Secret Identity

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.

--Colossians 3:1-4  (NLT)

Have you ever felt very out of place, like you just didn’t belong somewhere?  Chances are you’re not thinking in the right context or from the right perspective.

Let’s say you’re a multi-billionaire.  You’ve got more money than you know what to do with, but then what?  Are you truly satisfied deep within?  It may make you comfortable, it may reduce the stress of having to make ends meet, and it may allow you to acquire some fleeting pleasures, but in the end, money can’t satisfy our souls.

Let’s take it the other way.  What if you’re absolutely in the pits career-wise?  What if you’re at the bottom of the bottom without any hope of climbing the ranks?  Does that make you any less of a human being?  Are you really going to spend the rest of your life bitter about not achieving something that could never satisfy you anyway?  

The truth is every born-again believer has a secret identity, so to speak.  Our real lives are hidden in Christ.  We tend to tie our identity to the circumstances we’re in, but that’s all wrong.  If you truly know who you are in Christ, then your circumstances will begin to shift around you.

Look at Rahab as a case in point (see Joshua 2).  She was living as a prostitute, circumstances God certainly would not have approved of.  But she had something that made her very unique in God’s eyes: she had faith in Him.  Her faith in God propelled her to help the Israelite spies coming to scout the land God was giving to His chosen people.

As a result, she and her whole family were spared from destruction.  What’s more, she went on to become a link in the ancestral chain of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  

Don’t tell me God can’t turn things around when you put all your trust and faith in Him alone.  Rahab wasn’t even a Jew, yet her faith made a way for her to be grafted into God’s family tree.  Stop allowing your circumstances to define you; let God do that.

You are valuable to Him.  He gave His only begotten Son to die for you.  He gave His All to have a relationship with you.  And what are we living for?  If you’re living for finite things, then you’re getting ripped off.  

33 But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.

34 So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble (Matthew 6:33-34 AMP).