Identities of a Christian Pilgrim in a Fallen World, Part 6

51.  I am seeking for the generations before and after me to praise the Lord.  It bothers me to see people who name the name of Christ wasting their lives on all sorts of trivial pursuits and idols, to see them constantly profaning the name of my Jesus by not deeming Him worthy of all praise and adoration.  God did not consume me with the desire to make much of Him in order for that to only remain personal.  Far from it; He has also awakened me to the need of others - both old and young, from every kind of cultural background - to praise Him with their mouths and lives.  "It is the Biblical duty of every generation of Christians to see to it that the next generation hears about the mighty acts of God. God does not drop a new Bible from heaven on every generation. He intends that the older generation will teach the newer generation to read and think and trust and obey and rejoice. It's true that God draws near personally to every new generation of believers, but he does so through the Biblical truth that they learn from the preceding generations. The Spirit comes down vertically (you might say) where the truth of God is imparted horizontally." - John Piper, "One Generation Shall Praise Your Works to Another".  (Psalm 79:13)

52.  I am called to participate in the Lord's mission of reaching every tribe, tongue, and nation on the planet with the gospel.  All Christians are part of a "royal priesthood", called to take the good news of Jesus Christ to those who do not know Him.  Whether I am called to stay where I am and pray for missionaries, or to take the gospel to a place where the flag of Zion does not yet fly, I have a job to do in world missions.  Whether I am able to see God save anyone before my eyes or not, I know that He has promised to save souls from every tribe, tongue, and nation; and I know that, as the only all-powerful God, He will not fail in carrying that out.  (Psalm 145:13; Revelation 5:9; 1 Peter 2:9)

53.  I am an undeserving recipient of the great gift of salvation.  Scripture says that the Lord saved me not because of my righteous works, which were filthy in His sight before He saved me, but because of His mercy.  He grants salvation even to corrupt tax collectors, adultresses, and murderers, saying, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick" - the sick in sin.  Even though I have stumbled in ways that American Christendom would consider much more minor, I see how serious my sins are and how much I need Christ's forgiveness.  And those who God forgives of much love Him all the more and praise Him all the more.  Seeing those who have been saved out of a life of lawless deeds is indeed, a great encouragement to my heart.  I can wrongly consider them to still be thieves, drunkards, liars, and idolaters; or I can apply some of the most beautiful words in Scripture to them: "And that is what some of you were.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God."  (Titus 3:5; Isaiah 64:6; Matthew 9:9-13; Luke 7:47)

54.  I am able to witness answered prayer, and I do not need to be anyone special to do that.  Since I can make requests to the Father through Christ my Mediator, I am on equal footing in this regard with any other Christian.  Elijah prayed fervently that it would not rain for 3 1/2 years.  Asking in faith and according to God's will, God granted his request.  And Scripture said Elijah was not Superman, but a regular man just like me.  (James 5:17; 1 John 5:14)

55.  I am misunderstood by the world.  I follow a Savior who, like me, honored His Father as He lived in this world, and was therefore rejected by the world.  The Lord has chosen me out of the world.  Therefore, the world, which hated Christ first, will see that I am not one of their own and will hate me also.  "Let the world despise and leave me.  They have left my Savior too." - Henry Lyte.  "Don't follow a defeated foe. Follow Christ.  It is costly.  You will be an exile in this age.  But you will be free." - John Piper.  (John 1:10-11; John 15:18-19)

56.  I am a branch attached to Christ, the vine.  He is my source of nourishment and ensures my continued life.  Continuing to abide in Him verifies that I am in Him.  "The plant world was created to be to man an object lesson teaching him his entire dependence upon God, and his security in that dependence. ...  what is its secret? Be wholly occupied with Jesus. Sink the roots of your being in faith and love and obedience deep down into Him. Come away out of every other place to abide here. Give up everything for the inconceivable privilege of being a branch on earth of the glorified Son of God in Heaven. Let Christ be first. Let Christ be all. Do not be occupied with the abiding--be occupied with Christ!" - Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ.  (John 15:5)

57.  I am pruned by the Father.  This, too, proves that I am in Christ.  Pruning is painful, since it can cut off things from my life that were living, that were bearing fruit, that I thought were good.  But the Father knows best, and He will do with me as He sees fit in order that He will be most glorified in me.  Thus I can praise Him even in these seasons.  "And even fruitful branches need pruning; for the best have notions, passions, and humours, that require to be taken away, which Christ has promised to forward the sanctification of believers, they will be thankful, for them." - Matthew Henry.  (John 15:2)

