When we first started Grace Life International in 1995, our Vice-President was meeting with a man who had ADD. He spent quite a bit of time describing how bad it was and how it was negatively affecting his life. The Holy Spirit prompted our VP to ask this great question. "Do you have ADD or does ADD have you?" This person still needed our help, but it was keen discernment revealing that he was allowing his ADD to define his identity.
Similarly, we have "some" "things" wrong with us. Sometimes they are a condition like ADD, fibromyalgia, trauma, depression, addiction, pride, self-effort, a struggling marriage, loneliness, perfectionism, worry, impatience, rejection, self-condemnation, performance based acceptance and more. The question is do they have us or do we have them?
In Christ, we do not have "something wrong with us" because we are complete and perfect in Christ. Colossians 2:10 says, "in Him all the fullness of deity dwells and you have been made complete in Him." NASB Hebrews 10:14 echoes this in a more powerful way stating, "Through one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those whom He sanctified." NASB God has fixed what was wrong with us when He crucified our identity in Adam and raised us up with Christ with a new creation identity as a child of the living God!
There are two deceptions we need to be aware of. One is believing we are defined by what we do, who we know, what we have, illnesses, what has happened to us, or what others say about us. One man said at one of our Grace Life Conferences that his parents had raised him to believe he was better than everyone else. A lady once said she has been told her entire life that she would never amount to anything. These were defining moments for each.
A second deception is believing that because we know who we are in Christ, we don't have any thing wrong with us. We do and it is called the flesh. The flesh has desires which have been or are patterns of coping with life apart from dependence on Christ in us. Do you know what yours are? Here are some of mine: superiority, self-pity, discouragement, legalism, fear of rejection, performing for acceptance, depression, and having to be the best to feel important. I am thankful that I don't follow those patterns very much anymore. They have been replaced with the patterns of Christ living through me instead, which has gotten my focus off of me and on loving God and people. But most of all, though I have "some" "things" like these which are wrong with me at times, I don't have "something wrong with me" because God took care of that already when He exchanged my old identity for my new identity in Christ.
How about you? Do you live life thinking "there is something wrong with me" because of fleshly patterns? Or, do you stand firmly in your identity in Christ while realizing and admitting you still have "some" "things" wrong with you at times?
Why don't we all take a moment right now and ask God which of these ways we tend to live our daily lives, then respond to whatever He says to us?
You are loved! Believe it. Receive it. Live in it.
Mark Maulding, President and Founder
www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2012 Mark Maulding
