows the number of hairs on our heads. We are not just a bunch of kids that he hardly knows but each has a special relationship with him.  The writer of Hebrews tells us, “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven” (Heb.12:22-23).  The writer is not talking about a future tense for us, but present tense. In the spiritual realm, we already belong and are already present. Interestingly, the phrase “church of the firstborn” is a plural, meaningfirstborn ones.  The idea is that each of us is loved by God as if we were his firstborn.  Paul says, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (Rom.8:13). In other words, we have tremendous standing in the courts of heaven and in the heart of our father.

As believers, we need to know who we are, how favored we are in heaven, and how much is available to us for our personal needs and as we conduct kingdom business. Too many of us still see ourselves as orphans, weak, broken and insignificant. We expect little and dare little.  That is not God’s will for his children. We must begin to say what God says about us and speak that over one another. One of Satan’s great strategies is to keep us from knowing who we truly are in Christ, because if we ever grasp it, the kingdom of darkness is done.