Conflicted, but God still wants you! (Live Recording Below)
Even everyday encounters with family and loved ones can be a challenge, but the holidays can be particularly daunting, presenting us with both the best and worst of times. In the life of a Believer, that which is most familiar to us is very often no longer desirable.
As we celebrate and share these cultural and religious seasons alongside those cherished former days and memories of what was, we can find ourselves running from the “Ghosts of Christmas Past” – still wandering through the shadows, and caught betwixt and between the old and the new.
Oftentimes, we struggle with our new identity in Christ Jesus in the face of spiritual resistance and even opposition from those we love and hold in the HIGHEST regard. A stiff neck from those who still retain a position of ‘moral authority’ and exercise over our lives, because we let them. People who have been given the power to both reflect and cast their image of us into our very souls.
Have you ever noticed that even a simple encounter with those who are both ‘contrary and familiar’ is enough to throw our constellations out of orbit? It seems to always happen just when we thought we’d conquered “the mountain of other people’s opinions.” We instantly and painfully discover that “what they think about us” means a lot more than we had previously thought. Rivaling and counteracting what God has said and formed in us! How can this happen??? How could this be???
Our conflict is not that God hasn’t really done it in our lives, because He has (you know, “That good NEW thing God has done in us!”), but instead, and rather in the fact that others just can’t seem to accept it. The new man.
Just when you think family and friends are finally embracing and ready to see the real you is when you discover that they just can’t see you the way God does. What can be even more devastating is when you realize that they don’t even want to.
This can all lead to very serious relationship trouble, fear, and anxiety, along with an inner battle of turmoil and even anguish over what to do about it. What can you do when you can’t reconcile the two worlds that others want you to live in?
We hurt and then we mourn ourselves. Our identity is captured and held hostage at that moment, and beyond until we face that 800-pound gorilla in the room. All of this, by the way, is happening by God’s revealing Grace. It is happening in order for us to identify and understand that this idol is still hovering over the throne of our hearts.
God is still not in an “unshared” 1st Place in our hearts and lives. This stronghold is attached to our very DNA like a personally coded virus, but there is One Way out of what can feel like an invisible prison of the soul – and He is the Lord! So, “What must be done?”
Join us in this broadcast as we get naked and true about the real you– and how just one revelation from God showing His GREAT DESIRE for you – and your desirability to Him – can change your entire identity and “what you think about yourself” FOREVER.
About The Author
WE MUST ALWAYS KNOW WHO WE ARE WITH GOD.