Remember Who You Are

Lord Jesus, we thank you so much, Lord, for speaking a better word over each and every one of our lives.

Lord, we thank you that we can sing and we can celebrate even in the midst of uh chaotic times, Lord, that we know that you are a cornerstone, Lord, that you alone are speaking a better word over each and every one of us, Lord.

And I pray now that as we just open up your word, Lord, that you would give us a word this morning.

Lord, we don't need to hear from a person.

We need to hear from you.

And so, Lord, I pray that as we open up your word, that you would speak to not just the people in this room, but you would speak to every single person that's watching this, and that you would uh do a work in their lives through what we're talking about this morning.

And so, Lord, be with us now.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Awesome.

Well, we're continuing a series uh called Remember.

And uh last week we looked at uh remembering God's faithfulness.

Russ did a fantastic job uh talking about remembering God's faithfulness and the story of Joshua and the memorial stones.

And today I want us to kind of uh look at really something so significant that it's important for us to get this down because if we don't get this down, then it has the chance and it has the tendency to totally mess up our lives and not get us to the places that God wants us ultimately to become.

And so what we're gonna talk about this morning is something that we oftentimes forget.

Now, forgetting things is something that I do very often.

I'm bad about forgetting things, especially uh with multitasking and all the stuff that's going on around me.

I can fall short of remembering to do everything.

I'm bad about getting text messages.

Um, I see them on my watch, I'll look at my watch, see them, put it to the side, and I won't respond until a couple days later it will dawn on me that I have not responded to people on text.

So if you're watching this and I haven't responded to you on text, that's the reason.

It's not because I don't like you, I promise.

Um I'm bad about losing my keys, um, forgetting where I put my keys.

I still think that my wife and the kids hide them from me just because uh I know I put them in one place and they never end up being there.

Um and so I'm bad about forgetting things.

And we all at times can forget different things in our lives.

Maybe it's uh, you know, maybe you forget a birthday or an anniversary, and that can cause some relational issues for sure.

Maybe you forget about taking your trash to the street, or maybe a grocery item that you meant to get at the grocery store but you forgot to get, or maybe it's medication.

Uh, maybe you forgot to take your B12 and you just uh totally forgot to take your medication.

Maybe in this uh light of the coronavirus and the spread, maybe you forgot that you can't shake people's hands and you just naturally reached out to shake someone's hands.

Well, we we can forget a number of things, but those things are gonna have minimal consequences.

That they aren't going to totally change the direction and the course of our lives if we forget to take the trash out to the street.

It might cause us some pain, it might cause us some uh wasted time, but it's not gonna cause the direction of our lives to be missed.

But what we're gonna talk about this morning is if we don't get this right, and if we don't understand what we're gonna talk about this morning, then we will never, ever be able to fulfill the purposes that God has for yours and for my life.

And what we're talking about this morning is ultimately remembering who we are in Christ.

The remembering our identity in Christ.

And this is something that we oftentimes forget.

We forget who we are in Christ.

And we begin to define our lives based on a number of different things.

Maybe it might be the political party you affiliate with.

Uh, maybe it's uh what job you have.

That's the first thing that men typically ask each other.

They shake their hands and they say, What do you do for a living?

Um maybe it's your family.

That's what women typically define themselves by, by their family or their kids.

Uh maybe it's uh some accomplishment or education that you've achieved.

Well, it can be a number of different things.

And we can fall into the trap of defining our lives by those things.

But here's the other reality to it.

We have an enemy, and the enemy is actively trying to get us to miss out on the God-shaped identity that we should have.

And so we have an enemy that's coming against us, and he's not only telling us that we should define our lives by the things I just talked about, but he's also talking about how we should define our lives on our shame and on guilt and on condemnation.

He wants us to buy into this idea that our lives should be full of fear and anxiety and panic and depression, that that's what the enemy wants us to define our lives by.

He's actively trying to get us to destroy ourselves in the process of identifying ourselves in all the wrong areas of life.

And so it's so important for us, especially in the times that we find ourselves in, to remember who we are in Christ.

And so that's what we're gonna talk about this morning.

And it's such a huge topic, and it's something that we've all got to wrap our minds around because again, the enemy wants to subversively, he wants to push this other thoughts into our heads.

