Knowing who you are in Christ is more than half the battle of overcoming the world and the attacks and temptations of the enemy. We subconsciously act out of who we think we are. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7, KJV). These “core beliefs” about ourselves go deep. They have been with us so long they project what we believe to be reality, although they are lies from the enemy. If we think we are unworthy of love, defective, and incompetent, due to early experiences of rejection or abandonment, an expectation of rejection and disappointment will flavor our life and affect every decisions. If we have been told we are better than other people and more deserving, we will approach life with arrogance and an expectation of entitlement. I have met a few of those individuals, but most of us are in the other category.
If we were rejected, criticized, neglected or abandoned as children, then we had no father or had a father who was wounded and broken himself. He had no vision for loving, encouraging or shaping a child into a healthy, confident individual. As we “learned” we were of little significance to our father, we also became convinced that fathers are angry, indifferent, distant, and rarely keep promises. Many of us have been afflicted by an orphan spirit that whispers we are still on our own and cannot trust other people to provide, protect, or care for us. If we do experience care and comfort from someone, our core beliefs generate an expectation that the care and comfort we are receiving will still be withdrawn or taken away some day.
The trap is our tendancy to take the template we have of our earthly father and project it onto our heavenly Father. When we do so, we find ourselves serving a God that we view as angry, unreliable, rejecting, critical, and so forth. In our hearts, we fear his love is conditional and we cannot meet his conditions. The good news that the blood of Christ washes away our sin doesn’t seem to penetrate our core beliefs, so we continue to anticipate rejection even by God. We may serve him out of fear or duty, but not out of love. We pray with little faith and anticipate disappointment in our relationship with him. We also take our view of ourselves as defective and unworthy of love into the relationship and Satan continually whispers that a holy, perfect God will not love us because of our failure to measure up to his standards.
But the Biblical view is God is love. He has always known our weaknesses and our failings but has pursued us none the less. The Psalmist declares, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sinsdeserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:8-14).
Our view of God must match the revelation of who God is. He is holy and just, but also kind and compassionate. He is the perfect Father who loves unconditionally but who also disciplines us when we need it as an expression of love. As a father, he has loved us before we loved him. He knows we are weak and that we will stumble. Yet he called us to be his sons and daughters in his foreknowledge, when he already knew of our sins, our selfishness, our “mess-ups,” and even our moments of rebellion before we were ever created. He has pursued us, forgiven us, ben patient, and has been working to mature and guide us since the day we were born.
We are his adopted children who are co-heirs with Christ, made righteous by his blood, sealed by his Holy Spirit, and loved more than we can know. We will not be perfect and he does not demand that. We, like children, will fall short on many occasions bur he will never leave us nor forsake us. Like any father, he will provide what we need and forgive us on many occasions.
What he wants from us is faith that he is good, merciful, loving and kind. He is not an earthly father who gets up in a different mood each day or who catalogues our failings so he can remind us daily of how disappointed he is in us. He is the God who remembers our sins no more. He is a father who is preparing an unimaginable place for us and who will come and take us to be where he is. We are his beloved children. We are royalty in the household of God – kings and priests. He sings over us and longs for us to be in his presence. He is more than willing to answer prayers that will bless us in the long run and will rejoice when we return…even after being prodigals. He wants the best for us and wants us to trust his forgiveness and mercy when we fail. We are his children.
A primary key to victory over the enemy is spending intentional time meditating on God as your loving father and you as his child. Satan spends a great deal of time trying to convince us that we must be perfect in order to be loved and blessed by God and that God is like earthly fathers who sometimes keep promises and sometimes don’t. He whispers God is constantly disappointed with us, often angry, and when angry stops caring for us. When we listen to those lies we no longer trust in his provision, his protection, and his favor. We feel like insecure orphans who must control the world around us and forage for ourselves. We live with anxiety and distrust and never fully experience abundant life.
Paul prayed that God would give the Ephesians a “spirit of wisdom and revelation that they might know him better and that he would open the eyes of their heart so that they might know the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people and the power he is willing to wield on their behalf (Eph. 1:17-19). We actually need a revelation of who our Father is and who we are to plant that truth in our hearts. I would encourage you to pray that same prayer every day. Knowing who God is and who you are as his son or daughter at a heart levelchanges everything.