58.  I am saved by a living Savior, who defeated death and appeared alive again to over five hundred eyewitnesses before ascending to Heaven.  I rejoice that His tomb is empty!  "He’s indescribable! He’s incomprehensible. He’s invincible. He’s irresistible. You can’t get Him out of your mind. You can’t get Him off of your hand. You can’t outlive Him, and you can’t live without Him. Well, the Pharisees couldn’t stand Him, but they found out they couldn’t stop Him. Pilate couldn’t find any fault in Him. Herod couldn’t kill Him. Death couldn’t handle Him, and the grave couldn’t hold Him. ... That's my King!" - S.M. Lockridge, "That's My King".  (Luke 24:5-7; 1 Corinthians 15:6)

59.  I am aiming to please the Lord for however long He would have me live.  Whether I live another hundred years or just one more second, whether I should fall ill and be healed like King Hezekiah or taken home, my times are in His hands.  Truly, "All the days ordained for me were written in [His] book before one of them came to be."  I am given today to use this life on earth for His glory.  "If life be long, I will be glad that I may long obey. / If short, yet why should I be sad to soar to endless day?" - Richard Baxter.  (Philippians 1:21; Psalm 33:15-16)

60.  I am going to spend eternity praising my Creator.  How much more beautiful than the new heaven's streets and gates is the Author of the salvation of countless souls, seated on the throne, accompanied by four living creatures who spend eternity declaring His thrice-holiness!  I will not praise the new creation, but Him Who made it.  We will not need the sun or man-made lights to light our way, because the glory of the Lord Himself will be the light.  "Heaven is rightly called, 'Glory'." - C.H. Spurgeon.  (Revelation 4:6-11; Revelation 7:10; Revelation 21:23)

Identities of a Christian Pilgrim in a Fallen World, Part 1

"I give names in hope and prayer that my sons will become what their names imply. But God has the right and the power to cause anyone He names to become what the name implies. The names He gives are sure indicators of the destiny of those He names."

- John Piper, "I Am Who I Am".

"At the beginning of the 19th century, most obituaries made some mention of the character of the deceased. ... But by 1990 [a person's occupation] had become the key means by which a person was identified. This substitution of function for character is a unique mark of how the modern world now understands personhood."

- David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland; quoted in Tullian Tchividjian, Unfashionable.

"From now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do it no longer."

- 2 Corinthians 5:16.

In my personal Bible studies over the past year or so, I have been asking myself, "What does the Bible say a Christian is? How can I express characteristics of all Christians in terms of 'I am [fill in the blank]' statements?" Originally setting out to find 100 "identities" in the New Testament, I have found over 150 in a search that has also spanned Psalms and Proverbs and called back to my mind other passages in the Old Testament.

I do not intend this to be an exhaustive list; and although my Reformed Baptist tendencies shine through in a few of the statements, I have tried to focus on and elaborate on areas where Biblical Christians from many denominations will find common ground. Some of these are not automatic "identities" but goals to work toward as a Christian. They are not organized by topic or passage, but only in the order that I thought of them. I'll continue to flesh these out and post these in many parts until the series is done, though I will probably take breaks during my upcoming trip to the Philippines and as I get ideas for more immediate writing.

1. I am a stranger in a strange land. Many people start to describe their identity based on the country of their birth. As a Christian, my identity properly begins with my standing in Christ. He transcends all boundaries built by man. Man's countries are strange places to me, since wherever I can go in this world, many people live as though God never gave them a law to obey. Ultimately, my citizenship is in heaven. And, unlike immigration processes in this world, my eternally permanent residency there will be certain. "Lord, I would not [want to] be a citizen where Jesus was an alien. ... My heart burns within me by the way when Thou dost speak to me. And though I be a sojourner, I am far more blessed than those who sit on thrones, and far more at home than those who dwell in their ceiled houses." - C.H. Spurgeon. (1 Peter 2:11; Philippians 3:20)