He wants to change our thoughts and change our minds to get us to believe something that's so not true.

And so we've got to wrap our minds around the truth of God's word this morning.

So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 8 is probably one of the greatest chapters that was ever pinned in Scripture.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Um, Paul is writing here to the church in Rome, and he's writing to a church that he's never met.

He's never met these people.

He's writing this letter to them.

They're facing persecution, and he's writing this letter, and he's really laying out a theological kind of doctrine here.

He's laying out kind of the basis and the foundation of the faith.

And he's talking about sin and how sin's corrupted everything, that we've all fallen short of God's standard.

But then at the same time, he's talking about the death and the resurrection of Jesus and how we can have life through Jesus and who he is.

And then he gets to Romans 8, and Romans 8 is the pinnacle, it's the it's the it's the climax of the chapter.

It is where everything kind of hinges in the book of Romans, and he starts off and he says these incredible words.

He says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.

Which we could stop there, we could spend the rest of the morning just talking about how the good news of the gospel is that we have no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

That we have a God that is for us, that loves us, that cares about us, even in times of struggle, even in times of hurting, we have a God that is absolutely 100% for us.

And he doesn't look at us to condemn us, but he looks at us to love us, and he sent his son to love us and not condemn the world, right?

And then he continues and he starts to break down these ideas that there's a war going on, that there's a battle, and the battle is in our minds.

That the battle is that there's the battle between the flesh and there's the battle between the spirit, and the spirit is speaking the words of life, and the flesh is speaking the words ultimately of death.

And there's this war that's going back and forth that is pushing us, that we're actively in.

If you didn't know that you are in a battle, you are very much in a battle right now.

And if you don't recognize you're in a battle, if you're not fighting as if you're in a battle, then that means you're losing the battle.

Because we have a God that has put something in us, and he's greater than the world for sure, but we have an enemy that's actively looking to bring us down.

And so he talks about this war that's waging in our lives, and then he gets to chapter to verse 14, excuse me, verse 14, and he starts to lay out some incredible truths about who we are in Christ.

And this is what he says about you and me, if we're followers of Jesus.

In verse 14, he says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him.

So let's break that down for a second.

Verse 14 again it says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons and daughters, you could say, of God.

Now this is so significant.

We cannot miss this, that you and myself, if we are followers of Jesus, then we are seen as sons and daughters of God.

Like that's that's a huge deal.

That's something that we cannot just gloss over and yawn at.

That is an incredible opportunity for us to see that we are sons and daughters of God.

But it says, if the ones that are led by the Spirit of God are the sons or the daughters of God.

The word led there is it's this following of God's Spirit.

It's not just, you know, believing some truths, and it's not just kind of jumping through some hoops of obedience, but it's following God's Spirit in our lives, that we are led by the Spirit of God.

If we have a hard time saying that we're led by the Spirit, then you have a hard time saying that you're a follower of Jesus.

Because followers of Jesus, children of the King, are ones that are led by the Spirit.

We have to be led by the Spirit.

And that affects our behavior.

It points us towards a behavior of where we belong.

And this isn't behavior modification.

We're not saying that we just try our best and try our hardest to be the best moral citizens that we can be and therefore we'll be children of God.

That's not what he's saying.

He's saying that because of our belief, because we're following Jesus, we begin to take on the traits of our Heavenly Father.

I've got two kids, um, I've got Sam and Ben.

Uh Sam is about to turn five.

Actually, in two weeks, he'll turn five.

And uh Ben is uh two and a half.

And uh whether they like it or not, they take on the traits of their parents.

And so if you know our kids, you know um that they have different personalities, very different kids.

Um I would say probably uh Sam, our oldest, is probably more like my wife, Caitlin.

Um he's super passionate, um, but he's you know super talkative.

Um I don't tell Caitlin, but he's a little hard-headed, and that she keeps that honestly.

Um but but he is someone that's a perfectionist and he's super sensitive and affectionate, and that's something he definitely doesn't get from me.

And and so he very much takes after my wife.

Now, Ben, on the other hand, Ben probably more reflects me.

He he's typically for the most part, he's laid back, he's easygoing, he's someone that loves to sleep.

