The topic for the whole evening was our identity in Christ. We split it into 3 "mini talks" given by 3 of the small group leaders. My topic was that we are forgiven. Since I've been thinking about posting more often, I thought this might be a good reason to start, so here's my talk that I put together:
Feeling condemned and unforgiven is actually something I’ve struggled with as recently as our last small group meeting. I’ve seen in myself a pattern for years now – I feel really bad about what I’ve been doing, or not doing, I end up feeling defeated and disgusted with myself, and then I determine to do better. I do better for awhile, then I’ll typically get busy or distracted by something and let go of whatever I’ve been working on, and then one day I’ll stop and think about how far I’ve fallen from where I should be – again.
My personal struggles usually center on me being lazy. I used to like to say it was my phlegmatic, easy going personality, but it’s really just laziness; I don’t want to do anything that I don’t like doing. I have to work hard to cultivate self discipline and self motivation, and I can rarely maintain it for more than a couple weeks at a time. I’ve been working on it for years, and I think I can say that I’ve made at least a little progress, but overall, it doesn’t ever feel like it’s all that much, compared with how far I still have to go. It’s easy for me to imagine sometimes that God is constantly annoyed with me, disappointed with all my yo-yoing back and forth, just like I am. It’s also easy to think that God will be less likely to listen or answer my prayers because I don’t deserve it. I believe that he expects more from me, especially as someone who’s been a Christian all my life, and really, truly knows better. When I was younger, I actually wondered from time to time when it was all going to be enough and God would give up on me and cut me off.
The truth of our identity in Christ is that as a result of Christ’s death, God brings us into his presence and we are holy and blameless as we stand before him without a single fault. We’ve been forgiven forever. Hebrews 9:28 says that Christ died once for all time, and a little later chapter 10 says that when sins have been forgiven, there’s no need to offer any more sacrifices. All over the New Testament, we’re told that God saved and forgave us because of his incredible, incomparable grace and kindness. He’s done it because of who he is, and who he is doesn’t change. God will never be any less kind or full of grace and love toward us, so there is nothing that can change what has happened, that Jesus’ blood has paid for all of our sins and we are forgiven.
Because we’ve been forgiven, Hebrews says that we can come boldly to God’s throne and ask for his mercy and grace when we need it. We don’t have to be scared or think that we’re not worthy to approach God and ask for anything, he’s made it so that we have almost the same standing with him that Jesus does. In fact, when he looks at us, it’s like he’s looking at Jesus. It makes me think of when I was a kid; there were these secret messages that would be on cereal boxes sometimes. If you looked at it just plain you’d see a box with a bunch of red and blue spots. It was kind of a mess; you couldn’t see anything that made any sense. But it would come with this transparent red slip of plastic that you could put over the box and a word or a phrase would pop out and you’d find what you were supposed to be looking at. That’s what I think about when I think of our identity in Christ and how God sees us. We’re kind of a mess on our own; our lives don’t make sense sometimes. But when God looks at us, he sees us in Christ and through the blood of Jesus. All the mess and all the gunk is still there, but it’s covered, and it doesn’t interfere with what God did for us, to him we’re holy and blameless.
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