http://granvillenychurchofchrist.org/?p=1387
Identity Crisis – A Devil’s Tool (past 4) – By Ben Fronczek
Last July CNN ran this story — When police found the unconscious man in a Southern California Motel 6, the IDs on him said he was Michael Thomas Boatwright from Florida. But when the man awoke at Desert Regional Medical Center a few days later, he said he’d never heard of Boatwright. He didn’t recall being born in Florida.
When doctors told him he had five tennis rackets in his hotel room, he couldn’t say why. When they showed him photos of himself with others, he didn’t recognize them, or himself. And he didn’t speak a word of English. The man said his name was Johan Ek. And he said it in Swedish. That was last February. Today, the 61-year-old man says he has come to terms with the name “Michael Boatwright,” but only because doctors told him he should. He still feels like Johan Ek from Sweden. And he can’t explain why.
Phenomena like these stories of people who have lost their memories, and have forgetting their true identity intrigue many of us. Hit movies have been produces with a similar theme. Movies like TOTAL RECALL, where Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in the future plays a construction worker who learns that he was some kind of secret agent with secret information about Mars.
And then BOURNE IDENTITY trilogy, where Matt Damon, who play Jason Bourne is pulled from the ocean with no memory of who was is or how he got there, but then slowly finds out that he has special abilities and slowly learns who he really is.
One of the most intriguing and sad stories I ever heard regarding lost identity was one that I heard year ago. Some may have heard it before but I would like to share it with you.
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. The other prairie chickens said, “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor.
“He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth– we’re just plain ol’ barnyard chickens.” So the eagle lived and died just a barnyard chicken, because all he thought he he was. How sad because he was robbed of his true identity.
In our present series of lesson I have been talking about how our adversary, the devil, is out to rob us. He wants to rob us of a good relationship we should have with our Father God, and with one another, and he wants to rob us of the confidence and peace of mind that we should all enjoy as a Christian.
Another dastardly tool the devil uses against us to rob us of these things is by robbing us of the reality of who we really are, our true identity. And oh he has done such a good job at this!
Too many people live and base their whole life simply on what they can see with their own eyes and what they’ve heard with their own ears. We believe and accept most of what we have been taught by society, and what has been spoken to us by our family, friends, and other people in general, not realizing that the devil can use these people like a pawns in his service to cripple us.
I don’t believe most people realize who and what we really are. Like that eagle, we have forgotten or even lost our true identity. What may seem like reality to so many is really a farce, a deception on the devil’s part.
I am here today to tell you that you are so much more than you have been led to believe about yourself. I do not say these things to give you a big head or puff you up, but rather you need to see the truth because anything less is a lie which the devil wants you to believe. He wants to rob you of your true identity, hoping that in doing so you will never become what you were meant to be.
If you remember from our last lesson, I mentioned the fact that the devil can use us, and others to do his bidding. If we are not careful we can find ourselves serving the enemy by how we act, what we do, and what we say. And others can do his work on us. For example:
Because of what people have said over the years or because what our society dictates, many see themselves as, unimportant, insignificant, not anything special. From youth some have been led to believe they are inferior, a failure as compared to others, not very attractive, not smart enough, not educated enough, not ambitious enough.
Even worst yet because of what some have been told or how they have been treated by others, some feel dumb, ugly, untalented, uncultured, stupid, worthless, and that they will never amount to anything, or that they are some kind of freak, a misfit, or just a waste of space.
And so what happens to such a person. Proverbs 23:7 basically says that as a man thinks of himself in his heart, so he is.
So what has happened to us? Too many today have a low opinion of themselves; that they are not good enough, smart enough, or always feel guilty about something.
To overcome these feelings, some work themselves to death attempting to attain success, wealth and power to prove to themselves and show the world that they are not a failure. Others become mean, bitter, confused or envious, of others. And still others simply live a life of mediocrity, simply living and going to work just to pay the bills, living week to week, month to month, year to year just doing their best just to survive, without out any real goals for the future. They ask, “Is this all there is?” That kind of life is a defeated life, the kind of life the devil wants you to live.
Whereas the devil wants to disable and cripple you Jesus came that you may learn the truth, that you may learn your true identity which the devil is trying to hide from you. And why is he trying to hide it from you? So that you will not become what you are meant be, so that you will do his bidding and cause others to blinded as to who they really are. And ultimately I believe he wants to do his best to hurt Father God by blinding us to His love for us.
