Origin
Origin
Disarming Deception, Born This Way
What name tags or patterns of identity have you adopted that are not yours to own? What is the danger of saying, "I was born this way?" Join us at the table as we discuss the identity that we have in Christ as believers. Hear how God has an original plan for our identity. We get to choose if we walk in it. Life fulfillment doesn't come from self-seeking pleasure, but from removing the focus from self to others and ultimately, to Jesus.
Hello, and welcome to the table of Origin. Today I'm joined by my friends, Jina McAfee and Kyli Rose. We're discussing how to disarm deception by applying the Word of God which is the truth. Today we're calling out deceptions in our culture and even in the church. We're trying to see what the Bible says because it speaks clearly regarding some of these deceptions. We're glad you're with us today. We'd love to hear your thoughts. You can interact with us on our Facebook page at Origin. When you hear, "I am born this way," what do you think of?
Kyli Rose:I think of different personality traits: I've got an Irish temper, or this was how my grandmother is so this is how I am too. Maybe the way you behave or the way you think.
Jina McAfee:I'll ask people,"Are you a morning person or a night person?" So we kind of even give it credence as if we are saying, "You are that." Another question I ask, "Are you an introvert or an extrovert?"
Kyli Rose:In the age of Enneagram, if you know anything about Enneagram, we can ask,"What's your number?"
ReGina Johnston:I think we know more about ourselves than we ever did, and we're just as confused as we ever were. I don't know if I would say, "I was born this way." I tend to ask myself, "Was it genetics, or was it environment?" I do know that I've been a passionate person. Like the apostle Paul, I'm all in. Sometimes my passions will overflow, and it sounds to other people like anger or frustration. I could say, "Well, that's just the way I am; you've got to accept it," but I've had to address it. That passion sometimes pulls out responses that are unintended, in a way that is demeaning or condescending to someone else. So I've had to really address that. I can't just say, "That's the way I am." At times I have said, "God, take this away from me because it gets me in so much trouble." I heard Him very distinctly say, by the voice of the Spirit, "I made you that way." But I think that's the
point:How did God make us? What is God's intent? With certain cultures, we have said, "They are just that way." For instance, we've assigned quick tempers to the Irish. Dare I go further, because we can get ourselves in so much trouble with this. But certain cultures sometimes carry certain thought patterns that we've assigned to them, or maybe in some way, it's been earned. We can say, "Oh, that's just who they are." We've made it part of their identity.
Kyli Rose:Sometimes parents and grandparents can unknowingly speak things over their kids. We pick up these cards that you get when you go to events, "Hello, my name is....." We pick these name tags up along the way. Oftentimes that process of accumulating name tags starts very, very young. We eventually see them as being almost like a second skin or identity.
ReGina Johnston:As we've looked at this deception, "Born this Way," we've come across a term called "cultural identity." So what is that and how is it developed?
Jina McAfee:When I was looking up the phrase, "Born this Way," I found a definition for"cultural identity." It's a self perception. It's how you see yourself. It can be related to all kinds of things like your nationality, your ethnicity, your religion, your social class, your generation, where you live, or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. One thing that stands out is that it's fluid. That means it changes; it's not static. It could be like the household you grew up in, your heritage, your work, your social class. It is how we see ourselves, and it changes. It's formed as a person is immersed in values, beliefs and practices of a certain group. Then they identify themselves as a member, and then they develop relationships in that culture. I was asking one of my grandkids,"Why are you so good at this? He or she said, "I'm a nerd." That wasn't the answer I was looking for. It made me laugh. One of my sons could say he was a Trekkie, which I don't even know if that's a thing anymore, because it changes, right. But he loved everything Star Trek. It's how we see ourselves.
ReGina Johnston:So it's those tags of identity.
Jina McAfee:And it changes.
ReGina Johnston:There's a danger with saying, "I was just born that way." What are we in danger of saying if we're not testing ourselves?
