Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Over my life, I've come to recognize, not only in myself, but for how many people I know that something that someone influential has said in our lives something negative that someone influential in our life has said to us has shaped our life. And when I say influential, I'm talking about even our parents.
[00:00:21] I'm talking about teachers, coaches, our bosses.
[00:00:26] Sometimes it's our friends, sometimes it's even our spouse.
[00:00:31] And oftentimes it's just ourself.
[00:00:34] We say a lot of negative things to ourselves about ourselves and those statements stick with us in our life.
[00:00:44] Why can't you be more like your brother?
[00:00:47] Like your sister?
[00:00:49] Do you realize how difficult it is to work with you?
[00:00:54] Why are you so sensitive, so emotional?
[00:01:00] You know what? You're never gonna amount to anything.
[00:01:04] You know, it just seems like you always figure out a way to mess things up for our family.
[00:01:12] I expected more from you.
[00:01:15] You know what? You're just not as smart as the other kids.
[00:01:20] You should be ashamed of yourself.
[00:01:23] You're embarrassing me.
[00:01:25] I am so disappointed in you.
[00:01:30] And you know what?
[00:01:31] Nobody really likes you.
[00:01:36] And sometimes maybe there's just a comment, a negative comment about one of our physical features that somebody makes. And so for the rest of our life, it just becomes part of who we are, how we see ourselves in negative ways.
[00:01:51] I was thinking about the great philosopher Ricky Bobby in Talladega Knights.
[00:02:00] His dad told him when he was a little boy, if you ain't first, you're last.
[00:02:06] And if you've seen the movie, that's what drove him. Literally, Dr. Drove him in his life.
[00:02:13] How do we respond to these negative messages that we've received in our life?
[00:02:22] Sometimes even subconsciously, we don't even. May not even remember that people actually said these things to us. But somehow along the way, they just sink into our soul and they take root in our life. Subconsciously.
[00:02:35] It becomes our identity and how we actually view ourselves. And in the midst of that, our soul starts to shrink, starts to shrivel.
[00:02:45] And whether we realize it or not, we start to live as if those messages are the deepest truth about us. The most true thing about who I am.
[00:02:58] Some of us, we don't shrink and shrivel.
[00:03:01] We take it on as a challenge. I'm gonna prove them wrong. You could say right now who it was and what they said and you could trace in your life how you've wanted to prove them wrong.
[00:03:14] And this can look great on the outside because it can make us driven. It can make us striving to perform in this life because we're Gonna not let that message become a reality.
[00:03:30] But our heart becomes hard trying to push back against things that have been said to us.
[00:03:40] A couple questions I want you to think about today.
[00:03:45] What maybe have you come to believe about yourself consciously or subconsciously that has been because of something that has been spoken to you by somebody influential on your life and maybe even spoken to you just by yourself?
[00:04:00] What are those things? What have you come to believe? And secondly, is that actually what God would say is true about you? I want us to hold those two things up together today because that's what Paul wants us to do today in this series that we're calling Becoming who you are, what does it look like for us to grow up in Christ? Paul's going to tell us that the starting point is that we need to understand first and foremost who we are and whose we are if we're ever going to become who we are together.
[00:04:42] Ephesians, chapter one, the section that we're going to look at today, starting in verse 3, from verse 3 to verse 14. In the original language, it is one single sentence.
[00:04:53] And the subject of that sentence is God.
[00:04:58] Paul wants it to be really, really clear who we are and whose we are. It starts and it ends fully with God. He is the only one that has the power and the authority to proclaim our identity.
[00:05:12] Here's how it begins. Verse three.
[00:05:15] That we're blessed.
[00:05:17] Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
[00:05:34] What is the blessed I think about on social media, how so many times people will post about something and then at the end of it say blessed.
[00:05:50] What are the things that you would hashtag blessed in your life?
[00:05:56] Is it that vacation that you got to take?
[00:05:59] Is it that new car, that, that new job, that new relationship?
[00:06:05] Is it the reality of your health that your health is good?
[00:06:09] Is it that you are blessed with your marriage, your family?
[00:06:12] Is it experiences that you're getting to have in this life? Is it some kind of a goal that was achieved or a reward that was received? What is the hashtag blessed for you?
[00:06:26] Another way to say it is when you count your blessings, what do you count?
[00:06:32] What do you count? Just think about it for a minute.
