Rick Warren - Finding Your True Identity in God's Family

Last week we looked at the first of the five

callings that God has for your life. In this series

on live your calling, that God has called you to

be loved before you do anything else. You don't do

anything for God. You just let God love you. You

are called to be loved. This week we look at

the second calling of life, and it is this. You

have been called to not just be loved, You've been

called to belong. To belong to God's Church, which is

going to go on and on forever in eternity. Now

the Bible says this Hebrews Chapter C, Verse ten. God

is the one who made all things, and all things

are for his glory. He wanted to have many children

share in his glory. God created the entire universe because

he wanted a family. And God doesn't want his children

to be orphans. He doesn't want his children to be

street kids. He puts them in the family, and that

family is called the Church. Now I want you to

write this down. The second purpose of my life is

that God formed me for his family. God formed me

for his family. If God hadn't wanted a family, you

wouldn't exist. But God made you because He loves you

and He wants you to love him back, and he

wants you to be a part of his family. You

were formed for God's family. This has been his plan

from the very beginning of time. Ephesians one says this,

His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into

his own family by bringing this to himself through Jesus Christ.

So the first purpose of God for my life is

that I am I beloved by Him. But the second

purpose of my life is that I belong to Him,

and that I belong to his family. Now, God's family,

write this down, is called the Church. That's what God

called his family. He calls his family the Church, the

Church of God, the Church of Jesus Christ. One Timothy

chapter three says this, I'm writing to you so that

you will know how to live in the family of God.

Paul's writing in Timothy says, I want you, guys to

know how to live in the family of God. That

family is the Church circle that that family is the Church.

That family is the Church of the Living God, the

support and foundation of the Truth. So God formed me

for his family. His family is called the Church. And

the third thing I want you to get is that

I'm called to belong to that family. I'm called to

belong to his church, and the Bible says this in

Ephesians two nineteen. So now you are no longer visitors

or strangers. Now you are citizens together with God's holy people,

and you belong to God's family. Just underline that, start

circleing you belong to God's family. That is the second

calling or purpose or reason or mission of your life.

First to know God, who loves you dearly, but second

is to be a part of His family. And that

family is called the church. Romans one six says you

are among those who have been called to belong to

Jesus Christ. The word church literally means the group of

people who are called by God, the called out ecclesia

called by God. Christianity is based on God's word, and

God's word says the church is the called out. In

other words, church is an event. It isn't a program,

It isn't a building. If I ask most people what

do you think of church? Is they think of a

building or they think if it's something you go to.

I'm going to church, not something you go to. Church

is something you belong to. It is not an event

and it's not a location. Church is a relationship. Now

we worship here, we have a place here, but this

is not the church is the people of God.

It's our relationship.

What I want to do this weekend is share with

you the five benefits of belonging. Because God designed his family,

the church, to meet your five deepest needs. In fact,

the church is the only thing that can meet your

five deepest needs. In the Bible, the church is often

referred to by a different metaphor. The church is called

a family, the church is called a temple, the church

is called a body, the church is called a flock,

and the church is called a garden. Each one of

these have profound implications for your life. And if you

understand the five meanings of these five metaphors, you will

understand how the church was designed. God's family was designed

to meet your deepest needs in life.

Now let's get into this.

The first metaphor that the Bible describes the church as

is one we all are familiar with, and it is

this a family. It is a family, and in a

healthy family, one of the benefits of a healthy family

is you're taught who you are, You learn your identity.

So the first thing I want you to write down

is that in God's family, the first benefit is I

learn my true identity.

You're not going to learn it from the world.

You're not going to learn it from your parents, You're

not going to learn it from your peers or anybody else.

Your true identity is found in relationship to God's family. Now,

we're all concerned about our identity. In fact, we do

this by the kind of clothes we wear. Have you

noticed that people like to wear clothes that have brands

on them or have logos on them.

But the truth is.

Most of your identity comes from your relationships, for good

or bad. And if you have good relationships, you have

a good identity. If you have bad relationships, your identity

is much more difficult. See I am a grandson, I'm

a son, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a grandfather.

I'm a team member, I'm a small group member, I'm

a pastor, I'm an employer. All of these are relationships

that define who I am. You know who you are

in relationship to other people. Now what that means is

if my connections or my relationships get broken, or my

connections or relationships are poor, then I have a hard

time of knowing who I really am. Anybody who's gone

through a divorce knows. After divorce, you go, now, who

am I? Because your relationship was tied to that person,

Or somebody who's been married to someone for a long

time and that loved one that spouse dies. It's very common,

very natural, and normal people go now, who am I?