Kyli Rose:Really, you're in danger of disobedience to the Word. The coolest thing about the Bible and the Gospel is that God gives us a way out. He gives us an option. He gives us a choice. He gives us hope. So whenever we just look at these tags, these labels that we've picked up along the way, or maybe things that have been spoken over us, cultural things that we've picked up, in some ways it can become like a blame game. It's like I absolve myself from all responsibility, and I say, "I have no choice. This is just the way I am." We see that in the very first pages of Scripture with the original sin, Adam and Eve in the garden, they disobey the Lord, and they begin
to blame one another:"She made me eat it. The serpent deceived me." You see this blame game ensue just three chapters into the Word, and we do that today."They made me do it. I had no choice. That's just who I am." The Bible says, "No, you actually do have a choice." Whenever we say, "This is just who I am," we're basically saying that we don't have a choice. But we're going to let you know today that we do; we do have a choice.
ReGina Johnston:I've been reading a leadership book. The title of it is Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. It talks about how we deceive ourselves any time we begin to blame somebody else for our thought processes or our behaviors. Once we do that, we put ourselves in a box when it comes to dealing with another person. The whole objective of the book is to test yourself in every relationship and ask yourself, "Am I in the box in this relationship, or am I out of the box? Getting yourself out of the box will transform your relationships. We're dealing with what's inside of us. We're all capable of being affected by this thought process. We have already talked about how we've been tempted in this thought process. We've been a little vulnerable. What are some ways that we've established disciplines so that we don't hang out in that place of compromise? Can you think of ways in which you've had to establish some disciplines in your life or some ways of catching yourself? And if so, what are those?
Kyli Rose:I think our thoughts and feelings can often be a huge stepping stone. In moments of stress or frustration, those name tags can rear their heads. Like, Kyli, you're a failure. Or, you're always going to be this. Or, you will never be able to do that. Those absolutes! I have to be able to take that thought, that tag, and immediately ask a question, "Who said that?"
ReGina Johnston:That's a good test!
Kyli Rose:If you've been hanging out with us for any amount of time, you will have heard us say, "You've got to be in the Word." I'm not going to be able to identify that place of origin if I'm not in the Word. Did God say that about me? Absolutely not! Not only do I have to identify who said it, but then I also have to hold it up against what God said about me. He says a lot of really cool things about His kids in Scripture. Do I know what they are? They're going to hold me in those moments.
Jina McAfee:In and of myself, I will be lacking. I might be afraid to do something because I think I can't do it, and the truth is, I can't do it without Him. It's only in Him that I can do it. Sometimes you just have to overcome your fears: What if I fail? What if I don't do well with that? The truth is, if God has called you to do it, He's going to equip you.
ReGina Johnston:There's a truth in general for all of us to apply. Jina, what is that truth?
Jina McAfee: The truth is:we are all born into sin. So we are all born that way. Sin starts in the first chapters of Scripture, like Kyli just said a few minutes ago, in Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, with the first man and first woman, Adam and Eve, in the garden. They believe the serpent, which is Satan, over God. God said, "Don't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or you'll die." Satan plants a seed of doubt. He says, "Did God really say.....? He goes on to say, "You won't die. Instead, your eyes will be opened you, and you'll be like God knowing both good and evil." So what did they do? They went ahead and ate. They ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and at that very instant, sin entered the world, not just for them, but for every person born after that.
ReGina Johnston:So now we can just blame them.
Kyli Rose:And they get blamed.
Jina McAfee:But if they hadn't sinned, we would have, right?. When you see a baby who's just starting to make decisions on his own, maybe six months old, and you say, "No, don't do that," because you know it's not good for them, and they look right at you and do it anyway. And smile. And you're thinking,"Wow, sin is in that little six-month-old baby." You know it.
Kyli Rose:It's interesting as we talk about deceptions, there are a lot of things we pick up like some of the negative name tags, right, but there are actually a lot of things that culture celebrates, that culture would say, that's a good thing. You put yourself first. You do you! There are a lot of things we wear as name tags that aren't as easy to identify as negative, because you have an entire culture cheering you on for that thing that is directly opposed to the Word of Christ. The culture could say, "That's self care," while God's Word might say that's a little bit selfish. His gospel says to pick up your cross and carry it, to lay down your life for your friends, if someone slaps this cheek, you turn the other one. Scripture shines a magnifying glass on some of the things we celebrate, and culture would say we have a right to celebrate. So there's a deception even in that.