[00:06:36] When you think about what makes your life blessed, what do you count?
[00:06:44] Now I want you to think about this.
[00:06:47] Whatever just came to your mind, I want you to ask this question about it.
[00:06:52] What would happen in this life if that was taken away?
[00:06:58] Here's the question that you need to answer, can that thing that you think is the thing that makes your life blessed, can it be taken away through loss? In this life, if circumstances somehow changed in some way, could you lose your blessed?
[00:07:19] Oftentimes when we're thinking about the blessed life, we're looking on the horizontal plane.
[00:07:24] What is it in this life that makes life worth living?
[00:07:29] But Paul's going to tell us, huh?
[00:07:32] Because those things on the horizontal plane, those things can be taken away.
[00:07:37] Circumstances can remove those things from our life in a blink of an eye. Paul says the real blessings in life are the things that cannot be taken away, these heavenly blessings. Paul's saying, look up when you want to understand how it is that you've been blessed. Because we've been blessed in ways being in Christ that friends, this world cannot take away, nothing can take it away.
[00:08:06] The deepest blessings are those that we know are going to last for eternity. And Paul starts out by letting us know that one of the greatest blessings that we receive is the reality that we have been chosen by God. Verse 4.
[00:08:22] For he chose us in him, meaning in Christ, before the creation of the world, before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight. That is our position that cannot change. We are chosen ones of God.
[00:08:46] What does that mean?
[00:08:49] What does that mean?
[00:08:52] It means that you are not overlooked.
[00:08:56] I don't care how you feel in this life.
[00:08:59] Paul is saying, you are not overlooked. You are not unseen. You are not forgotten in any way.
[00:09:06] God, God, for all of eternity, before the creation of the world, he sees you, he knows you, and he chose you.
[00:09:23] And that is true always and forever, for all of eternity. You are a chosen one of God.
[00:09:35] But I bet every one of us, on some level, we've got a story where we've experienced what it feels like to not be chosen, to be left out, to not be chosen for the basketball team, to not be chosen for that part in the school play, to not be chosen for that job that we really wanted, to not be chosen as a spouse and friends. If we start to see our identity as a person that is not chosen, that carries the not so subtle message sometimes that we can believe wrongly, that I have no worth when it comes to me in this world, I am not useful.
[00:10:27] We start to live into some, maybe some of those messages that we've heard, that I'm good for nothing, that can form the backdrop of our life in terms of how we see ourself with that backdrop that sometimes I would just say is common for all of us. At different times in our life, Paul uses the word chose.
[00:10:52] That word chose. God chose you in him. And that word chose, it is like a breath of fresh air in the context of a world where we can feel like we're unseen and left out. God chose us.
[00:11:08] And can we just think about it just for one minute?
[00:11:12] Who chose you? Who's the he?
[00:11:15] God, the creator of everything that we see? The infinite Almighty God.
[00:11:26] He sees you right where you're at right now. There's nothing about who you are that he doesn't understand.
[00:11:37] He knows you better than you know yourself and he sees you.
[00:11:43] And because Paul says he chose you before the foundations of the world, this wasn't just some kind of a little last minute choice of his, where God is kind of like feeling sorry for us.
[00:11:57] Like when we're on the playground and everybody's getting picked and there's just one person left and like, all right, we'll take Shawn.
[00:12:07] That's not the kind of chosen that God experiences.
[00:12:13] God sees you. He knows you and he chose you.
[00:12:18] Not like we're some kind of a stray pound mutt that nobody wants.
[00:12:23] You're not an afterthought.
[00:12:26] He chose you before the foundation of the world.
[00:12:32] He sees you. He knows you, and he chose you.
[00:12:37] And that's what Paul is telling us. When we want to count our blessings, we've got to look up and let this form the bedrock foundation of how we see ourselves. We are a chosen one of God.
[00:12:51] But Paul doesn't just stop there. He keeps going in this run on sentence that goes for multiple verses. We are predestined. He said in love.
[00:13:01] He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will.
[00:13:13] What is his choosing?
[00:13:15] His predestining? It is sourced in love, not pity.
[00:13:23] It is sourced in his pleasure, not obligation.
[00:13:29] It's not like I'm God. And this is just the thing that God has to do is love people to pull people toward Him. No, God did it with great joy.