What's my place? What's my role? Or if you get

laid off and your identity has been tied to your work,

you're going, who am I?

What's my identity?

And so our identity is actually tied to our relationships. Now,

the problem with this is a lot of us don't

have very good relationships growing up. And some of you

would say, you know, Rick, my family was dysfunctional, my

family was broken, my family was really nonexistent, So how

do I know who I am? Well, here's the good news. Ephesians,

chapter two, verse nineteen. You are members of God's very

own family, and you belong in God's household with every

other Christian. Now doesn't matter what other families you've had.

Your most important family is God's family. Why, because that's

the permanent one. It's gonna last, it's gonna last forever. Actually,

your physical family was just a channel to get you

into God's family. God used your parents, whether they were

good parents, bad parents, or indifferent parents, or maybe you

never ethe knew him. He used them to bring you

into the world. But his real goal was not to

keep you in that family, but to put you into

His family. You see, I hate to say this to you,

maybe a shock to you, but your spiritual family is

actually more important than your physical family because no physical

family lasts. People grow up, they move away, people get divorced,

people die. No physical family lasts. We know that, But

your spiritual family is gonna last forever and ever and

ever and ever and ever, so it's actually more important.

In fact, the Bible says God created the entire universe

for his spiritual family, the church. When you get your

identity from that, then you get a long term identity.

See.

The problem is we go out trying to look for

identity and things that aren't going to last, and the

world judges your identity on all the external stuff, not

the internal. The world says to you, you're short, you

have black hair, you are of Asian descent, or European

or African American or Latin America or whatever. You have

this kind of thing, and this is your political party,

and this is your job, and you are an American,

and those are all interesting identifiers, but none of them

are going to last. Yes, I am an American, but

there's something more important than that. I'm a member of

the family of God. America isn't going to last. No

kingdom lasts one thousand years or two thousand years or

ten thousand years. Where's the hit Dyed Empire, Where's the

Assyrian Empire? They don't last. So if you want your

identity to last, you put into something that's never going

to change. And the Bible says God's family, the Church,

is going to go on for all of eternity, because

it's why God made the universe. What matters most is

your spiritual identity. Hebrews chapter two, verse eleven says this

Jesus and the people he makes holy all belong to

the same family. So this is why he, Jesus isn't

ashamed to call them his.

Brothers and sisters.

Did you know that Jesus calls you his sister, That

Jesus calls you his brother. That's a pretty amazing thing.

And it says he isn't ashamed to call you his

brother or sister. Have you ever had a brother or

sister you are ashamed of?

Don't answer. You may have, you may have, But Jesus.

Isn't ashamed to call you his brother's sister, no matter

how messed up your life.

Is why because you're in the family.

You see, this is one of the great things about

being in the family of God, is that your sin

doesn't define you anymore. Yes, you sin, but it's not

your defining characteristic.

Let me explain it this way.

It's the difference between Alcoholics Anonymous and Celebrate Recovery. Celebrate Recovery,

of course, was started at Saddleback Church. Alcoholics Anonymous is

a good program, it's very good program, but I think

Celebrate Recovers a whole lot better for a number reason.

It's Christ centered. But one of the reasons is we

say and celebrate recovery. Your sin does not define you.

Your sin is not your identity. Here's the difference. If

you were to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, you

would stand up and you'd say hi, my name is Rick,

and I'm an alcoholic, and you would be saying that

the rest of your life you're letting your sin define you.

At saddleback and celebrate recovery. People stand up and say, Hi,

my name is Rick. I'm a child of God who

struggles with alcohol.

See the difference. Big difference.

His difference was saying saying you know, I struggle with

lying or saying I'm a liar. Big difference. Your identity

is not your sin. Does that make sense? That's why

Jesus is not ashamed of you to call you a

brother's sister, because once you're in the.

Family, you're in the family.

You may be a little weird, but you're in the family,

and you may have some sin in your life, but

you're in the family, and brothers stick up for brothers

and sisters, and the Bible says Jesus is.

Not ashamed of you.

By belonging to God's family, you will learn your true identity.

Hey, would you like to go deeper with pastor Rick

to discover God's purpose in your life? Well now you

can with the video based study kit called What on

Earth Am I here for? This life changing study is

taught by Rick and includes a workbook and six video sessions.

As you go through these lessons, you'll embark on a

journey of discovery to answer life's most fundamental question, what

on earth am I here for? You'll learn that it's

only in God that we discover our origin, our identity,

our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny.

Every other path.

