You are not your past.

Believe it or not I used to give sermons at Open Door Community Church in Denver on occasion and as I was wandering around my PC I found one that I thought deserved a closer look. Please take into consideration that it was originally written in outline form and I did my best to expound on the ideas that were running through my head at the time. So here it goes......

You Are Not Your Past


When was the last time you looked in the mirror and said, “Well, PRAISE THE Lord! I am one heck of an awe inspiring creation! If you’re anything like me that would be never. We are always picking away at ourselves. We are never quite good enough for us. We compare ourselves to Super Models, Athletes and Movie Stars. How fair is that? We are forever making comparisons to those who have more money, better looks and bigger houses. We even compare ourselves to people in our own family. Wouldn’t it be nice to be more like my sister, brother or cousin?
Then you take a look at nature and then you really are in awe and wonder.

Psalm 8 says “When I look at the amazing work of your hand, I wonder who am I that you should consider me? And the son of man that you care about him? Yet You have made us just slightly lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and majesty. You did make us to rule over Your creation. You put under our rule including the animals of the earth and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and even the fish that swim in the seas. “

Now I don’t know how many of you have seen the magnificence of God first hand, but I have. (No I have never been to the moon or landed on some distant star, butI have looked through a very powerful teltscope) You can’t miss it really. Go outside on a clear night and look up. That is the majesty of God revealed. “O Lord our Lord! How majestic is Your name in all the earth. You have displayed Thy splendor above the heavens.” We look out at the stars and see only a tiny fraction of what is out there.
What is it like to think about that? Do you feel small and insignificant? Can we, in our small minds, understand how immense this universe is? We can’t. No more than we can comprehend eternity. But this earth is merely a cell in a very large body. The earth is big enough for us to contemplate. 6.5 billion people. You are just one being in all of that chaos. So WHO ARE WE in all of this immensity?
Genesis 1:27
27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;….

You are created in the very image of the God that created all of this. You are created slightly lower than the angles, but far above the very stars in the sky. You are a precious jewel set in the crown of the Most High.

So if we are created in the image of God to be like God, why do we spend so much time and effort listening to false information? You know it’s true. Let us count the ways.
1: People we don’t even know.
2: Ourselves
3: Sometimes our spouse/SO
4: “friends”
5: Parents
6: TV/media

AS I look over this list I see the majority are people we are very close to. I know that a great deal of false information come from our parents. I think back on my years of schooling and I recall tons of false information that came from the ‘bullies’ and my teachers. I know it’s hard to believe that teachers would ever make a comment that might be critical, but it happens. These situations and people can attach labels to us that can haunt us and play tapes in out minds for years. They may not be in these exact words but they can be:

Stupid
Fat
You’re a waste
You’re ugly
You can’t do anything right
Klutz
Idiot
Loser
Dork
Geek
Lazy

I have heard many of these and I call myself some of them. Perhaps you have done things in the past or have had things happen to you that have ‘labeled’ you or Maybe you have labeled yourself:

Maybe you were abused so you are a victim
Perhaps you have had alcohol abuse in you past
Maybe, like me, you abused drugs.
Could it be that you have issues with anger?’
Are you a thief?
Liar?
Godless?
Cheater

How many of these things do we allow to define who we are? We are told in scripture to speak things that are not as though they are and yet we find it difficult to believe that my telling myself that I am not a drug addict doesn’t make it so. Jesus makes it so. Jesus delivered us from all of the labels that man puts on us. That’s just it these labels are:

Man made.
They are not truth as in they are lies.
They were nailed to the cross.

Jesus died to deliver us from the wages of sin and death. These labels are just that. If life and death are in the tongue and death has been defeated then we can overcome the death that has been dealt to us over the years. Every single part of your life where you feel you fall short has been sacrificed with Christ on the cross. Every time that we heard or said these words to ourselves it was as if Satan himself was speaking defeat and death to you. You see we are not in a battle with flesh and blood but with dark powers that are trying to steal from us what Christ died to give us. The one thing we can be sure of is that these labels are not from the God that created us greater than the stars.

1 John 4:4-6
4. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them (the spirits of antichrist), because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
5. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.

Paul said “I want to know nothing except Christ and Him crucified.”
I don’t want to know that old me. I don’t want to know anything about the life I left behind. These labels are not who we in Christ are anymore. Romans 8:1 reminds us that There is Now no condemnation to those who are in Christ. So, we are of God and so we should ask….

“What would God say?”

We are God’s greatest creation
I am saved
I am Chosen
I am Loved
I am forgiven
I am the very righteousness of God through Christ Jesus
I am above and not beneath. The head and not the tail.
I am a Child of the King of the Universe.
And so are You!

So that none of you should think I don’t know what I’m talking about or perhaps that I live some charmed life, I have worn all those labels that I listed above. Either from others or myself. I was a liar, thief, cheater, slob, and a loser. Carrying these labels around can become the heaviest possession we own. The can bend our will and crush our true self. Our Jesus self. It is time set down the labels and enter into the rest that Jesus said was His rest, through accepting the sacrifice that was made for us. We must remember that the past is in the past and now we are free. We must forgive all of those who have spoken against us including ourselves. Every single hurt and bruise, every horrid thought and memory is now nailed to the cross where Christ took it all upon His shoulders. It can’t hurt you anymore.
Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. What words to rest by! YOU are God’s greatest creation. Don’t ever forget!