ICS Daily Devotions
Exercise the Truth of Our Identity
2 Peter 1:2-4 (NKJV) Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
The Word of God is Christians’ yardstick in measuring what is right and wrong in society, including gender issues. We know from Genesis that God made Adam and Eve to be partners for life. The Bible starts with a marriage between a man and a woman and ends with the church being the bride of Christ in the Book of Revelation, so the biblical view of marriage is always between a man and a woman, and there is absolute gender clarity in God’s creation. Nonetheless, we live in a broken and fallen world, and sin is lawlessness, self-centredness and living apart from God.
Because we are made up of body, soul and spirit, and all our bodies are fallen—believers and non-believers alike, unless we know how to walk in the Spirit, we will be subject to fleshly desires dictated by the body through its senses. As the struggle with our flesh won’t end until we get to heaven, it’s necessary to renew our minds with the Word of God to have the awareness that we can overcome these natural or unnatural sexual desires.
The last battlefield is in the realm of our mind. The devil is trying hard to conform us to the world by advocating through media, social media and even education that sexual confusion, sexual fluidity, same sex attraction, fornication and adultery are all ok. Therefore, we must counteract these lies with the truths about our identity in Christ and live from them. First, know that we are children of God saved by grace, redeemed, born again, and have new hearts that are empowered by the Holy Spirit to reign in our fleshly desires. Second, we need to deal with the issue of rejection by knowing that we are accepted in the beloved. Because the root of rejection started in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were booted out, a restored relationship with God is the only thing that will give us a definite sense of security.
We are deeply loved by God since we are hidden in Christ, and it is in Christ that we are seen as righteous, holy, and accepted by God. Knowing our identity in Christ enables us to live confidently and differently through the knowledge that we can rule and reign through our spirit man instead of being subject to the realm of the soul. We need to exercise the truth of who we are in Christ in our daily living, including dealing with our thought life, being selective with what we watch, and refusing to let our feelings get the better of us.
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