Two years ago, I found myself ready to write a song.
“Lord, what do you want me to write?” I asked.
I felt Him asking me: “What do you want to write?”
The words began flowing, not in rhyme, yet flowing forth into a prayer to Him:
Jesus, I have known you for so many, many years…
But there’s a longing deep within my heart to know you
So much better than I ever have before.
So draw me closer, Precious Jesus.
Hear the prayer my heart is crying out to you…
It was truly my heart cry. I knew Jesus, but I wanted more. I wanted more than what I was experiencing at that point.
And He answered.
A month or two later, I found myself at the Youth Alive Conference. And I haven’t been the same since.
It was the beginning of a mighty work of God.
I’ve already shared before what God did there, but I want to share a story of a change He started that weekend that has totally changed my life and my relationship with Him.
I nervously walked toward the building for the Youth Alive Conference, feeling somewhat out of place. I was 28, but this was my first-ever youth conference. And since this wasn’t my usual circles, I essentially knew no one there.
A teen-aged guy was coming out the door, but when he saw me, he paused and came up to me.
“Hey! Good to have you here. I’m Jethro. Have you been here before?”
He immediately put me at ease, helped me get checked in, and showed me into the main conference area. As he prepared to leave, he pulled a card out of his pocket.
“Here. Fill this out, and after the conference, look at it and see if your answer has changed.”
I took the card, slid it into my pocket, and forgot about it.
Several weeks later, I was looking for something in my car and discovered a familiar card in my center console. As I looked at it, I was amazed at how my answer had changed.
Before the conference, I would have said that I was a warrior; an ambassador; a servant of God. And none of those things are the “wrong” answer, because I AM all those things.
But the first day, when my dear brother Conrad Beiler got up to speak, God gave him a message that would start a radical shift in my life.
Because he spoke about how we are children of God. How we have been adopted. How our identity is now in our Heavenly Father.
And so, here’s how I filled out my card, three weeks later:
For more in this series, check out part 2.
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Amen. First and foremost, to our wonderful Father, we are his children. To Jesus our risen Savior, we are his brothers and sisters that he’s not ashamed of. To Holy Ghost, we are clay moistened by the washing of the water of the Word, so he can conform us to Jesus’ image as he reveals the living Christ to us.
EVERYTHING ELSE comes after that!
That’s the anchor point, isn’t it? As soon as we move out of being a son or a daughter as our identity in relationship to God, we have moved off our basis in Jesus. And probably into performance based righteousness and acceptance. I think that’s what satan is up to when he tempts us to sin; as soon as we sin, he now has a basis to accuse us, and from there he can try to get us to defend ourselves. It seems to me that as soon as we try to defend ourselves ( I am righteous because I did NOT commit that sin, or I am not righteous because I DID commit that sin ) he’s hoodwinked us into playing his game by his rules, not realizing we are being led away from the simplicity that is in Christ. Or at least this is how I understand it so far.
I remember hearing all this stuff about “our identity in Christ”, you know, more than conquerors, the righteousness of God, all that sort of teaching. I’d listen eagerly, but then be confounded by it, because it really just told me things that were attributes outwardly but didn’t help me with understanding the essence of what changes when you become a Christian. I was seriously annoyed with how that talk was bandied about as if it were the answer to all my questions and imparting great revelation when really it was missing the most important revelation. I think what you wrote on your card tells it all.