More than conquerors (IV) I am not my problem

I remember a conversation with a friend who told me “I am a looser.” My response was that that was not true. “No,” he told me “it is true! Every time I try something I fail. I have not been able to hold a job down for more than a few weeks in my entire life.” We talked, and he eventually came to realize that he was engaging in self fulfilling prophecy. Typically if you think you are a looser, you will not try your best. Well why should you if you are going to blow it anyway? And not trying your best it the thing that trips you up, and you verify what you always believed anyway! My fried came to see that his belief was self destructive. The scripture puts it this way “What I feared has come upon me” (Job 3:25). It is as if our negative faith (for this is what fear is) invites the conclusion we fear. And so “According to your faith be it unto you” (Matthew 9:29).

There is a fine line between admitting I have a problem, and identifying myself with it. If I do not admit that I have a problem when I do, I will not take up my responsibility concerning what I need to do about it. But if I identify myself with my problem, it can keep me stuck there. Twelve-step-programs speak of a higher power, as “God as you conceive him to be.” This allows those whose faith is not in the Judeo-Christian God to tap into the need for something bigger than themselves, and into the genius of twelve-step-programs. And certainly there are many who with a vast variety of different higher powers, have found help with their addictions through the twelve steps. The point though, is that the principles that lie behind the steps work. As it turns out however, the two men who put them together were Christians, and they got their inspiration from that source. In fact the principles themselves are all Biblically based.

So the principles work and have helped many! But as I have been saying, there is always more (Ephesians 3:20). Jesus came that we might have life in all it’s fullness, and I seems to me to be impossible to move into that, if my identity is still in my problem. The Christian is a child of God, and we are intended to be “more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). Paul prays that we might know “the glory if the riches our His inheritance” (Ephesians 1:18). His (Jesus’) inheritance is ours (Romans 8:32)! The thief of course, wants to rob us of all of this (John10:10a). And we will not be able to press into all that He has made available to us, if we do know know who we are in Him. An earthly inheritance left to a son who does not know that he is, will likely loose his inheritance, especially if there are those who would gladly rob him of it!

Father, we need to know that we are Your sons and daughters in the very fibre of our being. Otherwise the thief will surly rob us. This is exactly what he did do You, Lord Jesus in the wilderness. Almost immediately after the Father had spoke “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,” the devil came and questioned your sonship “If You are the son of God …” (Mark 1: 11; Matthew 4:3). Help us Father to move more and more into the assurance that we truly belong to You, that we are Your sons and daughters, and that You have already freely given us all things. In Jesus Name Amen