That's why you've got to be made whole. You don't want to hang around - in fact if you've been abused don't think of entering into romantic relationships until you've resolved your baggage. You're bringing your baggage in, you've got a bad future ahead of you. At some point it'll come up and you'll have to resolve it. What I have noticed is people who see themselves as being a victim of abuse tend to attract into their life people who will abuse them. It's just like until it's resolved you're like a magnet for this stuff. That's why you have to change, we have to renew how we think about ourself and even you notice in Uganda when the woman saw themselves in a certain way. Just getting the truth that actually a woman is a minister of God sets them free. Now they start to think, I can do that kind of stuff. So many of the ways we see ourself are shaped by our family background, our culture, the community we're in. All kinds of things affect it.
So we're wanting to move from that and to look at how we get established in Christ. So the first thing we talked about was how God defines us according to His purpose, so when we looked at Jesus we found in Matthew He shall be called Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. So when God brings a person into the earth He has a purpose for our life, so He wants you to see yourself in terms of your relationship with Him and what you're called to do with your life and destiny. You're an important person. You're an important person. Jesus, when He was baptised, the father spoke to Him: this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. So He received His identity by revelation. He was who the Father said He was. Now people from His hometown said that's just Jesus, the carpenter. He said no, I'm Jesus, the Saviour, and so He lived His life out of revelation of who God said He was.
Those who related to Him according to Him being Jesus, the carpenter, He couldn't touch their life at all. He couldn't receive any miracles, and hence you see the problem. If we view ourselves according to the way the world's described us we can't live out what God called us to be. If you view other people according to a natural way you've seen them, according to where they've come from, what family they're in, you will confine them and they won't be released to be who they are. Sitting next to you is someone waiting for their potential to be released. Are you going to confine them by your expectations, or are you going to help them become who they were called to be? Church community is to be a community where we call people forth into who God has called them to be. You don't have to make people anything; we have to find out what God has called them to be and help them become it.
You can see it's quite different, as we get to the end of this you'll see this. So you notice then Jesus was incredibly secure in His identity. In John 13 it says in verses 1, 2 and 3, somewhere around about there, he said Jesus knew where He came from. He knew where He was going, He knew what the Father had given Him, and do you know what He could do? He could serve. He wasn't worried about position, wasn't worried about title, wasn't worried about privilege. This is important to lots of people - wasn't important to Jesus at all. He took up the lowliest job and washed their feet. He said I'm your master and I can do this. You guys can do it too. In other words because His identity was secure He could have any position, status anywhere; His life was not found in those things. Life was not found in His money, not found in property, it's not found in His position, not found in His title. It's found this is who I am, for the Father told Me so and so He could lay His life down.
If you're not sure who you are you'll look for people around you to affirm it. You'll try and find your identity outside yourself, when actually you need to find it inside yourself by hearing what God has to say about you. I don't care what the authorities say about you. What does God say about you? I don't care what your past friends have said about you, what does God say about you? That's your potential. That's who you can be. Most people will only know where you've been, but God knows where you could go and so we see in the Bible as we - remember, we looked at this. We looked at various people, how God spoke to them. God speaks into us and sometimes He changed the names of people, because He wanted them to get a different picture so they can fully embrace the call of God. For example Abraham; we saw his name was originally Abram and God changed his name to Abraham so everywhere he went they'd say who are you? Oh, I'm the father of nations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're an old fella, where's the nations you know? Where's the father thing you know?