…you may be partakers of the
divine nature… —2 Peter 1:4
“We are made “partakers of
the divine nature,” receiving and sharing God’s own nature through His
promises. Then we have to work that divine nature into our human nature by
developing godly habits. […] Does it really matter that our circumstances are
difficult? Why shouldn’t they be! If we give way to self-pity and indulge in
the luxury of misery, we remove God’s riches from our lives and hinder others
from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity,
because it removes God from the throne of our lives, replacing Him with our own
self-interests. It causes us to open our mouths only to complain, and we simply
become spiritual sponges— always absorbing, never giving, and never being
satisfied. […] If the majesty, grace, and power of God are not being exhibited
in us, God holds us responsible. “God is able to make all grace abound toward
you, that you…may have an abundance…” (2 Corinthians 9:8)— then learn to lavish
the grace of God on others, generously giving of yourself. Be marked and
identified with God’s nature, and His blessing will flow through you all the
time.” CHAMBERS
Living each day with the
awareness that you possess a divine nature is something that most Christians
don’t do. Someone once said that
Christian is not an adjective. If you
remember from English class, adjectives are words that modify or describe
nouns, like the “black” cat. But the word, Christian, is a noun not an
adjective. It is who we are. A Christian is a sinner who has been given a divine
nature by virtue of being born again by grace through faith. As Christians we can be described by our
gender, our natural ethnicity, skin color, citizenship, maybe even doctrine. But at the core, we are Christians who
possess the same Spirit, same Hope, and same future. Where trouble comes is when we reverse the
words and we consider ourselves to be one of the adjectives and not the
noun. I am black. I am white.
I am Mexican. I am American. I am rich.
I am poor. But the truth is, I am
a sinner saved by grace. (Galatians 3:26-29) “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of
God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed
yourselves with Christ. There is neither
Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you
are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are
Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Did you catch that? You are Abraham’s seed. That means that, spiritually, you have a new
ethnicity. You are a “new noun”.
Each day, you must walk in
that newness (Romans 6:4) “Therefore
we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in
newness of life.” Who you are in Christ
should shape your thinking and doing. Man,
in vain, legislates moral conduct, but as you know what man defines as moral
changes with time. What God has declared
as moral or right never changes. It never changes. Man attempts to change others from the outside
in. But true change can only occur from
the inside out. God does that through
Christ. Several years ago, Pastor Marc,
a Haitian Christian, and I responded to a vision that he had about planting a
church in a certain mountain village near Jacmel. The church was next to a house owned by a
Voodoo priestess named, Meyèze. We held crusades virtually in her front yard. We built a school and a church next
door. Marc shared the Gospel with her,
but she would not yield her heart to the Lord.
But, yesterday she professed her faith in Jesus to the glory of God. And today she is a new noun, the seed of
Abraham, a daughter of the most high God.
You might marvel at the great distance she traveled from a devotion to
Voodoo to a devotion to the Lord. But the
truth is that it is the same distance that you and I have traveled. We all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God. (Romans 3:23). God is only one step of faith away for all of
us. Pray for Meyèze. And don’t forget who you are and whose you
are. Walk in the newness of life. CHARLEY
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