ReGina Johnston:The deception is less clearly exposed in those areas where culture is saying,"Go, you go." And that's where we are in culture right now. Basically the culture is saying, whatever your mind can conceive to do or be, you should be allowed to do that. And there doesn't seem to be a line. Every time the line gets drawn, someone else comes along and says, "No, no, no, we believe..... And you are wrong not to make room for us because we are right." And then everybody feels terrible because somehow they're not just not politically correct, they're mean, they're rude because they won't recognize what this person says they are, when it's not who God says they are.
Kyli Rose:You're talking about sin. Sometimes it's hard to recognize that these things we celebrate are actually sin when held up to God's Word.
Jina McAfee:And we're seeing that more and more, because just like you said, Kyli, we have to be in the Word. If you are not in the Word, you're not going to know the truth. When I was growing up, you heard the truth more readily in the culture, but now you are not hearing much truth. So you have to seek it, you have to look for it. It's not just intuitive sometimes. It's not just easily recognizable sometimes.
ReGina Johnston:That's why we daily read the Word because little by little, and thankfully, it is little by little, the Holy Spirit will expose in us those things that need to be dealt with so that more and more, we become like Jesus. If it was lots by lots, we couldn't handle it. But it's little by little. So the answer to our sin problem is Jesus. Now, that seems so simplistic. It's like the answer to every Bible question at church is Jesus. In every kids' class and every adults' class, that's the answer. It seems simplistic and the "how" of that sometimes escapes us, but we're going to clarify that as we continue today. He's the answer. He solved our sin problem already. It's already taken care of. And only He could do it. He's fully God, and He became fully man as well, born into the flesh yet lived without sin. So He alone was able, capable, to justify us. On the cross, He took upon Himself all of our sin, from the beginning of time to the end of time. That's so hard to understand, because before I even lived, He died for my sin. The world didn't really get it, right? And oftentimes, we don't really get it. But the Bible tells a story that I think could illustrate even some of this not-getting-it in a man called Nicodemus. He was a religious leader when Jesus was doing ministry on the earth. He came to Jesus at night to find answers because he had the
question:How does this all work? He knew Jesus was from God, but he didn't understand. And so he came and asked the question. What truth did Jesus reveal to Nicodemus in that moment? And what is He revealing to us?
Kyli Rose:Essentially what he told Nicodemus that night, under the cloud of darkness, is,"Nicodemus, you must be born again."
ReGina Johnston:That's a weird concept.
Kyli Rose:Jesus was always saying things that made people scratch their heads. And this is definitely one of those things. He tells Nicodemus, "I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. I assure you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don't be surprised when I say, 'You must be born again.'" (John 3:3, 5-7) Nicodemus is like, "What? I'm an older man." Essentially, he is saying that a man can't go back into his mother's womb and be born again, can he? Jesus was saying that when we are born, we are born physically alive, but spiritually dead, and that we get the opportunity whenever we surrender our lives to Jesus, to not only be physically alive, but to come spiritually alive as well. And that is when things get really good. Whenever we're born again, we get this brand new identity. We're going to talk about that a little bit more. We pick up in John
1:12-13, "But to all who believed Him [Jesus] and accepted Him, He gave the right to become children of God. [When you're reborn, you are now a child of God. And with that comes an inheritance. With the deposit of the Holy Spirit, you have access to all sorts of things that you did not have access to before.] They are reborn, not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God." Because we're now children of God, we get to peel off some of those name tags, and you get a whole new name tag which says "child of God." That means I get the inheritance. I get the Holy Spirit. And I get a choice. I get a choice about what name tags I wear now.
