THE WATERFALL JOURNEY
EPISODE 8. - LIVING IN THE WATERFALL Part 3 - IDENTITY
JESUS KNEW WHO HE WAS .
If he’d been confused or uncertain, He would not have made the impact He did.
His authority came from knowing who He was
Whose He was and what He was here to do.
If we are going to be His disciples, we need
to have the same certainty, in who we are created to be.
SO WHO AM I?
Our certainty in who we are, is hindered because we are out of our natural habitat. Adam knew who He was.
He lived in the absolute certainty of the drenching,
infilling, Waterfall of The Father’s love.
He was home, secure and all His needs for love and belonging,
value and worth, meaning and purpose were met in that relationship.
Initially, its all about love and belonging.
In the fallen world we do not know who we are
because we know, we were created to be 100% loved
but life does not deliver this.
When our love tanks are not full to overflowing
we fill them up with negative feelings driven
by our beliefs, as to why this should be.
Our question is ‘What is wrong with me?’
And we find plenty of answers.
We lose ourselves, and carry shame and unworthiness
so we don’t think the words we hear are for us.
We learn not to believe, because in our estimation
it could not mean us, because we are not worthy.
We discount our right to the truths of the Bible.
We’ll believe we are lacking because we’re not good enough,
not loveable or less than others.
These beliefs undermine our sense of our true identity
that is what God, our creator says about us.
The Waterfall Journey leads us through God’s transformation, which we will address in subsequent episodes.
It strips away the idols in our bucket down the well and
brings us back to the Christ-like certainty, of who we are in God.
HOW CAN WE BE AWARE OF OUR IDOLS, those things we have depended upon for our sense of identity?
A GOOD EXERCISE IS TO ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS ……..
1. Where do I spend my time?
2. Were do I spend my money?
3. Where do I get my satisfaction from?
4. What is always on my mind?
The answers will help you see what you rely on, to give you a sense
of who you are and if you are drawing from your bucket
what you should be drawing from God.
At one stage of my life I put my job in place of God
I defined myself according to how the day went.
On a good day I was ok, worthwhile, I was someone, I was significant:
on a bad day I was hopeless, a failure, less than everyone else, worthless.
Then I had to try harder not to fail and life became driven
by more and more effort, until I had a breakdown.
Often as TWFJ leads to healing a search has to be made to find the person we were created to be. With our love tanks full, we need to find our true selves. Now I can grow and flourish into the unique shape God designed me to be.
The gifts and the skills and the person can blossom .
WHAT IS GOD’S PERSPECTIVE OF YOU – YOUR IDENTITY?
The most significant change comes by recognizing that your identity is in what God says about you;
it is not in what you have believed about yourself
or what the world says about you.
SO WHAT DOES GOD SAY ABOUT YOU?
Well HE SAYS He loves you and you belong to Him. He chose you.
You are not a mistake. He created you uniquely to be who you are.
At this moment you may be unaware of how amazing you are because you are too wounded to see your own beauty, yet that does not negate what God says.
It is a good habit to begin to read the Word and to apply it to yourself.
God cannot lie; What is in the Bible is THE TRUTH, so choose to believe. This is a decision you make and has nothing to do with the way
you feel about yourself.
WHERE TO START???
Our beginning to learn the truth of who we are
is the first stage of the renewing of our minds,
turning from the distortions of worldly thinking and
back to the health of Godly thinking.
And we know from God’s Word that ‘the renewing of our minds sets us free.’
The Father’s love letter is made up of verses from the Bible
it is profound. You can find the full text on fathersloveletter.com this is an extract … The Father is speaking
Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled.
His death was the ultimate expression of my love for you.
I gave up everything I loved that I might gain your love.
If you receive the gift of my son Jesus, you receive me.
WE have to be careful - If I say, “Well it’s true for you but The Father cannot mean that about me. I’m not good enough.”
in effect I am then saying, that God is a liar,
that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was not good enough for me
and the Bible needs to be edited on the basis of my unworthiness.
This is what rebellion looks like
We need to choose to believe what the Word says is true, even about us. I used to believe I was unloveable.