Leads to a dead end. This resource is packed with

biblically centered principles and is perfect for personal or small

group study. So be sure to request this study kit

when you give a gift to Daily Hope to help

share the hope of Jesus with a hurting world. We'll

send it to you today as our way of saying thanks.

Now.

A lot of families to advertise their identity. They have

a symbol, or they have a family. Scottish families have

a plaid that the finds our families, and a lot

of groups will have some.

Kind of mark.

I mean, gangs will often get a similar tattoo. So

when you have a certain tattoo, then you know you're

part of that gang. Do you know what is the

mark the symbol of being in God's family? You know

what it is. It's baptism. Being baptized is the public

symbol that says I'm not ashamed to say I'm a

part of the family. I'm advertising in the world. I

don't understand it all, but I'm in. If you haven't

been baptized, you need to be baptized. That's the symbol

that says I'm in the family. It's coming out of

the closet. It's your public proclamation, it's your coming out party,

and you need to be baptized. The Bible says this

in Acts chapter two. Those who believed what Peter had

said were baptized and added to the church about three thousand,

about three thousand people that day.

Those day of kind of costs.

So you believe, then you get baptized, then you get

added to the church. Now that's the first metaphor. I'm

in a family, and my family helps me understand my

true identity. That's why a lot of people go back

and trace their genealogies to discover their true identity. Now

there's a second metaphor that God uses to describe the church,

and he says the church is like a temple.

It's like a temple.

Another words, it's like a building that is erected for

God's glory. It's a building where God's presence shows up,

where God has loved, where God is honored and worship

a temple. And the Bible says in one Corinthians three sixteen.

Here on the screen, don't you realize that all of

you together are the temple of God, and His spirit

lives in you. He's talking to the church, you know.

I remember when we have been building buildings here on

the Lake Forest campus over many years, and as each

ound of them is built, I'll walk through them as

they're getting built, and I'll see all of the carpenters

and the construction workers building all things. And I've noticed

that it takes thousands of different pieces to build a building.

But the most important thing is that the pieces have

to fit together. If you have a beam that's a

half an inch short, it doesn't hold up the roof,

And if you have a pipe that's one inch too long,

it doesn't make a connection. And if you don't make

the connections, then you don't have a building. A building

cannot stand on its own power unless it has connections,

unless the things fit together. I've also noticed that when

you go through a construction site, there's always a lot

of other stuff laying around on the ground, spare parts,

there's spare pieces of wood that haven't been used, or

spare pieces of pipe. And what I've noticed is that

you can be a pipe or a piece of wood

in a building, but not necessarily belong to the building.

You don't belong to the building until you're connected to it.

That's the way some of you are. You're in saddleback family,

but you don't belong to saddle back family because you've

never taken the time to get connected, to make a

commitment to say, I want to be belong here. I

want this to be I want to be more than

a tender. I want to be a member. I want

to belong I want to be connected. I don't want

to just be a spectator. I want to be a participator,

and I want to be connected. Now, why did God

choose a temple as one of the illustrations of what

it's like to be in his family in the church,

Because in a building, all of the connected parts support

each other. Now, this is the second benefit that you

get in being a part of the family of God

in God's temple. I'm supported by others. I'm not out

there on my own. I'm not a lone ranger. I'm

not there by myself in a strong structure of a building,

we support and we hold each other up. In a building,

all connected parts hold each other together. And you know what,

there's going to be some times in your life when

you need other people to hold you together. You're going

to need them to hold you together because you're falling apart.

And if you're not in the building of God, the

Temple of God, the Family of God, the Church of God,

and you're not connected, you're disconnected from the Temple of God,

nothing's going to hold you together, and you're going to

fall apart. The Bible says in Ephesians two, in Christ,

the whole body, the whole building, is joined together and

rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and

in Him Jesus, You too are being built together to

become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

So together we all together form the Family of God,

and we form the Temple of God.

What is a temple God? Well? In a building?

A disconnected frame has no support, it has no stability,

and you need it. This is the second great need

in your life. You need identity and you need stability.

You need to be a part of a family to

understand your identity, and you need to be a part

of God's temple to get the stability where we support

and we connect it to each other. You weren't meant

to go through life disconnected.

You know.

This week and my grandkids came over and we were

playing in the garage, playing legos because I got one

of the largest collections of legos in southern California, and

all my grandkids they like to play legos. You know,

there's only one purpose for legos. They're designed to connect.

