Merry Christmas!
I recorded a special video greeting detailing the one thing that I always come back to every December. It has helped me face the difficult Decembers, it has helped settle me when the busyness threatens to overwhelm, and it has helped keep me focused through it all.
God is so gracious and so good; He truly is Emmanuel!
Acceptance, Security, and Significance is the three legged stool that makes up our identity. My weakest “leg” is the one labeled significant.
I look at my little ol’ life and see a stay at home mom who rarely gets regular showers, a crazy homeschooler who receives the stink eye way too often, a wanna be author with dreams of a book in my local bookstore. My kitchen sink is never empty, I raise dust bunnies, my bed gets made fifty percent of the time, and my kitchen island collects life’s clutter. I don’t see significance when I look at my life.
God’s definition of significance transforms my understanding of it. Significance is not about being noticed or an empty kitchen sink. It’s not even a bed made with the blankets hanging evenly along the side (mine are quite crooked, thank-you very much).
It’s not even having thousands of people read these words or buy my “some-day books.”
Significance means becoming smaller so God can become bigger. It’s about less me so more God-honoring fruit grows so other’s can experience the harvest for his purpose. It’s realizing that this life isn’t about positioning myself for my idea of success. But how I position myself to be used for God’s kingdom. In order to do that I must go lower and lower so he increases higher and higher.
I must let go of the unspoken, yet very loud, expectations that pressure me. A clean house? Perfect children? Harmonious marriage? Successful blog? My success or failure in my roles as a wife, mother, housekeeper, teacher, or writer cannot dictate my significance.
That dream? The one that involves words on a page and my name on the spine? My significance doesn’t change whether that dream simply stays this wonderful, glow-y kind of dream. And the even more secret dream—of leading worship for women’s conferences, and leading tender hearts into the most precious presence of God? Guess what? My significance doesn’t change whether I’m leading 8 or 800.
My heart, my life, and my innermost being grows most significant when placed in the tender hands of my most loving God as he shapes and molds for his purpose and position. Even when I’m feeling as though I’m not seen, and as long as I stay a living, willing sacrifice, I know without a shadow of doubt that God looks at me and sees me as significant.
But it’s one thing to know this on a surface level, it’s a completely different to accept this on a heart level where it gets lived out on a daily, moment by moment level.
But these verses in Ephesians and Philippians show us how to live out our acceptance, security, and significance.
“In whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.” Ephesians 3:12 ESV
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13 ESV
I cannot convince myself of my acceptance, security or significance because I cannot positive self-talk to myself enough to break through the lies my heart believes. I’ve tried. And the failure feeds the lies.
It’s only when I take my weakness to God that I find the strength I need to embrace the Truth of what he says about me:
Beloved.
Chosen.
Accepted.
Purposed.
Significant.
Special.
Priceless.
Receiving our identity in Christ happens the moment we receive Christ as our Savior. But living out our identity with him takes steps of faith and trust that he will rewrite our negative thought patterns into thoughts based on his truth.
It’s this process that makes our lives beautiful and colorful and oh so worth the wrestling. There’s nothing more beautiful than a woman, who has never felt loved or chosen, then when her eyes light with the Holy Fire of God’s truth as it sinks into her heart and rewrites what her past has taught and told her who she is. As the profound truth penetrates her heart, the strongholds fall and God rushes in and beauty is wrought from the rubble.
It’s like the butterfly’s metamorphosis. Beauty unfurls and beauty is you as you embrace the struggle of owning your significance in Christ. Let go of self-sabotage and trust the truth God declares over you.
I’m really good at being busy for the Lord.
And I know I’m not alone.
Many years ago, I was Women’s Ministry President, Children’s Ministry Director, and a Youth Sponsor—all at the same time. It was exhausting and in the midst of the busyness I realized I had forgotten how to sit at Jesus’ feet and just be.
So I finished out my term as Women’s Ministries president and declined reelection. I found a replacement for the Children’s Ministry and informed the youth pastor I could no longer be a sponsor.
I thought this “learning to be” would be easy, but it was not. I had looked to my roles and the spotlight as indicators of my significance, and with nothing to do, my heart panicked.
Identity is so much more than my roles, reputations, accomplishments, past, present, or future. Through faith I’m believing that I’m accepted and secure in Christ. Although there’s still an internal wrestling, especially on days when I’d rather give up and move to the wilds of Alaska, except for the snow thing and the dark days.
