“But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for He called you out of the darkness into His wonderful light. ‘Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy, now you have received God’s mercy.’” (1 Peter 2:9-10 NLT)
How do we become great for God? By allowing Him to become great in and through us. Here’s the truth: if we’re seeking greatness for ourselves, if it is attained, it will be short-lived and disappointing. Why? Because God alone is “great and greatly to be praised” as the Psalmist declared in Psalm 48.
Greatness grows out of history, but is realized in our destiny, I love how Lisa Bevere expressed it when she wrote: “God speaks to WHO we are BECOMING not to WHO we’ve BEEN. He calls forth DESTINY rather than echo HISTORY.” The Lord isn’t nearly as concerned about who you are or who you’ve been as He is in who you will allow HIM to be in and through you. The more visible Jesus becomes in and through us, the greater measure of usefulness we’ll have in His Kingdom.
If we come to the Lord with a crisis of identity, we’ll be lost and virtually valueless to the Kingdom of God, but if, by His grace and in the power of His Spirit, we yield our life and allegiance to the Lord Jesus, open our heart and life to His directives, we can be anything He desires us to be or do.
If we see ourselves simply as a victim and we choose to be shaped by our victim mentality, we’ll feel worthless, depressed, distrusting, negative, and very likely self-pitying. Our identity will always be overshadowed by our thoughts of ourselves as “poor me”, rather than “How Great THOU ART!” Or if we only see ourselves as a worthless sinner, while the victim may focus on their pain, the sinner focuses on their failures. “Sinners” continue to relive their failures, living in shame and regret, ultimately concluding, “What’s the use! I’ll never amount to anything. I’ve failed, I must be a failure.”
Gratefully, we can learn from our history, but lean into our destiny by choosing a third option. The Apostle Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 5:17 when he writes: “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” Does that mean we simply ignore our previous life? Absolutely not! We learn from it, but we refuse to live in it.
Our new life allows us to experience an amazing, life-altering transformation that transcends the past and allows us to flow into a brand-new future designed and guided by the Lord Himself. The picture Paul paints is the beautiful butterfly that emerges from a cocoon; an ugly slug of a creature that becomes the awe inspiring butterfly, never to return to the confines of a cocoon again. The old is gone! The new has come!
This amazing transformation begins the moment we open our heart and mind to the Lordship of Jesus and will last throughout eternity. When a person is willing to give themselves to the ownership and rulership of the king of Kings, the Lord Jesus, from that moment He gives them the right , the Spirit-supplied power, to become and live as a brand new person.
If you’d like to discover that transformation for yourself, click on this link ANewStory.com and allow Ron Hutchcraft to walk you through a brief illustration as to how you can begin your new story today. You can step into a brand-new destiny, leaving your history behind.
Blessings, Ed 😊