Uh, we put Ben down for bedtime and he just goes right to sleep.

Sam fights it all the time, like I love my sleep, right?

And so he's taking after his dad in a lot of ways.

And so what Paul's unpacking here is he's saying that those that are led by the Spirit of God, that that we take on the nature of our Heavenly Father, that we begin to have the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, that we have all of those things in our lives.

That we as followers of Jesus, the ones that truly believe, it's not about just obeying a bunch of rules, but it's about loving the Father and following the will of the Spirit.

Now, there's a lot of people out there, and you might be listening to this or watching this message online, and you might have fallen into this trap too, where you have believed a lie that your faith is based on you trying your best to be the best person that you can be.

That Jesus dying on a cross for you wasn't just taking a bad person and making them good, and you just kind of go to church and you do your active duty and you maybe give and you maybe serve and you try your best to be the best person you can be.

And there's nothing wrong with those things, but if you're basing your faith on your behavior modification and just being a good person, then you're missing out on the invitation of Jesus.

Because Jesus isn't interested in our behavior modification, but he's interested in changing our total identity, moving us from death to life.

That's what God has called us to.

And so we begin, we obey, we do obey, but it's not because we have a sense of duty in order to earn some favor from our heavenly Father, but instead we obey because we see the Father and we are actively becoming more and more like him.

That's the beauty of this message.

So he says in verse 15, he goes on, he says, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

Now, this is so significant because he's saying here that the spirit that we have received is not a spirit of fear.

And I think in the world and the culture, especially in this season of life, that's the spirit that is predominant in our culture and our world today.

You turn on the news, you get on social media, and it's just almost instantaneously you begin to feel anxiousness in your soul.

And for whatever reason, I've been like driven to social media more now than probably in weeks and months before.

I'm just like glued to social media and news and all the stuff that's going on, and it's so easy for fear to creep in.

It's so easy for us to fall back into this idea of falling back into the slavery and falling into fear.

Slavery is doing something out of obedience based in fear.

So it's do what you say for my benefit.

We're trying to follow the law in order to gain favor with God.

And that's where the spirit of fear comes in.

The spirit of slavery comes in when we begin to fall into the trap of believing that we can go back to the law, that we can try to obey the law, and therefore God's going to give us his approval and his favor in our lives.

And God's saying, or Paul's saying through God, uh God is saying through Paul that that's not the spirit that we have received.

2 Timothy 1.7 says, for God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-discipline.

That that's the spirit that we have been given.

And this is so important for us to understand that anytime you have fear, anytime you have anxiousness, anytime you have those thoughts that start to creep into your mind of what if, those are not from God.

Those are not from Jesus.

Those are from the enemy.

And if we're not careful, we forget who we are, and ultimately we forget who God is, and we begin to listen to that voice rather than God's voice.

And so that's why it's so important in Corinthians, they talk about taking every thought captive.

That we've got to be disciplined.

We've got to think, okay, this is who God says I am, and so therefore, this is how I'm going to think.

That I'm not going to do my thinking based on what everybody tells me and what I'm reading and spending on Facebook and Instagram and wherever I'm looking to get my news.

I'm not going to spend my time thinking just those thoughts, but I'm going to counteract that with immersing myself in what God says rather than what others say.

And this is the reality that I think the church has fallen into.

We've missed the mark in filling our minds with everything the world says, and then we tack on a little bit of Jesus.

You know?

Like we'll read the Bible, we might, you know, spend 10, 15 minutes in the morning and we we we read the scripture, maybe we have a really kind of good moment with the Lord, and then we kind of go off for our day, and then we spend the next 20 hours of our workday running around, doing all these things, listening to news, podcast, media, and there's nothing wrong with those things.

Don't hear me say that.

But I think that if we are immersing ourselves in the voice of the world, then we're never going to be able to live in the spirit that God has called us to live.

We're never going to be able to live with a spirit of power and not fear, of love and not fear, of self-control and not fear.

And so my question is: are you following the spirit of slavery and fear, or are you following the spirit of adoption?

Now here's the kind of uh comparison that Paul is making here.

There's the spirit of slavery and fear, and then there's the spirit of adoption.

So he's saying the other end of the spectrum is that we have a spirit of adoption where we have been brought into the family of God.