[00:13:38] And what did he do? He adopted us.
[00:13:41] He pulled us into an eternal relationship with him that lasts forever, with all the rights and privileges of what it actually means to be a son or a daughter of God.
[00:13:58] We're the child of a king.
[00:14:02] Say that to yourself sometimes.
[00:14:05] My mom, long before I ever chose to follow Jesus, when she would put me in bed at night, she would say that over and over to me, you are the child of a king.
[00:14:18] Sometimes when I would come home late at night, not having been doing what I should have been Doing with tears in her eyes, she would look at me and say, you're the child of a king. And I'll be honest, I didn't even like it. It just. It kind of grated on my soul. But I tell you, that moment that I received the gospel, when I understood what John said, when he said, but as many as received him, to them they gave the right to become children of God.
[00:14:46] I just wept.
[00:14:48] Just the remembering of that identity that my mom spoke over me all those years ago. You are the child of a king. We need to look in the mirror, friends, and say that about ourselves. We are the child of a king.
[00:15:05] He predestined us.
[00:15:08] This idea of being predestined and chosen, those words carry, in some senses, a little bit of overlap. And they carry the overlap of intention.
[00:15:18] And by intention, I mean that this is not a random choice of God. He is personal, absolutely personal with each and every one of us.
[00:15:29] It's not like we're all just a part of this mass humanity that God chose and predestined together. He sees you individually and he sees us collectively.
[00:15:40] He knows there is a relational element in God deep within him, of intentionality. He moves toward you as an individual, as a person.
[00:15:55] But there's a nuance to this word predestined that actually denotes the idea of a destination.
[00:16:05] It implies that there is an intended purpose for our life.
[00:16:10] God didn't call us to a relationship with him and then just push us out into the world to wander around and say, good luck, kid.
[00:16:17] Hope you figure it out.
[00:16:20] No, again, at his core, he is relational.
[00:16:24] And that relationship is intended to be reciprocal, where we walk with him and around Him. In his purposes in this world, he's got a destination for us and for his church and for all of eternity. He's got a plan and a purpose, and we get to be on the stage, part of what it is that God is doing in the purposes of this world.
[00:16:51] Now, I don't know where God is right now and your priorities for life, but I know that we, as followers of Jesus, as chosen and predestined ones of his, we are center stage in God's mind and priority in terms of what he is doing in this world. He wants to use us to be a part of bringing redemption to this world. It is to be our priority. Just think about that.
[00:17:19] The most important thing happening on the planet, the redemption of people. God invites us together to be a part of that in the world, to bring his kingdom to earth, to bring redemption to the brokenness of this world.
[00:17:39] We get to be a part of bringing his kingdom.
[00:17:46] And that reality, friends, it demands a response.
[00:17:50] If that's true, if God has a plan and a purpose and he wants to use it, how are we gonna respond?
[00:17:57] And I think the only response, and I believe that Paul thinks the only response is humility, that. That we would actually hold our life up humbly before God. One just in great gratitude that we're chosen and destined in God's plan and his purpose. But we hold our life up to him and say, my life belongs to you. I want to be a part of your plan. And we acknowledge God, your plan for my life is better than any plan that I would have for my life.
[00:18:29] My life is yours.
[00:18:32] My life is yours. I want to be a part of the destination of predestination that you have for me.
[00:18:42] As Paul continues, he wants us to know that part of that plan as we hold up our life to him, is also to receive something. Part of his plan is that we would receive his grace, his incredible love, his kindness, his unearned favor in our life.
[00:19:05] Here's how Paul continues on verse six. It says, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves in him, meaning in Christ we have redemption through the blood, through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us.
[00:19:35] You hear what Paul's saying.
[00:19:38] If we're gonna live as part of God's plan, if we are gonna become who we are and whose we are, we've got to continue to look up. And when we look up, what do we look at?
[00:19:50] Paul is saying, you look at the cross, you remember this grace that was freely given to you.
[00:19:59] Freely given. It is not something that you worked for or earned or deserved in some way.
[00:20:07] The fact that God can look at you as holy and blameless is not because in everything that you've done in your life is holy and blameless. It's because the holy and blameless one stretched out on a cross in our place to pay the penalty for our sins. And because of what he did on our behalf, through that and that alone, we can become holy and blameless.
