A good and happy Christian??
Even after being a Christian for many years and knowing that Jesus died to forgive all my sins, I still felt a sense of not being the best Christian I could be. I felt unhappy, a sense of guilt and condemnation when I failed – felt jealous, had bad thoughts about someone, or spoke in an unkind manner. I was frustrated with myself for not being able to reflect the image of the Lord in all situations – especially when it came to close family that easily irritated me and led to my own unhappiness. I had this sense that the Lord wanted more of me and was not completely happy with me. The revelation I explain below is one that completely transformed my relationship with God and gave me a clear picture of how He saw me and what He felt about me.
Did you know you are 3 parts?
You are a 3-part being made up of a spirit, a soul, and a body.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Thessalonians 5:23)
Often, we use the words soul and spirit interchangeably, not really understanding if there is any difference between them.
- Our soul is our mind, will, and emotions.
- Our body is our physical body.
- Our spirit is the part of us that was recreated when we were born again.
Renewed after the image of God
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
When we were born again the ‘all things’ that were made new were not our body; if we were a certain weight before, we got saved, and we were the same weight directly after we were saved.
It was not our soul – our level of intelligence or the way we thought largely did not change.
But the ‘all things’ that that had become new is our spirit which has been recreated or renewed ‘according to the image of Him’. The “old things” is our former spirit that was separated from God through sin.
…since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him. (Colossians 3: 9-10)
In our newborn again spirit we perfectly reflect the image of God.
When the Lord looks at you, He sees your new spirit
The Lord is a Spirit, and he looks at you according to your new spirit.
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. (John 4: 24)
When the Lord looks at you He sees this renewed spirit made in the image of him. He sees the righteousness of Christ in you, He sees all the power, ability, gifts, and talents He has put within you. He does not see you according to your flesh (body and soul) where you still may fail from time to time even though you have the best intentions.
This new spirit cannot be contaminated by your sin
Our newborn born-again spirit cannot be contaminated when we sin or fall short, it has been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. (Ephesians 1:13)
The Lord loves you, is excited to live within you, and has a relationship with you based on who you are in the spirit. When he looks at you, He sees you as holy and blameless before him in love (Ephesians 1:4).
You can come happy and boldly
You no longer need to worry or fear when you come to Him in prayer, that maybe He won’t answer you because you have fallen short or forgot to confess all your sins.
We can come boldly before the Lord and make our requests known to him, knowing that He hears us and will answer our prayer.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The key question is do you see yourself as God sees you?
When you look at yourself, you may think that the ‘real you’ is your flesh – your mind, will, emotions, and physical body. We tend to prioritize whom we are based on our flesh and consider what we lack and where we fall short in terms of not always doing, saying, or thinking the right things. We criticize our personality, and physical makeup, where we have failed in the past or made poor decisions.
No! It is your spirit that is the real you, recreated after the image of Christ that will live in all eternity with the Lord. Even after we are born again and renewed in the image of Christ, we struggle to see the real us because we can’t see it in the mirror, we can’t feel it in our emotions or body. Because we are so dominated by our 5 senses and this physical world, we in a sense discard the promises of God that we cannot always see, feel, or touch.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. (James 1:22-25)
This scripture teaches us that His Word ‘the perfect law of liberty’ is God’s mirror for us where we can go and see who the real us is! Look into the spiritual mirror of the word of God, find His promises for you, and keep meditating on them to renew your mind to who you really are.
Know that He loves you, is for you, and only looks at you to bless you. When will you be as happy with yourself as God is with you?
My Prayer
My prayer for you is Romans 8:35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
