Establishing Your Identity in Christ (4 of 4) Mike Connell 22.06.2008 am
Okay, I wonder if you can open your Bible, Proverbs 23:7. I want to finish the series I began a little while ago and I've got to finish it by giving you some practical keys, so I want to get there and we're just going to quickly pick up what we've been doing. We've been looking at our identity in Christ, your identity, your identity and it's part of what the Lord was talking to us about through the year. Proverbs 23:7, as a man thinks in his heart so he is. Today I want to just talk about establishing your identity in Christ, who am I? We saw in this verse here, let's just summarise some things we've done over the last couple of weeks so we get to the new things - and first thing we looked at, Proverbs 23:7 tells us as a man thinks in his heart. What you believe in your heart about yourself will determine how you live your life. Make no mistake about it; the way you see yourself affects the way you live.
Even in the secular world they talk about self-image, the way you see yourself, the way you view yourself. That actually affects the way you relate, the way you connect. It affects your expectations, it affects the way you connect with people, so how you see yourself. If you see yourself as a person with nothing to give you won't front up to give. You'll always stand back in the crowd and always be a little unhappy someone else stood up and did something. If you see yourself as being uneducated, therefore you can't contribute, this is actually a lie and many people who are not educated are great achievers in life. You understand? But if you get the message while you're at school I'm a dummy, I can't do anything, and you begin to believe that it's going to affect your performance all through your life.
I prayed for a young man who had been rejected totally by his father, totally abused by his father, got involved in homosexual activities and he got a massive deliverance. Actually it was on the floor of a restaurant. I was up there in this restaurant and he gave his testimony and I was really deeply touched by his testimony and I thought I'd like to pray for him. So I got my hands on him and prayed for him and actually gave him a big hug. I held onto him and gave him a big hug, such a non-homosexual hug [laughter] and a big hug, a big father hug and held him. I held him and he just began to break and weep. He wept and wept and wept and then we just cast these demons out of him. Well the staff were just astonished. This guy's rolling around the floor and these demons coming out of him, and afterwards just totally clean. But you see his mind had been shaped, the way he saw himself and he just needed to get free.
I had another young guy in a church just recently and he also had had a similar background. He just said in his heart, he said I just want the pastor to hug me and I hugged [unclear 00.02.46] going on praying for people. I saw this one guy, just gave him a big hug and held him, he began to weep. I didn't know what it was. Later on he said God had touched and set him free, just like that. See, but these people saw themselves in a certain way, so how you see yourself is going to affect how you live your life. How you see yourself will affect how you live your life and we saw that people defined themselves in a whole number of ways; by our name: who are you? Oh well I'm Mike. We define ourselves by our name, we define ourselves by where we've come from, I come from this family line. We define ourselves by our race, I'm a Kiwi or I'm an Irishman or I'm a Maori or I'm a Cook Islander.
We define ourselves by gender; I'm a woman, I'm a man - and if we're not sure, well I don't know you know? I'm in between. [Laughs] But if you're uncertain, boy it's certain you're going to put some vibes out there that people will pick up. So we define ourselves in a whole number of ways and we saw also people define themselves by the experiences they've had. So if they've had a lot of failure experiences and they believe I am a failure, then what happens is they begin to live their life out according to that and they fail repeatedly. We saw also that if people had experienced abuse, injustice or whatever and they began to believe I'm a victim, I'm powerless, I can't help myself; then what happens is they begin to then be victimised all through life. That's why young women who have been abused tend to attract into their life men who abuse them - until the issue is resolved. When the young girl gets a different view of herself, then she'll attract a different kind of guy in.