Jina McAfee:I love that. We're Origin. We get to go back and see what God's original design is for us. We keep going back. It's so cool. I grew up where I did not have that terminology,"Born Again." I was in church, but I never really heard the That's what we're trying to do here in Origin, talk about how phrase, "Born Again." I didn't know what it meant. So I was God planned for this to play out in the very beginning. And as Nicodemus. It didn't make any sense to me. I would hear some believers who have become born again, here's what we're of my friends at school talk about it, but I just didn't get hearing, we have a new identity. How does that work? What does it look like? it. So here Jesus is introducing something brand new. They've never heard it before. It's God's plan for us, and I absolutely love it. It's just like Kyli said. We get a brand new spirit. We get Holy Spirit in us. So we're enabled to live, just like God intended for us to live in the power of the Spirit. When Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, we see the difference Holy Spirit baptism makes. Peter who once denied Jesus answers the crowd clearly and boldly. Listen to
the exchange in Acts 2:37-39:"Peter's words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, 'Brothers what should we do?' Peter replied, 'Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away, all who have been called by the Lord our God.'" After Pentecost, Peter preaches the gospel message to the crowd, and all of a sudden people get it. Their spiritual eyes are open. They finally see their sin. They finally see that they had Messiah right there with them, and they killed Him. And they said, so what do we even do? Peter said to them,"You must repent of your sins and turn to God." You receive the truth and you turn your life completely around, you go a whole different direction. Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away, all who have been called by the Lord our God. So we've talked about cultural identity. And we've talked about our identity with sin. But now we're going to talk about our God identity. This is the truest thing about us. In our salvation, our God-given identity is restored. To understand what we're saying, we need to go back to original design, to see our original God-given identity.
Kyli Rose:It is essentially our God-given identity restored. We got to be restored back to God. We see in Genesis 1:27-28, "So God created human beings in His own image. [That was always the plan, that we were always made to resemble God.] In the image of God, He created them; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.'" So we see in the very beginning, God designed created humans to look like Him. And then we see in Galatians 3:28, "There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." This was the plan all along that after Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead, there would be no more division. You know that God's original plan is for us to look like Him and that there wouldn't be this hierarchy as humans. Part of the fall is all this division, division between rich and poor, division between culture groups and color groups and socio-economic classes and men and women. God's original design is that there would be unity between the people that He designed to look like Him. So in Christ, our original design is completely restored, and we are all one in Him. We're no longer known by our gender, we're no longer known by our economic status or nationality. We're one, one in Him. What does this mean practically? This means that you and I have equal access. That means that we can go to Him as much as we want. We can have as much of Him as we want. This means that the tags that we wore, we can rip those off, because we have the power of the Holy Spirit to do it. This means that we now have purpose. This means that our minds can have peace. This means that we can walk and live in this space of passion. It's really cool. It means that we're loved. It means that we're wanted. It means that we're invited. It challenges every single name tag that the enemy wants to stick on us. Then He empowers us to rip them off, and put a new one on. I'm a child of the King!
ReGina Johnston:Between God and man, we see this kind of constant thing happening. It's a partnership. And it started with God. The partnership started with God. God did His part. And then we do our part, which is repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus, basically. But then God comes back and does more. And so it's like a sweet dance between God as the leader and us as the participant. We have to say, "Yes," to the things that He speaks to us. But when we say, yes, there's evidence. There's a story I'm reminded of that Kyli tells. I'm not going to tell the whole story, just a bit. She talked about Holy Spirit Baptism one time, and when the Holy Spirit comes and baptizes us, there's evidence. She talked about how a family they gather with came to visit, and when they left, there was evidence that people had been at her house. She had cleaned like crazy before they came, but after they left, there was evidence that they had been there. The same thing with God. Once we participate in this dance, there's evidence of God-life in us. What is that?
Jina McAfee:The Word tells us that we've been crucified with Christ. Kind of like the phrase, Born Again, what does the phrase, crucified with Christ, even mean? I watched the movie, The Passion of the Christ, and I thought, I never want to see that again. That was so hard to watch, Jesus being physically crucified. But we are making a choice that our sinful nature be crucified, that we die to our own self, to the things we want in our flesh.
ReGina Johnston:But I'm not going to be very happy if I don't get my way.
Jina McAfee:We think that's true, don't we?
ReGina Johnston:And we clamor to keep our way.