One of the reason Jesus came into the world was to unravel this kind of thinking and show us who we really are and how special we are and how important each of us are in the grand scheme of things and to God Himself.
Curtis and Eldredge writes omething interesting in their book, Sacred Romance; “The scriptures employ a wide scale of metaphors to capture the many facets of our relationship with God. If you consider them in sort of ascending orders, there is a noticeable and breathtaking progression.
Down near the bottom of the totem pole we are the clay and He the Potter. Moving up a notch, we are the sheep, and He is the Shepherd, which is a little better position on the food chain but hardly flattering; sheep don’t have a reputation as the most graceful and intelligent creatures in the world.
Moving upward, we are the servants of the Master, which at least leads us into the house, even if we have to wipe our feet, watch our manners, and not talk too much. Most Christians never get past this point, but the ladder of metaphors is about to make a swift ascent.
God also calls us His children and Himself our Heavenly Father, which brings us into the possibility of real intimacy. Love is not one of the things a vase or pot and its craftsman share together, nor does a sheep truly know the heart of the shepherd, though it may enjoy the fruits of his kindness.
Still there is something missing even in the best parent-child relationship. Friendship levels the playing field in a way family never can, at least not until the kids have grown. Friendship opens a level of communion that a five year old doesn’t know with his mother and father. And “friends” are what He calls us.
But there is still a higher and deeper level of intimacy and partnership awaiting us at the top of the metaphorical ascent. We are lovers. The courtship that began with a honeymoon in the Garden culminates in the wedding feast of the lamb. “I will take delight in you.” He says to us, “as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so I will rejoice over you, ” so that we might say in return, ”I am my beloved’s and His desire is for me.” (Sacred Romance, page 96)
You may ask, “who am I, how can God love me.” You are not loved by God because of what you’ve done, but rather because of who you are. We are His!
Let me share with you some interesting verses:
– Genesis 1:26-27 “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
Psalm 8:4-6 “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? 5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under theirfeet”
Jeremiah 1:5 (God told Jeremiah) “Before I formed you in the womb I knewyou,”
Romans 8:29 “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
Ephesians 1:4-5 “For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and”
1 Corinthians 15:49 “And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.”
John 1:12 says that we are children of God
Rom 8:17 says, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ”
I Corinthians 6:19 says that my body is a temple of His Holy Spirit who now dwells in me.
Philippians 3:20 says that I am a citizen of heaven.
Are you beginning to get the message of who you really are? These are important truths that the devil tries with all his power to make us forget. He wants you to feel insignificant.
And I am telling you today that we must hold on to these truths as if our very life depended upon it. In fact, it can be more important than life itself. Other people’s eternal destinies could depend upon whether we grasp these truths and live in them. The Lord wants to make you a powerful force in His kingdom but will not have much success if you see yourself as a useless, weak, failure.
It’s frightening to consider how much this world misses out when Christians think they are not special to God. There’s no Christian who cannot be used of God to win thousands of souls, should the Lord so chose. There’s no Christian who can’t be used to change the course of human history. But while we hold on to those lies of inferior thinking, we are crippled and won’t hardly do anything spectacular. This is serious – more serious than any of us can imagine.
I wonder how different this world would be today if all mankind could really see who and what they really are, if we could see everyone with the eyes of God and the angels.
We are a magnificent eternal, spirit beings, temporally clothed in this body. God, the owner, creator, and ruler of all the universe is FATHER to us all. As Christians, we will soon enjoy that supernatural, glorious body in spectacular surroundings with angels and our Lord in a heavenly existence.
Some of us have to wake up as to who and what we really are. Do you want to know how important you are to God? You are so important to God almighty, and He love you so very much that He allowed His Son to suffer and die for you, and then He sent you His own Spirit, to dwells inside you, wherever you go, 24 hours a day to help you. If that isn’t loving us and putting value on us I don’t know what is.
Negative thoughts will come but I tell you, once you recognize them, you need repel them with the same disgust you would a blood-sucking leech. These filthy invaders from the sewers of hell are not part of you. They are deceptions from the devil. The best way to push out those negative thoughts is to grasp the opposite thought, ideally, a statement you know to be true because it’s in the Word of God. Cling to them like life preserver. Resist the devil and he will flee (James 4:7). He’ll try to sneak back later, but as you daily look to the Lord you will live in victory.
For more lessons click on the following link: http://granvillenychurchofchrist.org/?page_id=566
All comments can be emailed to: bfronzek@gmail.com