Are you confident that you always believe that God means what He says? What about when you read a Bible verse that tells you to be like Christ? If we are honest, we would admit that we have trouble accepting Scriptures about God’s divine nature in us and what He expects us to be. Rather than skipping over such Scriptures, we should work at embracing them and applying them with all our hearts.

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Show Notes:

There are certain Scriptures that we find very difficult to take literally, especially when they challenge how we think about ourselves. When we read in John 17:23 that the Father loves us with the same love He had for Yeshua (Jesus), we tend to stop and ask, “Did He really mean that?” After all, how could God love us in our sinfulness with the same love He had for His Son? But God does mean what He says about us. God is bringing many sons to glory and loving them just as He loved Christ, who was the firstborn of many brethren.

When Yeshua was born, He could do nothing as a baby that He would do as a grown man. But He was already the Son of God, Savior, and Lord at His birth. He grew up to fulfill the purpose God sent Him to the earth to fulfill. And when we are born in Christ, He implants His divinity in us. Then our growth and maturity in Christ come from this nature of Christ already within us. Just as Christ grew up into the fullness of the Father, according to Ephesians 4, so we are to grow up into the fullness of Christ. Yet we resist accepting that about ourselves. Many even consider it heresy to say that we can be like Christ.

These Scriptures about who we are in God need to get through to us. We cannot simply skip over them or find other ways to interpret them because we have a hard time accepting what they say we are. We need to clearly see the purpose that God has for us and His equipping that matures us into who we are to be as full-grown members of the Body of Christ. That is why we have begun a project with the Fellow Workers. We are building a list of Scriptures that confront us about who we are and what God has put us on this earth to be. Join us in finding these Scriptures, meditating on them, and planting them in our hearts until they bear fruit in our lives.

Key Verses:

• John 17:23. “You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”
• Romans 8:29. “He would be the firstborn among many brethren.”
• Ephesians 4:11–13. “He gave … for the equipping of the saints … until we all attain … to the fullness of Christ.”
• Luke 2:52. “Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
• Hebrews 2:10. “It was fitting for Him, … in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation.”
• John 14:5–18. “The Father abiding in Me does His works.”

Quotes:

• “It’s that constant reality that is manifested in the now that we are what God brought us here to be. Is that maturing? Is it perfecting? Yes. But get out of the idea that you’re becoming something different or that you need to become something different than what you are.”
• “Our mind kind of blocks and parries this off so that we don’t let it really hit us like it needs to hit us—that the Father is in Christ and the Father is in us and Christ is in us and we are one.”
• “He wants us to be equipped. I think it’s part of our relationship with one another because somewhere in us and around us abide these apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, brothers and sisters, and that which is bringing forth this process of maturing.”

Takeaways:

1. God has chosen us to be in this time, just as He sent Christ to be in His time. So we need to find and come into connection with the reality of who we are and what our purpose is in this earth. And the Scriptures play an important role in that.
2. When we encounter a Scripture that seems too wonderful to believe about ourselves, we tend to interpret it in a way that lets us not take it at face value.
3. We must get out of this idea that we are working toward something or that we are doing a job out of dedication. Our work of service comes out of the divinity of the Father and of the Son that God has installed within us.
4. We need to be looking through the Scriptures and finding verses that confront us with the reality of who we are—that Christ and the Father are in us—and come to grips with what that means.

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