How different life became when I chose to believe that I am a child of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, a daughter of the king
welcome in the throne room, forgiven, accepted and loved.
The years of hanging my head in shame were gone.
Now it is possible to live out of my God-given identity.
There are 2 strands
Firstly, like the Lost son returning to the Father
when He found all that the Father had was His
because He was an heir, so with us.
My Father is my protector and source, the fatted calf is mine.
Secondly, I am His and He will grow me to be all he predestined for me to be. There is Position and power, responsibility and authority to be understood, as the blessings and obligations of being part of the family of the King.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
YOU ARE VALUED AND HAVE WORTH
The immediate way Adam perceived His worth
was that God wanted to spend time with him, trusted him and involved him.
God had created the wonderful place of Eden
not only to sustain life but to delight the senses.
When Adam had need of a partner
it was God who took pleasure in bringing Eve.
He is the God of the ‘immeasurably more’ and
this WF journey is so ‘ that we may be filled again
to the measure of all the fullness of God.’
Your worth is measured by what God says about you.
We are created to live in the presence of the Father
to know intimately Jesus and the Holy Spirit,
in a robust, love-inspired relationship with our God.
God’s whole being is poured out to elevate us,
from the crushed and bruised shells of the fallen world,
to live back again, in mutual trust and fellowship with the living God.
Do you know that if there were scales in front of the Father now and you were on one side and Jesus,
His beloved Son was on the other, THEY WOULD BALANCE because in the Father’s eyes, you have the same value as Jesus Christ?
If not, the Cross would not have saved us.
You can only redeem a treasure by exchanging it
with something of the EQUAL value.
We are a ‘chosen people, God’s special possession’.
We belong to the family of the Living God,
we are the sons and daughters of the King.
How differently do we experience life when we believe these truths.
As a born again Christian of some years
I used to slink into rooms where people gathered,
embarrassed at who I was because I was still in need of inner healing.
I believed I was less than everyone else.
Hoping no-one would find out, my body language betrayed me to all-comers. Therefore, I did not make meaning-full connections with others and
would leave feeling even more, that I was worthless,
wearing the mantle of victimhood and hopelessness.
How different now ……… I know I am loved by my Father in heaven.
I enter a room now, not in neediness
but as the daughter of the King, bought at a price by Jesus.
I can stand before a crowd because I can stand before my Father.
I am under His protection, I am led by the Holy Spirit.
I can relax and see with his eyes.
He can use me for Kingdom purposes because I am available.
This is not arrogance. Neil Anderson said “ Humility is confidence properly placed.”
I know the price paid for my healing and freedom
and I stand quietly, with a grateful heart until He calls me to action.
This leads to satisfying connections,
because it is His waterfall of love pouring through me,
that will connect others back through Jesus to the Father.
YOU ARE WHO GOD SAYS YOU ARE.
YOUR LIFE HAS MEANING and PURPOSE
We are not of this world we serve God John 15:19
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.
As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
As you live in the Waterfall
because you have aligned yourself to the will of God,
there is not a minute of the day when you are not serving His purposes.
God’s plan is for Jesus to return and for His church to be both His bride, pure and holy and His army, fit for battle.
He is preparing you for the role that only you can play in this story.
Thus the Waterfall Journey has Kingdom significance for each of us.
God will grow us up the ranks of the army.
Initially a Private is given simple orders to obey,
as he proves trustworthy and understands more he is given more responsibility. Officers have proved trustworthy and are given more insights into the plans,
of their General.
In the jig saw that is the Kingdom of heaven you are a unique piece only you can do what God has ordained for you to do,
for the puzzle to be completed.
God does not want us to be doing good things
but to be doing the right thing, at the right time for His master plan.
Remember in the Waterfall going forward is a partnership;
being willing and teachable you will achieve your God-given destiny .
As we follow Him, He will lead us to be everything He designed us to do and be.
This week’s challenge is to find verses in the Bible that speak to you about who God says you are. Post them round the house. Learn them by heart, eat them so they nourish you and choose to believe God’s perspective of who you are.