[00:20:31] And Paul's like, fix your eyes on that. Look up to know who you are and whose you are. Because that grace is pouring out. Paul uses the word, he lavished it upon us.
[00:20:44] That word lavished in all of its different forms, used in the New Testament 78 times that word is used.
[00:20:54] 45 of those times are by Paul, you could say he used it lavishly.
[00:21:04] Because Paul understood the grace of God.
[00:21:09] He never got over it.
[00:21:11] He never looked at his life, he never looked at his past without remembering the cross.
[00:21:18] And that's what defined who he was and whose he was lavished.
[00:21:26] Is it an overstatement?
[00:21:28] No, no, no, no. Friends, when we talk about God's grace, whatever hyperbole we want to use, it is actually an understatement.
[00:21:40] There's more grace than we can handle. When we hold our hands up to receive, there's more than we can handle. And if we think it's running out, there's more and more still. It's like John wrote in John 1, that we receive this grace upon grace with the implication, meaning upon grace, upon grace, it never runs out.
[00:22:01] And that defines, friends, who we are and whose we are. We are his.
[00:22:09] As Paul continues, he says that this plan that God makes known to us, it says with all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good purpose, which he purposed in Christ.
[00:22:30] Paul saying, we're.
[00:22:32] We're not invited in. As children that are kept in the dark and children that are like, you're seen and not heard, God brings us in on his plan.
[00:22:43] As I was studying for this, it was interesting. A couple of guys that I read there were a couple of my favorite. They both brought this up, this idea of what does it mean with all wisdom?
[00:22:55] For me, I just kind of. I kind of moved past that, but they didn't. And it was impacting to me. Here's what they wanted us to understand.
[00:23:06] The way that God makes known his mystery is with all wisdom and understanding.
[00:23:14] Here's what I want to contrast that with. It does not say knowledge.
[00:23:20] When God wants to reveal himself to us, reveal his purposes to us, he will do it with wisdom and understanding. Because biblically, wisdom and understanding is the application of knowledge.
[00:23:34] It's actually something that we learn to experience. We don't learn simply by being told.
[00:23:41] We need to experience the reality of what God is telling us is true about Him. We experience these realities of God through our life experience, both good things and really bad things in our life.
[00:24:03] You don't learn from being told. You learn from experience, good and bad.
[00:24:08] I don't know if there's a better example biblically than the life of Joseph.
[00:24:14] When you think about the whole story of Joseph, the end of the whole book of Genesis, you see where he started out in his life, Hashtag blessed.
[00:24:26] He was the Son, the favored Son, but then his Brothers got jealous and they sold him into slavery.
[00:24:38] Not so blessed, seemingly. But God, even in the midst of that difficulty, takes him to a place where. Where he becomes head of Potiphar's house, ruler, leader in and around the things in his influence.
[00:24:55] Blessed.
[00:24:56] Then, through a false accusation, Joseph finds himself again in prison.
[00:25:03] God, what are you doing?
[00:25:06] But then, through circumstances in and around prison, he comes to be number two in Egypt.
[00:25:13] Up, down. Up, down, up. It's the story of Joseph, someone that was deeply loved by God.
[00:25:22] What was the punchline of Joseph's life when he gets to the very end when his brothers are before him and he could kill them for what they did to him?
[00:25:36] He said, what? You meant evil.
[00:25:40] God meant for good.
[00:25:46] What was Joseph doing?
[00:25:50] He was looking up.
[00:25:53] He had learned over a long life experiences of ups and downs that God's plan is good.
[00:26:01] No matter where we are in the process, his plan. Plan can be trusted. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. He is good and his plan is good.
[00:26:14] And that defines, friends, who we are and whose we are. And that's why we can put our life in his hands.
[00:26:23] Joseph teaches, look up, don't look at your circumstances. Don't look at the circumstances of your life right now to try to decide whether God is blessing you or not. Look up, remember him.
[00:26:41] Because he's the one who defines who you are and whose you are.
[00:26:46] And in verse 10, Paul reminds us the end goal of God's plan with us, through us, for us. Verse 10, it says to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment. Meaning this is the end of time. This is the destination of our predestination. This is God's end goal for us. To do what? To bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth and all of it under Christ.
[00:27:26] Friends, hear this. I said this last week. We need to remember becoming who we are. And when I say we, I'm talking about us as the church. We need to remember that God's ultimate goal is not that we would just figure out how to get people to heaven when they die.