Jina McAfee:But the truth is, when we walk in His way, the way He designed us to walk, everything is peaceful. Everything works well. It fits together. When you're first saved, when you're first baptized in Holy Spirit, it takes time. God doesn't bring everything to the forefront at once. He works on each little thing. Holy Spirit is a gentlemen. He reveals to you one thing at a time, that one thing is not really My way for you, and you say, "Okay, well have Your way God." You lean into His correction. There are a couple of Scriptures that talk about being crucified. One is
Galatians 2:20, "My old self[that's my sin nature] has been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." So it's a choice that you're making. Galatians 5:24 says, "Those who belong to Christ have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there." Really those things happen bit by bit. It's a daily process. It's a lifelong process. We talked about being baptized in water. We know that doesn't save us. It doesn't make us part of a church. It's a physical declaration of what's going on inside of us. Symbolically, when we go down in the water, we die. When we come back up, we're a new person. It just helps me see that being immersed is like that death of the natural or carnal man, and coming out is like the resurrection. Since the old man is dead, I am no longer a slave to sin. Sin does not have dominion over me. That means, I don't have to sin. Do we believe that? I do not have to sin. So I'm making a choice. I am free to live a new life. I'm free to live the God life I was created to live. So it's a choice after that. It really is a choice because you are empowered.
Kyli Rose:That's good. So evidence is we're crucified with Christ. Another evidence is that we become this new person. Whenever we say, "Yes," to God, there's this invitation, there's this pursual, I finally take a knee, and I say, "Yes, Lord, I want to do things Your way," Scripture tells us that there should be evidence. Even science supports this. We have studies that say that you begin to pick up the mannerisms of the people you spend the most time with. Good or bad, you begin to sound a lot like them. The things that are important to them become important to you at some point. We slowly begin to morph and look like the people we spend the most time with. God is not looking to recruit a bunch of robots. He is looking to engage with His creation, He is looking to engage with men and women. He wants to be in relationship with us. And He wants us to be in relationship with Him. He wants to spend time with us. The idea is that the more we spend time with Him, the more we interact with Him, there is evidence because we will begin to look like Him. We will begin to sound like Him. We will begin to be bothered by the things that bother Him. We will notice the vulnerable. We will notice the marginalized. We will notice the issues in the world that we we're actually called to partner with Him to go and do something about. We will see things the way He sees them. We will hear things the way He hears. The things that were really important to us before probably won't be as important to us now. We respond differently. Again, this doesn't happen overnight. But it is a process that begins the day we say, "Yes." And it's one that we'll be walking out, looking more and more and more like Him. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a brand new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!" You are a new creation in Christ. You became a new person that day. And over the course of your life, there should be more and more fruit. The Bible talks a lot about fruit. This was an agrarian society in the time that the Bible was written. They understood a lot of this language. There should be fruit in our lives. We should be productive people. They should be able to look at our life and say, "You know what? There's something different about them. What tree are they connected to?" They know us by our fruit. Matthew 7:20 says, "Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions." Our actions should point to Jesus. Our actions should point to the One that we say we love. Our actions should point to the fact that we spend a whole lot of time with Him and so we look like Him. Galatians 5:22-23 says, "The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives." Did you know that there is not one good thing that can come from us except through the Holy Spirit? We're broken and sinful apart from Christ.
ReGina Johnston:How do you reconcile that with people that we know are just good people, but they don't know God at all, and they haven't really received a deposit of the Holy Spirit? How do you reconcile that?
Kyli Rose:I think when the Holy Spirit is deposited, we love in a way that Christ loves. It's deeper. It's more authentic. He calls us to holiness. He just does things in a way that we cannot do apart from Him. It's like He upped the ante in every way. Some of the fruit that it says He produces in our life is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. And I love it. You need these things. Life is really hard. The idea is that we get to partner with Christ, and people should be constantly taking bites of our fruits, constantly. It's not like we just get this basket of Holy Spirit fruit on the day that we're born again and we never have to refill it. No, you have to go and fill it every single day. You get to sit with Him and spend time with Him. And He is constantly refilling, because realistically, people are constantly taking bites, like your fruit has big chunks out of it by the end of the day, your patience, your kindness. So He is constantly giving us what we need. We should be able to be spotted in a group. Like there's something different about that one. What is it? And it should make them want to lean in and ask questions.
Jina McAfee:That's the whole idea. That's how He uses us to make Him known.