But this significance thing? I still don’t have it figured out. Significance and pride are so interwoven in my heart that it takes the grace of God to unwind. I’m writing and living from that tangled place.
The desire for significance is not an ungodly desire, but I make it ungodly when I chase after success in my roles, approval ratings, and reputation. Only God can fulfill my desire for significance and it’s only when I began exploring God’s definition of significance that I discovered three areas that, when combined together, make significance simple to understand.
Part 1 of significance is tied to our purpose and it’s only when we embrace our purpose— as defined by God— that we can grasp part 2 of our significance, which is our position:
Ephesians 2:6, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” NIV
1 Corinthians 3:16, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s spirit lives in you?” NIV
2 Corinthians 5:17-21, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” NIV
I am God’s temple, but it’s not about me.
After I die to my own sins, God raises me up and seats me with Christ, not so I can lord it over people, but to serve.
God makes me a new creation and pours his grace over my life, not so I can be blessed, but so that I can effectively be his minister of reconciliation to a lost and dying world.
My purpose is tied to my position. I am not in this world for my own pleasure and happiness, although I have a great deal of things that make me happy and bring me pleasure, like sharing song and words and beauty, but ultimately I have been given a position that needs good fruit.
Our position as God’s ministers is to make him known and to reconcile the world to him. But we can’t do this if we don’t know him or understand our identity in him.
This is where I can scare myself into inaction because the gravity and responsibility of this position is weighty. It also explains why I sometimes flat out refuse to take the next steps in growth in my Christian walk.
All those years ago, God was calling me to let go of my positions so that I could sit at his feet and begin to understand the significance that he calls me to, but I was scared to obey. I liked being in charge and having “important” things to do. I wrestled with giving up my positions in the church because I was afraid of losing significance. What I gained out of the perceived loss of significance was the beginning of the journey to truly embracing my identity in Christ.
As I took the time to be in his presence rather than be busy in his church, my definition of significance was replaced with his. Bearing fruit and serving others through the ministry of reconciliation is a gift.
It’s a weighty gift because I know how hard it is to stay grafted to the vine and engaged with culture. I know that if I reject the position God has called me to be as his temple and as his minister, that the purpose of bearing good fruit is pointless.
There will be times when we’re tempted to find our significance in other things, we’ll misrepresent God to the world, and we’ll do and say things that are opposed to his holy righteousness. Our purpose and position can feel impossible to accomplish. But it is possible and we find the key to success in the final area of significance.
When we combine the three aspects of significance we will find that fulfilling our purpose and position is accomplishable. Till next time.
I’m a pretty boring fruit person—I like the basics, at least that’s what I buy on a regular basis. Ido like mango, but my grocery doesn’t stock the kind I like. I like kiwi fruit, but sometimes I forget to eat it. Have you ever felt a mushy kiwi? It’s kinda creepy.
If you looked in my fridge right now, you’d find one grapefruit and five apples. The apples aren’t crispy, which is to bad. I like them to crunch and squirt apple juice all over my chin, and they must have the perfect blend of tart and sweet. So maybe I’m not really a boring fruit person, but a picky fruit person. Some people would think so, but I just say I know what I like.
I’m glad God isn’t a picky fruit person. I don’t think he’d throw me away if I weren’t crispy like I do with my non-crispy apples. In my house, apples are not guaranteed security. In God’s house, I’m accepted, secure and significant.
I’m studying the verses surrounding my identity in Christ, and I’m finding out who God says I am. He says I’m chosen and not just once or twice, but over and over again. He says I’m secure in him and in today’s world, I need that security. You, too?
But significance? That’s a tough one because pride twists it into something ugly and sinful, rather than something beautiful and holy. Our hearts, my heart, yearns for significance, and I’ve looked for it in people, in approval, in my strength, in my independence, in my roles, in how well I do this marriage thing, and how well I mother my kids. The problem with that?
The pressure to perform squeezes me dry and I fail repeatedly. I’m hurt when I’m overlooked and not recognized, but then I feel guilty when I read Bible verses about humility and meekness. So I squelch this desire for significance, but it grows and comes out in ugly, arrogant ways.
There is the self-seeking, arrogant, all-about-me side to significance, which reveals a gaping hole in my heart that cannot be satisfied with anything but God.
My identity—my approval, my security, and my significance— is found in him. He placed this desire for significance in my heart so that I would gain a greater understanding of who I am in God. And God says I am significant.