[00:27:43] Our goal as a church is to bring heaven to earth while we live. And Paul makes that so clear here. At the end of time, what is he gonna do? He's gonna bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth.
[00:27:59] And so what do we do now?
[00:28:01] We are that small working model of what we know about God's kingdom in heaven. And we're to bring the values of that kingdom into this world so that when the world around Us looks in and sees who we are and how we're living our life to say, I want a part of, of that. Not because we're great, but because of who God is and what it is that he is doing in our lives and through our lives. That is God's ultimate fulfillment.
[00:28:31] That's what it means for us to become who we are.
[00:28:40] Okay, now the next two verses in Ephesians chapter one, this is going to feel a little bit like a parenthesis because what I need to do is I want to engage around an age old question that has been debated.
[00:28:54] What is the nature of God's sovereignty or his providence or his plan in this world?
[00:29:01] Let's listen to what Paul says in these next two verses. It says in him, in Christ we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who, who works out everything, everything in conformity with the will, with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.
[00:29:31] Since this was written, this has raised questions in the minds of people. Does that mean that everything is predestined and determined by God that is part of his plan? Or am I able to make real choices in this life that actually make a real difference in this world? Which of those is true? Is there a blueprint out there that I don't know exactly what the blueprint is, but that blueprint determines the way that I'm gonna live and it determines every detail, including my eternal fate, whether salvation or damnation.
[00:30:13] All of that is controlled by God for all of eternity, for every person who ever lived. Is that what true? Or is our future in some way the sum of our choices? Am I free to make choices that are real?
[00:30:32] Here's what I want you to Just for the record, I am not gonna solve this for you today.
[00:30:38] Trust me, it hasn't been solved. People have debated this. I just want you to understand one thing. I want you to understand why this is debated.
[00:30:49] Why this is debated.
[00:30:51] Here's the short answer of why this is debated is because the Bible teaches both things.
[00:31:01] Ephesians teaches both things, talks about this plan of God and how we can be a part of this plan of God, this eternal plan. But it also says as we get to the end of Ephesians, here's what you need to do. There's actually things that you need to do to obey and be part of that plan. It talks about both things. Yes, there is a plan that we can be part of. And we can rest in that.
[00:31:26] But it also teaches that we have free choices in this life. Choices that are real, choices that matter, choices that have actual consequences to them. And we're held responsible before God for the choices that we make in this life.
[00:31:46] So if you were to take these questions to the Bible. Take this question to the Bible. Am I free to choose or does God have an eternal plan to. The answer is yes.
[00:31:57] It's yes.
[00:31:59] It's both of those things. And it's not like 50% this and 50% this. It is 100%. God has a plan that he is working to an end. And your choices matter. You are free to make choices that are real and they matter.
[00:32:18] But here's what we need to understand.
[00:32:20] Actually, we don't need to understand it. We just need to know that it's true is that God uses all of our free choices in such a way that they conform to his ultimate plan and purposes.
[00:32:36] Yes, God is sovereign over all of human history, and he accomplishes his sovereign purposes through our genuine human choices.
[00:32:49] I'm going to say it again. Our choices are real. And our choices have consequences in this life and for eternity. And we are responsible and our responsibility is real before a holy God.
[00:33:02] And God's sovereignty is real.
[00:33:06] Both of those things are true.
[00:33:09] But what God doesn't do, what the Bible doesn't do, is explain what are the mechanics of how these two things actually work together. The Bible holds up both of these truths without explaining how they fit together, but they simply never sacrifice either one. The Bible doesn't sacrifice one for the sake of the other.
[00:33:38] Let's get practical.
[00:33:42] If the goal of this series is for us to become who we are, to become people who are grown up in our identity in Christ, that we're actually able to look up. We don't look at our circumstances to try to figure out what God thinks about us, what is true about us. We look up and we listen to the one who has the authority to tell us who we are and whose we are.
[00:34:13] So how do we do that?
[00:34:15] How do we do that together?
[00:34:19] Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 14 and 15. Paul says this.
[00:34:25] Then we, meaning the church.
[00:34:28] Then we will no longer be infants, meaning immature, tossed back and forth by the waves, blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
[00:34:44] Well, Paul is saying we've got to get to that place where the messages of this world aren't the things that are rocking our world constantly.
