Child of God

What you can’t see in yourself, you will never be able to see in others.

If you don’t recognize your strengths, how will you see it in people around you? If you don’t see yourself as God’s Beloved, how will you communicate that to others? You help usher in the Kingdom and people listen for God’s word through you. If you don’t claim your identity daily in Christ, how can people walk with you? What you don’t see in yourself, you will never be able to see in others.

Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. The temptation to disconnect from that deep place in you where God dwells and to let yourself be drowned in the praise or blame of the world always remains. Gradually, though, you will begin feeling more connected and become more fully who you truly are – a child of God. There lies your real freedom.[1]

We must claim, most importantly, to ourselves that we are children of God.

But on an individual level we experience too much hurt and sorrow to be any different than who we always have been. The struggles of life create a callus. Never feeling like we have enough and always feeling inferior to those around us doesn’t make us want to love and especially serve. People’s pain, sorrow and despair are too great to just cast it aside and say, “Ok God, we’re ready.” We have our own pain and our own baggage. We have our own sensual and sexual need to be loved and to be served. When is it ever our turn?

The real truth is people are angry. Angry at God and angry at the church. Why should we forgive and teach others when no one forgives and teaches us? Why should I continue to love when every time I do my heart is broken? Maybe this is why Peter and the disciples in John 21 retreated back home. Maybe they were giving up. Maybe their hearts were broken. Maybe they were angry at God for abandoning them. Regardless, we can relate to every one of these feelings.

The hope in John 21 and the hope for us today is us claiming our identity as children of God. We belong to God, and it is as a child of God that we are sent into this world. The wider our inner community becomes, the more easily we will recognize our own brothers and sisters in the strangers around us.

Christian leaders must do what Peter in John 21 had to do: Recognize moments in your life when you feel like you let God down and realize that people share this hurt. This is where ministry happens. The biggest evil in the world is that people retreat into the depths of their heart and feel completely inadequate and choose to live a life of nothing beyond that of mediocrity.

What you don’t see in yourself, you won’t see in others. You must claim your identity as a child of God so others can too. You have been called out by God to lead. Will you accept the challenge to love yourself?
Will you accept the challenge to love Christ and in turn love others? It’s what God’s calling you to do.
[1] Nouwen, Henri. The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom. (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 70-71.

Comments

Charlie Johnson said…
This is a fine blog, Barrett. Thank you for taking the time to write your thoughts on a variety of important issues and subjects. Keep plowing, friend!
December 18, 2008 at 12:12 AM
John's Gratitude Journal said…
Again you provide a blessing. Thanks for your thoughtfulness regarding our journey in Christ.
December 18, 2008 at 9:23 AM
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