I am significant. You are significant. Did you know that you and I are God’s workmanship? We are created for purposes prepared in advance for us to fulfill because we are significant players in God’s plan for mankind.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10
I’m not created for myself. I am his. He longs for me to walk in his ways, not mine. I’ve messed things up enough to know that my plans aren’t that great so I’m totally okay with his plans for my life. I’ve found that when I walk in his ways, my desire for “self-seeking significance” is traded for the real truth.
The real truth is that I’m significant because Jesus chooses me. Imagine! God chooses me. He chooses you. God chooses the educated and the uneducated. He chooses the wealthy and the poor. He chooses us because he made us, and he is waiting for us to respond to him. When I stop striving for self-defined significance, and I rest in the significance of Jesus’s choice, I am given two choices.
I can either receive it or reject it. I’ve done both. When I’m stuck in a place of perfection and insecurity, I reject his choosing me. I receive His truth when I give up perfection, insecurity, and disbelief. The belief that I have purpose in God’s plan and that I’m chosen by Jesus to bear fruit is intertwined and cannot be separated.
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” John 15:16
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
Fruit bearing is impossible without abiding in Christ. We are either branches disconnected from the vine with fruit that rots from the inside out or we think we are the vine itself and the fruit we produce will look like fruit, but it’s a mirage.
Our significance comes when we receive God choosing us and planning for us to fulfill the works he has prepared for us. We don’t bring our resume. We don’t bring our list of accomplishments as a prerequisite for significance. We come with humble, wide hearts, and he receives us.
I don’t know about you, but I want to be good fruit. I don’t want someone to take fruit from my branch and be disappointed by the quality. I accomplish good fruit bearing when I live my life wholly committed to His absolute, unswerving truth. This is my significance and it is yours. Will you receive it?
I’m well acquainted with insecurity. It’s been a companion to Perfect for much of my life, and it lies dormant for a time. Then something happens that wakens the sleeping giant and insecurity becomes a driving force in my life. I’ve learned the triggers that bring Perfect and Insecurity into my life. and I’m learning to deal with them in a healthy way. Ignoring them makes them worse because they want their voices to be heard, and if I don’t listen they scream louder for attention.
Not to sound crazy, but treating them in this way gives me an opportunity to speak God’s truth to them, aka myself, when those voices drown out the voice of God in my ear. I’ve let Insecurity win far too many times, but lately the battle is turning in favor of Security.
I’ve not been able to fight this fight on my own, though. It’s been God who has worked and shifted and transformed my life, but before He could truly bring transformation, I needed to allow the depth of my insecurity to be mined and all the pieces laid at Jesus’ feet. It was deep and wide with many twists and turns along the way, but He filtered through the tangle of lies and truth, and He straightened what needed straightening and threw out the lies that destroyed.
I’ve believed the lies that my identity was secure in what I did or didn’t do. But security is not in my success at loving others well, or how well I live out God’s precepts. My identity is secure in knowing that I am precious to God and that I belong to him.
Security also provides ways to live this life well. When security is allowed a place in my heart, I find that my self-control grows. On the other hand, Insecurity leads me to self-indulgence. When I feel insecure, I self-medicate through excess food and a couch potato life or through food restrictions and excess exercise. Self-medication can happen through materialism, minimalism, and mommy-wars.
Insecurity drives our fear and security drives our self-control.
“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control,” 2 Timothy 1:7 ESV
Insecurity will drive us to excess and extremism because insecurity tells us we’re not enough so we run around trying to fill the void with something, with anything. Security in Christ helps me to turn to him instead of food, exercise, minimalism, materialism, and mall hopping. Security is the key to self-control.
When Insecurity rages within me, I try to find security in my own efforts, but security in Christ means releasing the ‘in’ part of insecurity. It requires a laying aside of our thoughts and hearts being wrapped up in ourselves.
This is hard.
I make the most compromises in my Christian walk when insecurity is in control. Usually, when insecurity is running rampant in my heart it’s because I’m far more concerned about what someone else thinks than what God thinks. I’ll downplay my relationship with Jesus because I’m afraid of what you might think. Or I’ll laugh at a crude joke rather than standing for purity. Or I’ll add my two-sense to speculating why so and so is acting they way they are.
Security in Christ helps me be steadfast in my Christian life, because I remember 1 John 5:18,
“We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.”
