“The Message” satellite radio station often has sound bites
that are catchy phrases about the Christian faith. As I was driving to work this morning, I
heard one that stuck with me because it was associated with something I had
talked about last night. It said, “The
Christian faith isn’t about being good enough.
It’s about trusting the One who makes you good enough.”
In my experience, the vast majority of problems come from
two sources: lack of forgiveness of self or others and not fully grasping the
concept of identity in Christ. The
latter affects self-worth. Robert McGee
in his book, “The Search for Significance,” explains that people often fall
into the performance trap. That trap is
best illustrated as a mathematical equation:
My performance +
other’s opinions = self-worth
When a person lives according to this formula, they are not
living according to what God thinks of them.
Helping people understand that God unconditionally loves them and wholly
accepts them just as they are is a large part of my job. When it happens, when they really get it,
growth is exponential. It is so cool to
see the transformation!
When I got to the office, I was a few minutes early for a
meeting. Usually when I have a few extra
minutes, I will waste it doing something on the internet or pull out a book and
read a few pages. Today, I
uncharacteristically just pulled out my Bible and decided to read something
from it. My first thought was to go to
Eph. 3:20-21 because it is one of my current favorite passages. But I thought, “I have a few minutes so I
will read the whole chapter and put it in context.” When I got to verses 14-19, it opened up to
me.
“For this reason I bow
my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth
derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His
glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted
and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the
breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which
surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”
Wow! There is so much
packed into this prayer! I can’t
possibly unpack it all here but two things stand out today. First, Paul’s prayer is for the Ephesians to
really GET identity in Christ. Secondly, it talks about how we are “strengthened
with power through His Spirit.”
These two points are impactful for me today not because they
are new to me. Rather, they stand out
because of the timing which some would call coincidence but I call “God-incidence.” I don’t believe in coincidences. The first point of identity in Christ is
timely because of the sound bite I heard on the radio which stuck with me
because I had just had a conversation with Tim about it the night before. The second point about the Holy Spirit ties
directly to what our Bible study group talked about last night.
In other words, last night I studied with my Bible study
group about the role of the Holy Spirit and how it energizes us and gives us
strength. Then late last night, Tim and
I had a conversation about self-worth and identity in Christ. Then, I heard the “good enough” sound bite on
the radio this morning. Then, I
unusually pulled out my Bible to pass a few minutes and happened to read a
passage that reinforces all of that.
Yeah, it’s just a coincidence.