Kyli Rose:People keep taking bites out of her patience, yet there always seems to be a grace on it. I know what she's walking through, but she seems to just radiate love. Like she's still loving even though that's not a natural response. It's a supernatural response. In answer to the question you asked, I think it's easy to love people that love us. I think it's a supernatural thing to love your enemy. I think it's easy to be patient when someone's being patient with you. It's supernatural to respond with patience when someone is cussing you out or to respond with love when someone is treating you unfairly or unjustly. Maybe you see some of these other things at play with people who don't know Christ, but I think the Holy Spirit enables us to respond in a supernatural way in situations that we couldn't necessarily respond that way without Him.
Jina McAfee:Not like the world. Not like the world at all. Sometimes we get so used to Holy Spirit enabling because we've lived this life a while that we forget. We don't even see it, but other people will say to you, "Wow, you are joyful, or you are loving," and you're like, "Yay. People see Holy Spirit fruit."
ReGina Johnston:I read a quote recently that said, "We as believers really won't find it as challenging to love Jesus. Our true challenge will be to love Judas." And I was like,"ouch!" Isn't that the Absolute Truth! That's the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in us that will enable us to do that, Kyli. It takes us to a whole other level. And this partnership that we're talking about, it can work with any cultural tag of identity that we've adopted. We can get so many tags that they're actually bondages. The Bible calls it slaves to sin. That word has a whole lot of connotation to it. That's not something you want to say that you are. But that's what the Bible calls it, when we're tagged with all these senses of cultural identity or things that we put on ourselves, or maybe other people have spoken over us that are not there because of the Lord. This kind of dance is available to any of us, this partnership with the Lord where He does something and we receive it. We allow it to be applied to our lives. We begin to cultivate such a relationship with Him that the fruit of the Spirit is evident in our life, but fruit takes time to grow. It may be forming on the inside, and it takes a bit of time to show up before other people really can see and say, "Yes, I see a difference there." But we can lean in to God and what He's doing in us. If we'll do that, it's a quicker process. He transforms us. He's the One that does the work. It's like still the dance is going on. It's not like you just have this one dance. It's as if He is saying to you, "Will you be My partner, the rest of your life?" It's from glory to glory. I heard Steven Furtick, a pastor at one of our mega churches, say, "My default is not my destiny." And that is the truth. It's often what seems to be the easiest, because we're so used to the habits that are already formed, but it's not our destiny. We get to choose every single day. We get to choose how we live.
Jina McAfee:One of the things, and I know we've already talked about it, you've got to know the truth. And the only way you're going to know that is if you get in the Word. And then you let God speak to you while you're in the Word. You've got to. John
8:31-32 says, "Jesus said to the people who believed in Him, 'You are truly My disciples if you remain faithful to My teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'" I heard someone say that the truth you live is the truth that sets you free. So you actually have to live in it, act it out, go for it, not just knowing it, but living it. There are multiple Sriptures that talk about putting off the old and putting on the new. It's a lifetime thing we do. Colossians 3:5-10 in the Message says, "That means killing off everything connected
with the way of death:[So all of the things that go on with that] sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, [basically] doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God.... It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for
good:[all those things] bad temper, irritability, meanness.... You're done with that old life. It's like a set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with His label on it. All of the old is obsolete." So it's really just living it. He introduces you to the new life. And He puts a hunger inside of you for that life. But you still have to choose it continually. You've got to get in the Word. You've got to make a decision to live according to that Word.
Kyli Rose:Your future, walking in your created self, like who you were created to be, your ability to do that and walking that thing out absolutely hinges on knowing what God says about you, because the enemy loves to remind you, like he wants you to go back. He wants you to go back. And so what is he going to do? I changed a lot of my lifestyle habits about five years ago, but I still have a family member who is constantly like, "I remember how you used to eat." We're five years into this, the habits have been established, the disciplines are in place, yet every time we sit down at a table, she says, "I remember when you would never eat a salad." The enemy does the same thing. He loves to remind us of where we came from because he wants us to go back. It's crazy. People will not always be comfortable with who you're becoming because they're so used to who you were. And so the enemy will use people around you. He is constantly trying to get us to go back to other places of shame.
ReGina Johnston:He doesn't want you to break out.
Kyli Rose:You're a fraud. You're not really joyful. You're a fraud. You're not really this. They all know who you are. You're never going to be that. When is this going to fail? How long are you going to do this until it crashes and burns? You will hear these cycles. Stay in your Word. You have to have something to prove that it's real. The enemy will try to pull you back. He does not want you to be your created self so he will constantly be reminding you of your corrupted self. You have to choose which one you are going to be. And just settle it. The Word will help you do that.
