Identity Check

Matthew 16:24

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

From creation to new creation what will you contribute? I know that is a staggering question but it’s one you need to be thinking about often. We all leave a story behind after we draw our last breath. We leave behind not only a story that others will remember, but we leave behind a story that follows us into eternity.

When my time comes to step over into eternity, I want my children and their children to be able to pick up a breadcrumb trail that speaks of following Jesus. I’m sure they will discover my sinfulness. We are all sinners, but I’m hopeful and sure they will also see my surrender to the only one that can set it all right again. They will find I followed Jesus.

Everyday choices paint your part of the story between creation and new creation. What is your canvas looking like? Are you living up to the identity God has set for you?  Christ has caused you to be a new creation in Him. He has bought you with a price. He has set you apart for His glory and sprinkled you among the world to be salt and light.

Are you surrendered today to the pen of God who wants to write a story through your life? He wants your life to be an echo to the world of how to be set free, of how to truly live, of what He has prepared for those who follow Him. Are you allowing God to have all of you? As one writer has said about the story God is writing, “He is its beginning, end and center. It is the story of the mission of God, of this God and no other.”

Is your life inviting people to hear God, to see God, to want a relationship with the God you follow? If not, you can change all that in a moment. Surrender again to His Lordship. Let Him take over the story of your life again. You were meant to worship God alone with all of your life.

Christopher J. H. Wright once wrote, “What a travesty it is when humans, who themselves are the work of God’s hands and were made to rule the rest of the works of God’s hands, choose instead to worship the work of their own hands (Ps. 115:4).”

You are leaving a legacy! What is that legacy? It can be His story through you if you will simply follow Him fresh again.

Author Steve Wrights, 1/7/13, at http://stevewright.info/2013/01/07/are-you-living-up-to-the-identity-god-has-set-for-you/