That you who were once far off have now been brought near.

If you were to go and uh adopt a child from some remote part of the world where they had nothing, and you brought them into their family.

Man, think about how blessed that child would be being brought into the family.

Well, in the same way, and probably more significantly, we have been brought into the family of God.

We are known as the children of God.

We have sonship.

And so we don't have to go into fear because we have a heavenly father that we can cry out to and say, Abba, Father.

And the word Abba there is literally a personal God, a personal uh father figure.

It's a personal term.

In fact, the word is not even, it's a different language that Paul is looking for.

He's kind of like, I don't know what the word is, I don't know what I'm gonna say.

And then he says Abba, which means the closest thing we can kind of translate it in English is daddy, daddy or papa, father.

That's the relationship that we have.

The ones that have the spirit of God within them, we don't have to worry about fear.

We don't have a spirit of slavery, because we, as he says, we can cry out to our heavenly father and say, Abba, Father, Daddy, Father.

That we can have that personal connection, that personal relationship with him.

Going back to my kids, um, you know, they're at the age now where uh they're still pretty dependent upon us.

Um, you know, we we still have to do a lot of things for them.

Uh I'm waiting for one day, you know, down the road where we're not gonna have to do diapers and all of that kind of stuff.

So they're pretty st they're still pretty dependent upon us.

But you know what's interesting is that um both of them, uh, when they come against something that's scary, um, they've started watching Scooby-Doo, thanks to Megan over here.

And uh they started watching Scooby-Doo and Sam uh gets scared pretty easily, and so uh Scooby-Doo uh scares him at night.

And so we have to make a habit of not watching Scooby-Doo, especially before we go to bed.

And uh, but he knows that when he's scared, that he can run to his mom and dad, that he can run to his parents, that he can run to his father.

He he knows that when he is afraid, as Russ talked about last week, I can trust in the Lord.

That that he can come to us as his parents, and that we can help him in his uh terrified state, right?

And there's not a hardly a night that goes by that he doesn't wake up and on the monitor we hear, mommy, daddy, I had a bad dream.

But he's calling out to us.

Now, if a five-year-old can do that, why can't we do that with our Heavenly Father?

You know?

Like instead of us worrying, instead of us having fear, instead of us having anxiety in our lives, why can't we cry out to our Abba Father, our our our daddy, and say, God, like I'm I'm I'm scared right now.

I'm afraid.

The world is in panic.

Everything around me seems to be falling apart, the stock market seems to be crashing.

And instead, we just let ourselves try to worry to fix the problem, and that never works.

But we have a God in heaven that loves us and cares about us so much that we can come to him as our daddy.

He says, and he continues in verse 16, he says, the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided, or that word could be because we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him.

So he's saying the spirit is bearing witness that we're children of God.

If we're children of God, then that means we're heirs.

That we have the kingdom belongs to not just our Father, but it belongs to us.

We're fellow heirs with Christ, that everything that's at the disposal of our Heavenly Father is at our disposal.

Now, when we understand that, when we understand who we are in Christ, when we remember that, that changes everything, right?

If my heavenly father owns a cattle on a thousand hills, if he spoke the world into existence, that changes my perspective on everything.

You right?

I mean, it changes the way that I live, it changes the way that I handle my money, it changes the way that I live in relationships with one another, because if my heavenly father is who he says he is, then that changes everything about how I live my life.

And so we've got to remember, we've got to remember who we are in Christ, who we are as the followers of God, who we are as the sons and daughters of God.

Just listen to a couple of the other promises that are found in Romans.

Romans chapter 8 and verse 18 it says, For I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Verse 26, likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for what we ought, but the Spirit Himself interced for us with groanings too deep for words.

So we're so loved, so belonging to our Father, such a child, a son or daughter of the King, that even in our weakness, even when we don't know what to pray, that we've got the Holy Spirit praying on our behalf to the heavenly, our Heavenly Father.

Verse 28, we quote this a lot.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purposes, that even in the midst of chaos, even in the midst of tragedy, that God is using those things to bring about good, to bring him glory and to do good for us, even when we don't feel it, even when we don't understand it, that we have a God that's working behind the scenes.

Verse 31, I love this.

It says, What then shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all.

