The Two Most Important Foundations of Belief: Who God is and Who We Are in Him

The Word of God says, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” This is very important. I’ve always said this Scripture should be posted everywhere because this is literally how we function and how we live. You see, the Lord created us as human beings who live psychologically from how we see ourselves. The cool thing is He not only created us as beings who live from how we see ourselves but He also created us in His image so we can see ourselves through His image in us.

You see, there are two great foundations we need to understand inside of ourselves if we’re going to walk in joy and victory and overcoming. Those two greatest foundations are: who God is and who you are in Him.

I love a statement that Dr. Caroline Leaf says. She says that in order for us to truly represent our unique identity, we have to understand our identity in God. In other words, our identity in our Creator is our core identity and from there we’re able to reflect our unique identities from our culture, such as male/female, groups we join, athlete, business owner., etc. These types of things that people often see as their identity are actually their unique identities. Your temperament, your specific temperament personality traits are unique identities but they are not your core identity.

Your, and my, core identity is where we came from. It’s in God, in our Creator, and who He made us to be in Him. The first of the two foundations I mentioned above was knowing who God is. And if you’ve done a lot of growth in the Word of God by studying and really learning who God is then that’s powerful and foundational.  Next it’s time to move on to who you are now in Him. Because both of them are required in us to be able to function wholly and not be driven by fears of failure, fears of rejection, victim mindsets, and many more.

If you are not sure or you think you know God but you haven’t been in the Word very much, then I encourage you to go back to the Word of God. Start by studying Genesis and then study the Gospel of John.  Then move forward from there.  I encourage you to ask the Lord to show you during your study time the following  four key ideas:    (1) His love, (2) His mercy, (3) His Holiness, and (4) His Justice, because God is all of these things. There’s not just one; it’s not just love and mercy and grace. It is holiness, righteousness, and justice.

That’s important for us to understand in the Kingdom of God but it’s especially important in this season. I believe, and most people believe,  we are headed into the third great awakening and the only way any of us are going to experience it is if we are walking in the fullness of God’s counsel. Not just walking in a piece or part of it such as only preaching grace and grace alone. Let me back up. We could be preaching grace as long as it is about true Grace which is the empowerment not to sin. Grace is not just a freedom from our sin, as in the concept of, “I can do whatever I want now because Jesus sees me as a new creation in Christ Jesus.” This is what has gotten some people in trouble and this is one of the reasons why we’re where we are right now in this country. It is so important for us to understand that love leads us to righteousness. Jesus said, “…if you love Me you’ll obey My commands…” He also said that when you are obeying His commands you are loving Him, so it’s important.

The Lord showed me this several months ago when I was pondering the concept of why walking in righteousness was so easy for me when I came to the Lord.  He showed me that it was something I longed to do because I was so in love with Him, and I knew how much He loved me.  Little by little I began to feel differently about behavior that had never bothered me before.  I began to feel in my spirit things like “Eww, I don’t want that in my life”, “I don’t want to watch that”, “I don’t want to say that”, “Oh, I don’t want to be there”.  As His love was filling me up, the Lord reminded me that I learned righteousness from love, not from the law.  If you have learned righteousness from law and you are reacting to it by going into an extreme grace message of doing whatever you want because God loves you, then remember there’s a place to come back to now, to the place of balance of who God is – His full counsel of love, mercy and grace, holiness, and justice.  They all go together.  For example, for holiness, you could say righteousness, holiness, and put those together too.

It’s important for us to understand and embrace walking in righteousness from a place of love, not from a place of law. I encourage you to go there and really learn who God is and then you will be able to see who you are because we are to be a mirror image of the Lord. When we look into His face it’s like looking into a mirror and we become transformed into His image.

That’s what God wants to do. He wants you to allow Jesus to be your mirror so that you become His righteousness as you look into Him.

Alright, that’s our identity moment for the day!

Be blessed!

Dr. Lisa Winchell