2. I am chosen for God since before time began. God has spent redemptive history gathering for Himself His elect - all those who repent of their sins and believe on Him alone for salvation. And He is not subject to their whims and fancies. He chose His sheep before the foundation of the world. He calls them; they hear His voice, and they come to Him. "Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by which He has determined in Himself, what He would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some and eternal death for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say he is predestinated either to life or to death." - John Calvin. (Ephesians 1:4; John 10:27)

3. I am saved for the glory of God. He has chosen to glorify Himself by saving me by His grace, which I can testify in my life is completely unmerited favor. Yet He is glorified when He says that He can save an idolatrous wretch such as I. He operates for His own sake and has no reason to give His glory to anyone else. "God is the one Being in all the universe for whom seeking His own praise is the ultimately loving act. For Him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue. When He does all things 'for the praise of His glory' as Ephesians 1 says, He preserves for us and offers to us the only thing in all the world which can satisfy our longings." - John Piper, "Is God for Us or for Himself?". (Isaiah 48:11; Ephesians 1:11-14).

4. I am given a specific mission on this earth: to make God's name great in every area of my life. This includes both obvious spiritual activities, such as prayer and worship, and the common things of everyday life, such as work and leisure time. God, by His sovereign design, made the common tasks of life and work necessary. We ought not to regard these as barriers to ministry or other more preferable activities. "God is pursued as I play with my son and we talk. / As we play hide and seek, God is seeing my heart. / There's no separation in places where He wants worship. / From my church to my work, God calls me to service. / So I serve Him." - Dillon Chase, "The Pursuit". (1 Corinthians 10:31)

5. I am passing through this world, not here forever. Human bodies aging over time and dying only prove that God has created our earthly bodies as temporal and mortal. The fact that God has allowed us to be aliens in strangers in a world where Biblical Christianity is not popular merely reinforces that we do not have a home on this planet. Instead, we look forward to the eternal "home of righteousness". "Heaven is not here; it's There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for." - Elisabeth Elliot. (Romans 6:12; 2 Peter 2:13)

6. I am a slave to Christ, not sin. Rather than continuing to worship and serve the creatures of God as I once did, I am driven to obey Christ, the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, Who sustains all things by His powerful word and is sure to sustain me as He sees fit. His commands on me are not burdensome, and obeying them brings me greater joy. Shunning anything of this world that causes me to see Him as less wonderful is not legalism to me, because it ultimately causes me to see Christ as more beautiful and satisfying. "If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer. I must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me. I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend. I must be holy for His sake. How can I live in sin when He has died to save me from it?" - C.H. Spurgeon. "And like a bondslave, you have no will of your own. / Just follow the will of God until you kneel at the throne." - 116 Clique, "It's Yours". (Romans 1:25; Romans 7:25; Hebrews 1:3; 1 John 5:3)

7. I am gazing at the Serpent on a pole. The ancient Israelites had to look at a bronze snake to be saved from the snakes that were killing them. The Son of Man was lifted up on a cross - dying the most offensive kind of death, given at that time only to criminal, non-Roman citizens. There, He died to save me. "Fix your eyes on the cross. And never get beyond it." - Arturo Azurdia, "Cross Eyed Life". "You will need nothing to build strange fires in your oven, if you only catch a glimpse of what He did on that tree." - Paul Washer, "Ten Indictments against the Modern Church in America". (Numbers 21:4-9; John 3)

8. I am continually broken so that God may empty me of myself, conform me to His image, and fill me with Himself. Although unbelievers may also find themselves broken as they go through the struggles of life, they do not experience trials to grow them in their faith because God has not given them repentance and faith. "Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds you abased and empty, His glory and power flow in." - Andrew Murray. (Romans 8:29)

9. I am pursued by God. I began my life in this world as a lost person - like a lost sheep. I had, possibly, some remembrance of who the Shepherd was, but I did not know where I was supposed to be, how to get there, or where the Shepherd was. He had to leave the ninety-nine found sheep and find me. The ninety-nine found displayed an outward religious veneer that showed themselves as perfect, with no need for a Savior. Yet Jesus found me in my sin - in my great need for turning from that sin and trusting wholly in Him alone - and He granted me repentance and faith and saved me. "He continues his care of the sheep that did not go astray; they are safe in the wilderness. But there is a particular care to be taken of this lost sheep; and though he has a hundred sheep, a considerable flock, yet he will not lose that one, but he goes after it, and shows abundance of care, in finding it out. He follows it, enquiring after it, and looking about for it, until he finds it. God follows backsliding sinners with the calls of his word and the strivings of his Spirit, until at length they are wrought upon to think of returning. ... There is a world of holy angels that are as the ninety-nine sheep, a noble flock; yet God sends his Son to seek and save that which was lost." - Matthew Henry. (Luke 15:7; Acts 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25)