[00:34:53] We've got to figure out how do we root our life in the good soil of what God says is true about us?
[00:35:01] How do we do that? Paul tells us instead of being rocked back and forth, instead speaking the truth in love.
[00:35:11] Speaking the truth in love. We will grow to become in every respect, the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ.
[00:35:25] If we want to become who we are as God's church in the Gallatin Valley, we need to learn to speak the truth in love.
[00:35:37] I'll make an admission here.
[00:35:39] Whenever I've read this, this idea of speaking the truth in love. I've always associated the truth piece with saying hard things to people like, I need to tell you the truth about who you are and what you did.
[00:35:56] We'll get there.
[00:35:58] But there is a place, friends, where what we need to do is we need to speak the truth about ourselves to each other and explain and communicate to each other who we are and whose we are as it comes from God and God alone.
[00:36:17] We need to be those kinds of people that actually speak encouragement into the lives of other people, that speak life into the lives of other people, that actually communicate these ideas of identity into the lives of other people. That's what it means to become who we are. We speak the truth, the beautiful truths of identity to one another.
[00:36:46] Got to say this. This week I'm gonna try to hold it together while I share this group of friends. We were together, one of the guys, one of our friends, was at this place in life where he had to make a really courageous but difficult decision.
[00:37:07] Cause he needs to take his life in a different way direction.
[00:37:11] We were there to, like, love and encourage and help him in whatever way we could.
[00:37:20] During that meeting, I looked at him and I just said, I want you to know I'm really proud of you.
[00:37:29] I feel like the words had hardly even gotten out of my mouth when he just kind of. His shoulders kind of went down and he looked down and his response was, there's not much to be proud of in my life.
[00:37:47] And I just kept talking.
[00:37:50] But then someone else in the group a little while later just said, hey, I need to go back to something that you said.
[00:37:59] You said a little while ago, there's nothing in your life or not much in your life to be proud of.
[00:38:07] And then this person with tears in his eyes began to just pour out the truth of who our friend was in Christ, who he was and whose he was. And you could just see his eyes just well up with tears.
[00:38:24] His head went from down to up.
[00:38:28] And I Just sat there thinking, that's it.
[00:38:32] That's it.
[00:38:33] That's what Paul is telling us. We need to learn to do that. We need to learn to do that for ourselves. Because we're going to say things to ourselves that aren't true. Other people are going to say things to us that is not true. The enemy of your soul is going to be whispering things to you that are not true. And in the midst of that, we've got to speak truth to one another. We've got to remind each other who we are and whose we are.
[00:39:03] Friends, this is your assignment this week.
[00:39:06] Listen.
[00:39:09] Listen to what people are saying.
[00:39:11] Listen to the person in your life that might be saying something that is not true of them. As a child of God that says something like, there's nothing in my life. There's not much in my life to be proud of right now.
[00:39:25] I'm never gonna be something in this life. Whatever it is, when you hear it, you gotta push back against it and say, that's not true.
[00:39:35] That is a lie from the pit of hell. We need to learn to speak into the lives of people and friends. You've gotta learn to speak into your own life because you're gonna tell yourself those same lies and you're just gonna be tossed back and forth.
[00:39:52] We've gotta learn to listen.
[00:39:55] Speak into the lives of people.
[00:40:00] Who gets to tell you.
[00:40:03] Who gets to tell you who you are and whose you are?
[00:40:11] Not your parents, not that middle school coach, not that high school teacher, not that friend that said something brutal to you when you were growing up. Those are not the people that get to tell us who we are and whose we are. God. And God alone gets to tell us that message.
[00:40:32] And we need to let him tell us that over again. And we need to speak it into the lives of each other.
[00:40:40] Let's pray.
[00:40:46] God, I am just so grateful that the things that are true about us because we are yours don't change because of circumstances in this life.
[00:41:03] They are rock solid. They are a firm foundation. Things can come and go in my life. I can win, I can lose. Those things never change.
[00:41:14] Thank you, God.
[00:41:16] That we are blessed, that we are chosen, that we are destined for a plan and a future with you. And we can rest in it and we can trust in it.
[00:41:31] Jesus, we submit our life to you because you're the only one that can tell us who we are and whose we are.
[00:41:43] We're yours.
[00:41:46] And it's in your powerful and resurrected name that we pray. And all God's people said, amen.