Jina McAfee:The Word tells you to cast that thing off, to fling that from you. You really have to develop that. So not only do we live the truth, we've got to stand for the truth. A Scripture in Hebrews says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas" (Hebrews
13:8-91). Do not! You get that choice, and you've got to recognize the strange, new ideas as not being God's plan. And just don't do it! Just don't!
ReGina Johnston:So, Kyli, what else? We find out we've got to know the truth, live the truth, and stand in the truth, but there's another portion to this dance. We've talked about it some, but talk about it a little bit more. It's going to keep the dance going, this partnership with the Lord going. There's another aspect of how we live.
Kyli Rose:It's countercultural, but if we're going to do this thing, we've got to give up our own way. The enemy loves to make us feel like God is holding out on us. That was the deception in the garden. He is not good, and He is holding out on you. Mark
8:34 says, "Then [Jesus] calling the crowd to join his disciples. He said, 'If any of you want to be My follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow Me.'" That is not exactly a motivational speech, right? If we were trying to recruit people, that would probably not be the tagline we would use. You've got to give up your rights, you've got to pick up a really heavy painful cross, the idea is suffering, and follow me. Here's the list. Who wants to sign up? Good luck finding volunteers for that. So what is He asking of us? And the enemy wants us to believe that you're not getting anything in return. You're giving all of your fun up. Like, if you say yes to Jesus, that's it. Like, He is not good. He is not kind. But I love that we don't just lay something down, we actually get to pick something up. Yeah. We had someone come and speak, and one of the things she said was so profound. When she had her encounter with the Lord, she said, "I gave up my whole life." She didn't withhold pieces and parts of her. She gave up everything. She said, "When I gave up my whole life, He gave me a whole life in return." He gave me something way better in return. So we don't just lay down our way, we actually pick up His way. And what is His way? His plan is that we would be conformed to His image, that we were made to be His image bearers, that we were meant to have peace, we were meant to know joy. You were meant to live with purpose. You were made on purpose for a purpose. It is the most incredible life, and I don't want to sell "easy." it is not easy. It is hard.
ReGina Johnston:Life is not easy. Period.
Kyli Rose:The cool thing about knowing Christ and walking with Him is that you're going to go through hard one way or the other. You just don't have to go through your hard alone. He equips you for every single thing that you're going to encounter. So we give up our own way. We're conformed to His
image. Romans 8:29-30 says, "For God knew His people in advance, and He chose them to become like His Son, so that His Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, He called them to come to Him. And having called them, He gave them right standing with Himself. And having given them right standing, He gave them His glory." He gave us everything. He withheld nothing from us. And so He asks that we withhold nothing from Him. He is better than you thought He could be. He will give you more than you could ever give Him. He put the skin in the game first. And He's good. He is worth surrendering to.
ReGina Johnston:So it's a major deception to think that if we keep pursuing our way of living with our tags of identity, that somehow we're going to be fulfilled and happy. It's just a deception. The truth of the matter is, if you lay it down and take up the identity God has for you, that's where life is. So I don't know what God is asking us to lay down today, what portion of self that He's asking us to lay down, and what portion of Him He's asking us to pick up, but this song has come to my mind. It's a song called,"Make Room. Here is what the lyrics say, "Here is where I lay it down, every burden, every crown; this is my surrender. Here is where I lay it down, every lie and every doubt; this is my surrender. And I will make room for You to do whatever You want to. I will make room for You to do whatever You want to.[And the bridge says:] Shake up the ground of all my tradition, break down the walls of all my religion. Your way is better. Your way is better." And that's the truth of the matter. I was born this way? Yes, I was born into sin. And I need to repent and turn and lay it down, and pick up all that God has for me, because He's paid for it. Lock, stock and barrel. It's all mine. So, Lord, we just thank You for Your word today. We thank You for the truth and that it exposes deceptions. Lord, we want the mind of Christ. God, we want to do it Your way. And so today, we make that choice. Have Your way in us. In Jesus' name. Amen.