When I forget that I’ve been born of God—and if you’re not sure if you are or what that even means, let me know and I’ll share the good news with you—I grow insecure in my identity and easily fall into old sin habits that were left behind when the old me died and the new me was raised to life in Christ.
And the new me? She sets her mind and heart on Christ. It’s when my focus is on Christ and his will for me that I’m fully able to serve and love others without the fear that I’m going to fail or make it all about me.
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory,” Colossians 3:1-4 ESV
When Insecurity stops by for a surprise visit, I invite it in for coffee and listen to its concerns. I look at the circumstances that perhaps triggered its visit. Sometimes it’s an unresolved argument or a recent failure. Sometimes it’s because I don’t like my hair or my shirt. But mostly, insecurity is a response to the uncertainty in life.
God uses my insecurity to point me to him and it’s then that he reminds me of where my security lies: in him, in his love, in his goodness, and in his strength.
We are secure in him.
Every year, I avoided a certain appointment. I wanted to know about it, but I didn’t want to be there for it. I panicked and my heart did funny things.
My heart raced and I couldn’t sleep for weeks leading up to the appointment. It consumed my waking thoughts and disturbed my sleep. I couldn’t seem to accomplish anything except worry.
Psalm 112:7 snapped me out of my funk: “He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.” I feared bad news. My heart wanted to be steadfast and it wanted to trust, but it struggled.
I’ve been exploring the concept of security in Christ and Psalm 112:7 could fit in with the next three verses used to assure us of security in an insecure world.
“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his sear of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” 1 Corinthians 1:21-22 NIV
“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 NIV
“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Philippians 3:20-21 NIV
Psalm 112:7, along with these three verses, may have penetrated the hard shell of fear around my heart, but I still struggled with the cycle of worry and lack of sleep.
I laid wide awake, listening to the creaky bones of an old farmhouse. The furnace cycled on and then off trying heat the drafty rooms. The water softener’s recycle echoed through the register vents. I listened to the coyote’s song and watched the red numbers on the digital clock creep their way to morning night after night.
I treated this event with the same intensity as Chicken Little in the children’s story who decided the sky must be falling when a single acorn hit him on the head. I laughed at the foolishness of Chicken Little, but when I became Chicken Little, I didn’t laugh. This appointment was an acorn, not the sky, but I treated it as though the sky was falling. It was completely and utterly ridiculous and I knew it.
I knew my angst over this situation and I knew the word of God, but the battle within my heart raged and rarely did the word of God win. I said I trusted God, but my actions and my words did not jive.
I felt the truth God’s word strike me in such a way that my ‘sky is falling’ perspective fell from the sky and lay shattered at my feet.
My security is not found in the outcome of appointments, good health, or financial freedom. It’s found in my one true King. Your security is found there as well. He is trustworthy. He is secure.
When he is our rock, we can trust that he is working things out. He views a much larger picture, and we don’t need to see the entire picture in order to trust him. He is our security.
My circumstances do not establish me. God establishes me. He takes this wretched fear-filled heart and fills me with anointing. He anoints you as well. He calls you beloved and he lays before you the task to trust him. We need his anointing to do this well. It’s impossible to trust well without his love coursing over and through us. If I don’t have his anointing, then my fear, anxiety and worry overtakes the goodness he longs to do in me and through me.
Our failures do not adversely affect our security because I know that God will complete the good work he began. He is the one who saves. He is the one who sets our feet on the solid rock. He is the one who rescues, redeems and gives a purpose for this life. And if he is the one who does the beginning, then he will do the middle, and he will do the completing.
We need only to submit, surrender, and obey. He is our everything. He is love. He is the beginning, the middle, and the end. This gives us the security we need to face those hard days when we are not trusting him well. It’s the security we need when we’re overtaken by angst on the parts of our story yet to be.
The sky is not falling. I can never recover those sleepless nights because the worry didn’t change the outcome. The fear of what might be was greater than reality, but I couldn’t see it at the time. Irrational fear overtook me in the face of our annual tax appointment. Yes, my friends, it was a measly tax appointment that was the acorn in my Chicken Little Story.
In my mind, this acorn held my hopes for security, but that’s not an acorn’s job. An acorn’s job is to grow a tree and God used this ‘acorn’ to grow faith in my heart as I transferred my security from a circumstance to him.
What is the acorn that has fallen that makes you cry out, ‘The sky is falling!’ Will you let God show you where your security lies and how he can turn your acorn into faith that your security is in him?
