Remembering Who I Am

For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.      1Co 2:2 

I find myself focusing on me way too often. It is so easy to let pride rise up within me. So easy to forget who I am and where I came from. And for that matter, where I am going.  Too easy to focus on what is going on around me. You see, I tend to forget who I am. The storm starts rising up around me and I forget the words that have been spoken to me. I forget the promises that were made. I forget that who I am has little or nothing to do with what I can see or hear or taste or touch or smell. Who I am has everything to do with who God created me to be.

God created me as an eternal being. I am only here on a temporary assignment. When I go back home again, the stuff I did as Andy Mason will not amount to a hill of beans. The stuff I did as a living temple, The King’s kid, the presence of The Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth is all that will matter. Have I been a steward of what He has given me? Did I take what He gave me and invest it to make more? Or did I just do the minimum, not losing ground, but not gaining any either.

So I have been asking myself some pretty tough, hard to answer questions: Who am I? What do I believe in? Why do I believe what I believe? Am I hearing what God is saying? Am I doing what He told me to do? I could spend the rest of my life looking for and waiting for the answers to these questions. So far, I keep coming back to the same answer. God is asking me “Do you know who I am?” That is all I truly need to know. Finding who God is will tell me all I need to know about me. If I have truly given myself to Him as a living sacrifice, there is no me to know. There is no me to hear what God is saying. There is no me to do what God has told me to do. There is no need to wonder what I believe in, and no need to wonder why I believe it. There is only Christ and Him crucified living in the redeemed me.

So to remember who I am requires me to remember who He is. He is the great I Am. He has always been and will always be. He never changes! He is the Deliverer, the Comforter, the Healer. He is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword.

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I am pressing on, if I may lay hold of that for which I also was taken hold of by Christ Jesus.

My brothers, I do not count myself to have taken possession, but one thing I do, forgetting the things behind and reaching forward to the things before,

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Phi 3:12-14

Compassion is a powerful thing! Without it, we really wouldn’t be doing the work of Christ. It is something that Jesus demonstrated every day. But Jesus knew how to control his compassion and channel it for the glory of his Father. Jesus said He only said what His Father was saying and He only did what He saw His Father doing.  If we allow compassion to move us, rather than the will and heart of the Father,  we will be ineffective. We will be performing works, but not changing lives. We will be “nice” people, rather than bondage breakers.

When Jesus ministered to the individuals and the multitudes, he demonstrated incredible skill and self control. He was moved by compassion, but that was only the spark that ignited love and obedience. It was love that brought Jesus to the earth as a man. It was love that was about to impact the person that Jesus was ministering to. The obedience came into play when Jesus trusted his Father and reached into heaven and pulled down freedom, or a new set of eyes, or a healthy hand or whole skin...It was obedience when Jesus completed the work he was sent here to do.

Yes, I said completed. Past-tense. When Jesus took upon his body the sin of the world, the stripes of our affliction, the abandonment of the Father, He exercised his free-will  to be obedient because of love that was fueled by compassion. He set us free! Whom the Son has set free is free indeed!

When we position ourselves to be used of God, we take hold of a burden—a passion— for those which Christ paid everything for. We now have compassion.

When we begin to feel compassion and turn our hearts toward our Father, we have now caught the love and the heart of the Father.

When we have truly caught the love and heart of the Father, the obedience will be natural, almost involuntary.

When we move out of obedience to the heart of the Father, lives will be forever changed. When we reach out to set someone free, they will be free. When we say “be healed” they will be healed!

So, compassion is a powerful  thing! Let us learn to move from a place of love and obedience.