Speaking truth to yourself

living in the reality of God

On Monday night, I preached a message from Ephesians 4.¹ If I had to condense the whole message into a thesis, it would be this: if you grow in knowing God, you will find yourself changed in the process.² It’s one thing to develop a list of rules to conform to, to force yourself to fit a mold. ³ It’s another thing entirely to gaze so long at Jesus that you become a different person.

Does that sound mysterious? Haphazard? Out of your control? It is. We gravitate toward legalism and rules because we can control those. We can explain them. We can measure them. But what God wants to do in us is outside of our control and our measurement. I would not say that God is haphazard, but it can feel that way. We often don’t understand what God is doing or why God is doing it in that way. From this vantage point, it can feel unexplainable.

While the work that God is doing is out of our control, we are invited to participated. God wants to partner with humans and that includes on a bigger societal scale and in our intimate personal lives. We live in a new reality because of who God is and what God has done on our behalf. We need to learn that reality and let our entire existence be in response to that new reality.

In the message, I pulled together a short list of what God has done for us that forms our new reality from Ephesians.

• we are adopted as sons⁴

• we have redemption, the forgiveness of our trespasses

• we have received an inheritance

• we have the seal of the Holy Spirit

• we have been raised with Jesus and seated in heavenly places

• we are being built together into a temple for God’s dwelling

• we are strengthened with power in our inner beings through His Spirit

• we are rooted and firmly established in love

• we are filled with all the fullness of God

This is our new reality. It takes a lifetime to learn to live from that.

We can start by listening to the stories we tell ourselves. What reality do we form for ourselves with our words? Before you start thinking that I’m getting a little woo over here, let’s take a breath If your parents, teachers, other adults spent your childhood telling you that you were stupid, it probably took you a long time to believe anything different. And that’s assuming you learned something different about yourself.

We have to tell ourselves the truth. And the truth is found in the reality of who God is.

When we mess up, we don’t tell ourselves that we are stupid and nobody could ever love us. We run to a God who offers forgiveness and we repent and ask for help. We do this every single day.

When we face difficulties, we don’t tell ourselves that they are impossible and we shouldn’t even bother. We run to a God who promises to never leave us, a God who is working on our behalf.

I don’t think we are consciously trying to tell ourselves lies or live in a false reality that we can build for ourselves.⁵ But often that’s exactly what is happening.

We have to learn to listen to the stories we tell ourselves. Then we have to ask if God says those stories are true. If it’s not God’s story, we have to practice telling ourselves God’s story.

Do you live in God’s reality or one that someone else has constructed for you? Can you start paying attention to what you speak over yourself?

1. It should be online later. I’m planning to share it next week.

2. Could I articulate it that well that night? No. The message became like a prayer for me and it’s just been growing in my mind and heart since then.

3. And that is a way we tend to use the Bible.

4. Adoption in the Greco-Roman world was not like our adoption is today. They adopted a grown male as an heir to receive their inheritance and carry on their name.

5. With help from others, the enemy of our souls, evil forces at work in the world, etc, etc.