When you define yourself all the time by what you do, you're not defining your identity in who you are, and your value around what God says. He loves you. You are more valuable than all of creation. God provides for the birds; how much more will He provide for you, who are of more value, Matthew writes. You are of great value. Of course the world and life around us tends to strip away our value, but I need to actually get into my heart an agreement with what God says about me. I'm a child of God. I am accepted. I am acceptable. I am loveable. I am loved by God. The spirit of God stays in my life, and God is my friend continually. I need to get that inside me, it needs to be the voice that talks, strong agreement with the word of God. In Romans 8:15, you have received the spirit of God, not the spirit of bondage to fear, and be in bondage, but you've received the spirit of adoption, and it's come into your life, and placed you into the family of God, and that spirit bears witness with your spirit on who you are, a child of God. Fathers love their children. You are loved.
Now you and I need to get clearly in our mind we are loved. We have not received a spirit of bondage, or a spirit of fear, to end up in bondage. People who are finding their identity and their resourcing outside themselves, if someone else has got to say words to you to make you feel good about yourself, you will live in fear of being rejected. If relationships are where you get your identity and affirmation from, then if they fail you, you will end up with issues in your life. So people end up in fear, because they're attached to the wrong things. Jesus wants us to be attached to Him, so our identity, we define ourselves by who we're attached to. I am attached to the living God, who created heaven and earth, see? Now when you're attached to God, and of course that has to be something you experience by receiving Jesus Christ as your saviour, and then by building a life with God, whereby you know firmly in your heart I'm attached to God, and God is with me.
How does it get to be like that? There are two primary ways. One is by meditating in the word of God, the other is by confessing the word of God. You need to speak, to speak what God says about you. He says I have a wonderful plan for your life. I know the plans for you, they're plans for good, not evil, that you might live with hope in your life. So if we get God's word into our heart you have to meditate on it. Why do you need to meditate? Because meditating, or rolling the word of God around in your mind repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, reprograms your inner man to agree with God's word. If I was to ask for you to tell me, how much is two times three, well almost before I've finished it you know the answer. How many found it bobbed up in there, you got 12? Oh okay. [Laughter] Sorry. How many got six - two three's, that's right? Two three's, okay. You got six, is that correct? How many got it straight away? It was programmed in. How did you get to learn that? Well learned it by heart. What does learning by heart mean? Oh, you repeat it. You have to repeat things to learn them by heart. After you've repeated them enough, then it's inside you.
So we know it works with times tables, but we somehow miss that some of the truths of the word of God will only come into our heart if we actually meditate repeatedly upon them, and embrace them, welcome them, celebrate them until they're written inside us. Then two times three is? [Six.] Six, of course it is six, that's right. It's always been six, but you know what happens is that we are wired in our identity, most of us, that two times three isn't six. We've got a different thing comes up when you ask the question, well what are you like? Who are you? We find there's problems in answering some of those things. We need to agree with what God says; I am who God says I am. I can do what God says I can do, and I have what God says I can have. We say well, you don't have much. Yes, but I have what God says I can have, and as I have a belief in my heart, eventually I'll see it. You understand that we have to believe to experience things, see, we have belief in our heart, so you've got to change and reprogram how you think. Most people don't take time to do that, because you do have to take - how many love learning your tables? Yeah, three ones are three, two threes are - what was that, two threes again? Oh, two threes are six, that's right. Two threes are six - you know, it takes time doesn't it. You have to invest.