Located in Christ

Philippians 3:8-9, “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith”

There is a human need that every person, at some point in their life, will come to question: “Who am I?”

People look for meaning and purpose in all sorts of things. Money, career, relationships, achievements, trophies, experiences, nature, etc. However, none of these things were ever meant to be our identity; that is why they fall short of truly satisfying the deepest core of who we are.

There is one place where we can truly find ourselves, and that is in Jesus, the One who determined our value and worth by giving His life for us. By His sacrifice of taking the sin of mankind and giving His righteousness to anyone who would choose to believe in Him, their identity is no longer determined by their achievements nor their mistakes. Their identity is found in Him.

Just as the Apostle Paul writes in Philippians, everything that once defined him- all his accomplishments and achievements he now considers them as rubbish. That means he refused to identify with his own efforts of trying to find life and earn righteousness; instead, he chose to count it all as dung.

Wow!

This was not meant to be only the apostle Paul’s way of identifying himself; the Holy Spirit inspired him to write this so we too could learn to refuse to identify with anything that originated and came from ourselves, whether good or bad, and choose to locate ourselves in the finished works of Jesus and identify with everything that He has said about us.

There are things that you and I have done where, if we continually choose to let that define us, we will forever live a frustrated life, trying to become something that we already are! Talk about frustrating the face of God! (Galatians 2:21).

We have to on purpose decide to identify with what Jesus has done in us and let that truth become the way we see ourselves.

This is a daily decision, a commitment that requires discipline because it is so easy to go back and rely on our own self-efforts and look at ourselves based on our performance. But when we decide daily to say out loud, “I count all of my past as rubbish; I am found in Him! His identity is my identity, His holiness is my holiness, His righteousness is my righteousness, His love is my value, His life is my life.” That’s how we will renew our way of thinking to match up with our true identity- in Christ.

Remember, we love you, and we are praying for you.

Blessings,

Chloe