If you don't connect the lego, it's worthless. Now, if

you connect legos together, you can build all kinds of

really cool stuff. But if you never connect them to

each other, they're worthless. It just a pile up, big mess,

is what it is. You are God's lego. If you're

a believer in Christ, you're God's lego, and you were

designed for connection, and you were meant to be not

just in the family of God, but in the Temple

of God, in the building of God, where we connect

to each other. Romans one twelve says it like this,

I want us to help each other with the faith

we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith

will help you. This is what we call the mutuality

of the body, of the building of the family.

And why is this important?

Why is it important for me to have support, and

why is it important for me to have stability in life?

Because the number one epidemic in our society today, in

my opinion, is not the financial crisis. The biggest epidemic

in our society is loneliness. As somebody who talks to

hundreds and even thousands of people, a lot of lonely

people in this world, and they feel alone and they

feel disconnected. It's very interesting. We have more technology for

connection than ever in history, and yet people feel more disconnected,

particularly teenagers.

And particularly young adults.

Now, the third description of the church in scripture is

that of a body. And you've heard this one before.

The Bible calls the church the body of Christ. Look

on the screen at this verse. The Bible says in

one Corinthians twelve twenty seven. Now you talking about Christians,

you are the body of Christ, and each one of

you is a part of it.

Now what is this illustration? This metaphor mean?

Well, we're different parts, but we're all connected and together

we complete the body, and we accomplish together what we could.

Never do on our own.

And when we do that, all of a sudden we

find our place, We find our spot, we find our niche,

we find now how we matter, We find our unique shape,

our our talents. And you're not going to find this

anywhere else except in the church, where you find how

to use your spiritual gifts, the gifts that God has

given you. And so the third benefit of belonging to

a church family is this. In Christ's body, I discover

my unique value. I discover my unique value. This is

your capacity. First I learn my identity in God's family,

and I get stability in God's temple. But I learn

my capacity in Christ's body. I discover my unique value.

Romans chapter twelve, four and five says this, Just as

there are many parts to our bodies, so it is

with Christ's body. We are all parts of it, and

it takes every one of us to make it complete,

for we each have different ways to do. So we

belong to each other, and each of us needs all

the others. Now, that's a very important passage. It says

four or five things. At first, it says that the

body of Christ, the Church is made up of many parts,

we're all different. You look around here, nobody's like you,

nobody looks like you, nobody smells like you. We're all different.

We're all God designed us that way. God loves variety.

Can you imagine if God had just said, let's only

make three kinds of human beings. God made us all different,

and we're all many parts. And notice it says everybody's needed.

Look at that verse, we're all needed to make the

body complete. Nobody can say, well, I'm not important, No,

you're needed. You know, if you have a jigsaw puzzle

and one piece is missing, what's the part you miss?

The one that's missing, the one piece that's missing.

So what you notice? First? It says we all have

a work to do.

We all have different roles, different ministries, And if all

of the parts did the same thing, it'd be nonsense.

Like if every part in your body was ear it'd

be kind of silly. So we all have different roles

to play and different things to do, but we belong

to each other. Notice it says there, so we belong

to each other. Underline or circle that I was going

to have you turn to the person next to you

and say you belong to me.

But that might result in a marriage proposal. So we belong.

But it's true if you're in the family of God,

if you're in the body of Christ, if you're in

the Temple of God, we belong to each other. We

don't just belong to God. We belong to each other.

And it says each of us needs all the others.

In other words, what good is an eyeball if it's

detached from the body?

Nothing?

An eyeball out here on its own is worthless. It

can't see anything. It can only see as it is

attached to the body. What good is an ear if

your ear is detached and sitting out over there, no,

none at all, has no value at all. It can't

hear unless it's attached to the body. What good is

your hand if it's cut off and put on the show?

It just withers and dies. You cannot be what God

made you to be without a church family, without being

connected to Christ's body, you can't do it. You can't

fulfill your purpose in life on your own. You have

to be connected. You have to belong, You have to

be an association. You have to be attached to some

local body of Christ.

Hey, would you like to go deeper with Pastor Rick

to discover God's purpose in your life. Well now you

can with the video based study kit called What on

Earth Am I here For? This life changing study is

taught by Rick and includes a workbook and six video sessions.

As you go through.

These lessons, you'll embark on a journey of discovery to

answer life's most fundamental question, what on Earth am I

here for? You'll learn that it's only in God that

we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose,

our significance, and our destiny.

Every other path.

Leads to a dead end. This resource is packed with

biblically centered principles and is perfect for personal or small

group study. So be sure to request this study kit

when you give a gift to Daily Hope to help

share the hope of Jesus with a hurting world. We'll

send it to you today as our way of saying thanks.