“To be relevant in our days we have to be revealed for what we are. We’ve been lying to the world when we said, “we’re the same.” We’re not the same – we’re new creations, born from above.” (Justin Abraham)
Far too often those who choose to love and follow Jesus and His ways have declared, “we are not weird, different or peculiar”, and have tried to look, talk, sound and even act the same as the world around them. Which wasn’t really the truth – Jesus certainly didn’t model that sort of behaviour or life. He was different, weird and unearthly. He didn’t fit with the status quo; the system, and He still doesn’t. Yet many times we do or we try to. We trade into the systems of the world, the popular, the same same, when really we are anything but the same.
We are new creations – born from heaven, and to say or believe anything else would be a lie.
“So from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Although we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)
Plus to be honest, people are not looking for the same in us. They are hoping that we will be different! That we will love when everyone fails to; that we will have the answers when they don’t; that we will hear God’s voice where they don’t recognise Him speaking, and that we will release and live in the realms of the supernatural where they don’t know how.
To walk in that reality of being different, and to be relevant to the obvious need and searching of those around us we must realise more fully who we are, where we come from, and daily have this truth revealed in and through our lives.
The world does not need more of the same! People actually need us to be different. That’s what Jesus did. On healing the paralytic Jesus told him to “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house. Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
When was the last time someone said to you, “I’ve never seen anything like that?” Because to be relevant and powerful in the world around us we must be revealed for who and what we are, and not merely try to fit in, or go under the radar of public opinion.
Today spend some time with Jesus, look into His word and see who you are, and then go out and live that way. Jesus was, and still is weird and radical, and for us to follow in His footsteps we too must be as He is – supernatural, weird, unearthly, and definitely not the same as the world around us!
Prayer: Lord I don’t want to be the same as the world around me, when my identity in you means that I am a new creation, capable of far more than earth tries to confine and dictate to me. Help me to walk more fully in the reality of who I am in you today. In Jesus name Amen.
Comentarios