This is the revelation that is shaping my life today – God brings revelation of my identity in His word, I see it, hear it, even agree with it, but do I allow it to shape my identity?
James 1:23-24 TPT
[23] If you listen to the Word and don’t live out the message you hear, you become like the person who looks in the mirror of the Word to discover the reflection of his face in the beginning. [24] You perceive how God sees you in the mirror of the Word, but then you go out and forget your divine origin.
Observation
The who I understand myself to be is the essential shaping story of my life. The who I am will shape the what I do. Identity is a powerful influence. This is why God does not start, or focus, on my behaviour, His start and focus is on my identity. Two thirds of what Jesus has to say was about restoration of my identity as a child of God, His beloved, restored into perfect relationship with Him. Often when we say what was the cross about, the answer is forgiveness, but forgiveness had a much higher purpose, identity. God forgave me not so I could live forever forgiven, but so that I could live forever as His child, in uninterrupted perfect relationship with him. The restorative plan of God was to bring me back to my true self, restored in His image. When I see myself like Jesus, restored in the character of God, the way He designed me, “in His image,” then I will behave as I see.
The challenge is we hear the truth, I see myself in the mirror of the truth as perfectly restored in image and relationship, “but then i go out and forget my divine origin.” My identity is not shaped in His truth, I forget who the man in the mirror is and I walk out and become a different person. God invites us to live out of His shaping truth. That means shame and condemnation have no shaping place upon my life, for the man in the mirror is clean in Jesus. I can no longer see myself as disqualified relationally from God, for His truth shapes the man in the mirror as perfect in His sight, without any stain of sin to separate.
“If you listen to the Word and don’t live out the message you hear,” your identity will be shaped by the tempting and seductive voices of evil, touching in on the pain of your past, the voices of significant others, the language of your family, the systems of society, to divert your shaping gaze from the mirror of Gods truth declared over you. God could not have spoken more clearly over our lives, His mirror of truth is not misty, it is clear, who I am is clear, but God always leaves me with the choice to be shaped in His truth. God is never coercive or manipulative, He is as clear as my reflection in a mirror with an open, unending invitation to new sight.
Application
I will walk in what I see and hear from God in terms of Him shaping my identity as His. I will not listen and then forget, I will not see one person and then walk as someone different, I will not walk out of the bathroom and forget before the front door who I am. My divine origin, my God image and God place of child, will not be sacrificed on the alter of conflicting voices regardless of the overwhelming evidence they may bring in their accusation. The man in the mirror of Gods truth will be the man I will walk as.
Response
Thank you that you restore me not through my performance but through your declaration. Thank you that I am not shaped by the what I do, but by the God I serve and the who He declares me to be in His story over my life. Thank you that you rescue me from the man that my past, my brokenness, my ongoing challenges and failures, would shape me to be. Thank you that your truth shapes me into a person who has an amazing life before them. I am blessed, I will walk out into the fullness of your mirror of truth.
Meditation
What does Gods truth declare over your life that you do not agree is true of the person in your mirror?
What part of your restored divine origin, image of God restored in you, do you not receive as shaping over your life?
JOURNEY DEEPER