How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

It is God who justifies.

Who is to condemn?

Christ Jesus is the one who died.

More than that, who was raised?

Who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed is interceding for us?

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or danger or nakedness or a sword?

As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Verse 37, I love how he ends this chapter.

He says, No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who has loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depths, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That's good stuff.

That's not a spirit of fear, but that's a spirit of power and of victory.

Because we understand if we can get this into our minds and we can recognize who we are, if we can remember who God says we are, it changes everything we do in this season.

It changes the way that we live our lives, it changes the way that we uh connect with people, it changes the way that even in the midst of a virus spreading, it changes everything we do when we understand who we are.

So I want to ask you, do you know who you are?

Right now, wherever you're at, in your house, in your living room, or in your car, if you're watching this, you know, weeks or months later, do you know who you are?

Or maybe more importantly, do you know whose you are?

Because if you don't get this, if you don't understand this truth this morning, then you will never be able to live the life that God has called you to live.

You will never live in power, you will never live in victory.

You will continue to let the enemy sell you lies of what defines you, and you will never be able to live with the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.

And so the great thing is that the spirit of God that lives within us and the relationship that we can enter into and become his children is a free gift.

It's not by our own works, it's not by something that we do, it's not about being a good person, but it's about trusting in the work of Jesus and what he accomplished on the cross almost 2,000 years ago.

That when he died on the cross, he took the sins of the world upon his shoulder.

And then three days later, after dying a gruesome death, he rose from the grave, defeating sin, defeating shame, defeating guilt, defeating condemnation.

And if we will trust in him, if we will put our faith in him, if we will walk in his ways, then he will give us new life.

He will take us from death to life.

He'll give us a spirit, not of fear, but a spirit of love, power, and self-discipline.

Is that the spirit that you have in your life?

We say this a lot at Church of the Grove, that following Jesus is as simple as the ABCs.

It's admitting that we're sinful, admitting that we're broken, admitting that we have made mistakes, that even our good deeds, the Bible tells us, are like filthy rags.

The second thing is that we believe, that we believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he died on a cross for our sins and rose again on the third day.

And then finally we confess him as our Lord and Savior.

And if you've never done that before, man, I invite you right now, in this moment, to turn and put your faith and your trust in Jesus.

Man, what an incredible testimony and what an incredible story it would be if during all of this chaos and during all of this crisis situation that's falling around us, that you put your faith in Jesus.

Man, talk about God bringing about good out of the bad, right?

That's the God that we have.

And so if that's the decision that you need to make, we have people that are ready to chat with you or talk with you, you can click on the links and you can follow along and we'll be able to get in touch with you and follow up with you afterwards.

But for those that are followers of Jesus and you're assured of your faith and your salvation, my question for you is what's the voice that you're listening to?

Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten who you are in Christ?

And as a result, forgotten who God is?

And this morning, man, be encouraged, be challenged to listen to the voice of your heavenly father.

Listen to the voice of the Spirit of God that says that you are a child of God, that you are a son or a daughter of the King of the universe.

And let that sink deep within your mind and deep within your soul, because in it is the secret to following Jesus and living the victorious life that He has called each and every one of us to have.

We can only live with no fear.

We can only live in power and in victory if we understand who we are in Christ.

Let me pray for us.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for who you are.

And Lord, I thank you so much for the opportunity that we have as the people of God to gather in this way.

And Lord, I thank you that even in the bad, even in the chaotic times of life, Lord, that you are working and that you are moving and you are doing things that we can't even begin to understand this morning.

And Lord, I believe that the word that was spoken this morning, Lord, that you're going to use that in the people in people's lives, that people are going to come to know you this morning.

I pray for those individuals that are going to take that step of faith and put their faith and trust in you.

Lord, I pray that they would have the courage to stand up and be bold about that.

And Lord, I pray for believers.

Lord, for too long we've been timid, and for too long we've been weak, and for too long we've been almost ashamed of what you've called us to do and the people you've called us to be.

But today, Lord, let us recognize who we are as your sons and your daughters, and let us live in a way that is full of victory, that is full of faith, that is not a slavery of fear and anxiety and all the other things that come along with that, but a spirit of love, power, and self control.

Lord, use us as only you can.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.