10. I am a pursuer of God. Called to flee the evil desires that I have known since birth, I must shun this world's natural passions and instead pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace - characteristics of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Much of this life pursuing God must be a hidden life. "See what a hidden life the life of a good Christian is and how much of it is concealed from the eye and the observation of the world. The most important part of the business lies between God and our own souls, in the frame of our spirits and the workings of our hearts, in our actions that no eye sees except the all-seeing God." - Matthew Henry, Experiencing God's Presence. (Psalm 83:3; 2 Timothy 2:22).

A Thrill of the Soul: Part Three: Spirit and Truth.

Our truest worship comes when we know both in a “thrilled soul” and in facts from Scripture about the God that we are worshiping. When knowledge about God meets love for God, the converted soul's most natural, indeed supernatural, reaction is to pour out everything in worshiping Him. He is the God that we hated when we were born into this fallen world. Yet, in His mercy He caused us to hate our sins, turn from them, and flee to Him, the Savior and satisfaction of our souls. The truly converted soul can never have satisfaction in trash anymore than a civilized human can enjoy eating pig slop.

The thoughts of the satisfied believer remain dominated by the One who is truly gracious, merciful, holy, just, beautiful, faithful, loving, powerful, worthy of all praise, and mighty to save.

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In a time of fellowship, a brother told me that he had never once attended a church service where every song in their worship set was theologically correct. It saddened me to hear this, but it does not greatly differ from my experiences with churches. With many churches content to use any popular Christian song that cultural Christianity is cranking out as a worship song, a lot of worship sets have at least one song in them that lacks depth or uses false doctrine. I recently got to visit a large church with a well-known pastor and great doctrine. Their worship songs, which included hymns and more modern songs, were all highly Christ-centered and Biblically accurate.

But what surprised me was that the crowd was solemn to a degree that I have not seen except in some Presbyterian churches. It was a quite yuppie church with a parking lot full of Beemers and Benzes. It seemed like one of the McChurch-y megachurches in some ways, but with far better teaching than most of them have. Yet in a large auditorium, few people could get excited about God. You don't need to have your hands up, although it is Biblically permitted as a correct way to worship (Psalm 63). And I realize that church cultures are different. But is it too much to expect that at least some of the people in there would occasionally look happy?

Why do people that go insane over football and baseball look funereal at church, especially at one that teaches so much truth and a high view of God? I don’t know about you, but I ride roller coasters to know what it is like to be excited – and then try to translate that into zeal for God in everyday worship. A hobby is not worth pursuing if it cannot bring any glory to God, so search for ways to make His name great in whatever you do. And if there are none, why waste your time?

But, even as truth alone is not sufficient, passion alone is not sufficient either. Many Christians go crazy in worship for the sake of going crazy in worship while not really trying to understand what they are singing about. You need passion and the truth. So go ride your favorite rides; and then read the Word of God, with a book by John Piper and Jonathan Edwards's Resolutions along with it.

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“God’s purpose for my life was that I have a passion for God’s glory and that I have a passion for my joy in that glory… [T]hose two are one passion.”

- Jonathan Edwards

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Please also see Lyrical Theology for the words to Shai Linne's song, "The Greatest Story Ever Told".

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“Our desire must be not only toward the good things that God gives, but toward God Himself, His favor and love, the manifestations of His name to us, and the influences of His grace upon us. We wait on God when our souls pant after Him and His favor, when we thirst for the living God. Oh, that I may behold the beauty of the Lord! Oh, that I may taste His goodness! Oh, that I may bear His image and be entirely conformed to His will! For there is none on heaven or earth that I will desire in comparison with Him. Oh, that I may know Him more, love Him better, be brought nearer to Him, and be made fitter for Him. Thus, upon the wings of holy desire, our souls should still be soaring upward toward God, still pressing forward, forward toward Heaven.”

- Matthew Henry, Experiencing God's Presence.