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 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 created us in His image so we can see ourselves through His image in us.

You see, there are two greatest foundations ever that 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 do 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, male/female, groups, athlete, business owner. These types of things that people often see as their identity; these are unique identities. Your temperament, your specific temperament personality traits. Those are unique identities but they’re 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. And so, the first one that I said of the two foundations was knowing who God is. And if you’ve done a lot of growth in the Word of God and studied and really learned who God is then that’s powerful, 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.

And so 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. Study Genesis and study the Gospel John and then move forward through there and what I am encouraging you to do is that when you study have four things in front of you. Ask the Lord to show you in all of the stories: (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 important especially in this season. Because I believe, and most people believe, that 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 in a piece of it, in a part of it; just preaching grace and grace only. Let me back up. Grace we could be preaching only but true grace. Grace 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’s gotten some people in trouble and this is one of the reasons why we’re where we’re at 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.

Something the Lord showed me several months ago when I was pondering this concept of why walking in righteousness was so easy for me when I came to the Lord. It was just what I longed to do because I was so in love with Him and I knew how much He loved me and little by little it started to, “Ew, I don’t want that… ew, I don’t want to watch that… I don’t want to say that… oh, I don’t want to be there…” Because His love was filling me up and the Lord reminded me that I learned righteousness from love not righteousness from the law. So if you have learned righteousness from law and you are reacting to it by going into this 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: love, mercy and grace, holiness, and justice. All of them go together. For holiness, you could say righteousness, holiness, and put those together too.

And it’s important for us to understand walking in righteousness from a place of love, not from a place of law. So 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’s wanting to do. He’s wanting 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

www.HisImage.me