Discovering Who I Am, Healing, Hope, Words of Endurance

Now we look inside, and
what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah
gets a fresh start, is created new.
The old life is gone; a new life burgeons!
Look at it!
All this comes from the God
who settled the relationship between us and him,
God put the world square with himself
through the Messiah,
giving the world a fresh start
by offering forgiveness of sins.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:17,19 (THE MESSAGE)

After I committed my life to Christ I always looked at myself as a “sinner who was saved” because I knew that I still struggled with sin. What I did not realize was that when I accepted Christ as my Lord I became a new creation as the Scripture above proclaims. Not because of anything that I did or would do but because of what Jesus did for me on the cross.

I am ashamed to admit that I became aware of this awesome Truth only recently on my journey with Christ. But let me assure you that it is never too late to learn the original Good News! I was stoked to learn that when I became a Christ follower I became a saint – totally righteous before God – even though I did not feel or always act like a saint! I was stoked even more when I read the following in the book, The Cure:

Nature provides many examples of this incredible discrepancy between who we appear to be and who we are. Consider the caterpillar. If we brought a caterpillar to a biologist and asked him to analyze it and describe its DNA, he would tell us, “I know this looks like a caterpillar to you. But scientifically, according to every test, including DNA, this is fully a butterfly.”

Wow! God has wired into a creature looking nothing like a butterfly a perfectly complete butterfly identity. And because the caterpillar is a butterfly in essence, it will one day display the behavior and attributes of a butterfly. The butterfly matures into what is already true about it.

So it is with us. God has given us the DNA of Righteousness. We are saints. Nothing we do will make us more righteous than we already are. Nothing we do will alter this reality. God knows that we are “Christ in me.” And now He is asking us to join Him in what He knows is true! THE CURE (JOHN LYNCH, BRUCE MCNICOL, BILL THRALL)

This was revolutionary and freeing for me because I now know that my DNA is the DNA of a Saint – a saint who sins but is forgiven and righteous before God. And if you are a child of God you are too!!! Together we can rejoice in the following Truth …

It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves
were stupid and stubborn,
dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands,
going around with a chip on our shoulder,
hated and hating back.
But when God, our kind and loving Savior God,
stepped in, he saved us from all that.
It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it.
He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people,
washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit.
Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously.
God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives.
And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life!
You can count on this.
TITUS 3:3-8 (THE MESSAGE)

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky