WHO YOU ARE

WHO YOU ARE?

As we explore the life beyond the manufactured life of ourselves — the ego, the identity we have constructed and learned to protect — we begin to discover who we really are.

We were made in His image.

For a long time those can simply be words written on a page. We confess them, believe them and hope that perhaps one day we will actually see ourselves that way.

But what happens when they become truth within us?

“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him.”— Genesis 1:27

We begin to realise that being made in His image was never something we were trying to achieve.

It was the intention of the Father from the beginning.

The journey is not about manufacturing a better version of ourselves. It is about the manufactured self falling away until the life God intended begins to be seen.

And when we see that truth, there is freedom.

We become free to express the image in which we were created.

Much of our sense of being alone has come from seeing ourselves as separate — an isolated self trying to find its way back to the Father.

Yet the Father was never separated from us. It was our mind that was telling us that lie.

Christ reconciled our mind with His mind, which in turn revealed the life for which we were created.

And now His Spirit dwells within us.

The more the manufactured self loses its hold, the more clearly another reality begins to emerge:

I was created in His image. Christ has become my life.

I have seen beyond the boundaries of my own limitations. Today I know who I am because Christ has revealed who He is in a new way within my mind.

Jesus prayed:

“Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am…”— John 17:24

There is something enormous in those words.

His desire was never that we remain forever looking at Him from a distance.

He called us to follow Him.

His Spirit came to dwell within us.

His life began to become our life.

And Scripture tells us that the journey ultimately reaches even into our mortality:

“As we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.”— 1 Corinthians 15:49

I am beginning to see beyond the mortal creature I have always known as myself.

I still live in a mortal body, but mortality is not the final expression of who I am in Christ.

There is yet a transformation to come.

“This mortal must put on immortality.”— 1 Corinthians 15:53

Created in His image.

Christ dwelling within.

His life becoming our life.

And ultimately bearing the image of the heavenly Man.

True freedom is discovering who you already are in Him — and what His life is about to express.

If you're open-minded and willing to see who you really are, read John L. Mastrogiovanni's book The God Who Never Wanted to Be God.

This most unusual title has more meaning to it than you might ever have imagined.

Take a walk on the wild side. Look inside this book and don't turn back.

As John writes, many get on the train to see beyond the boundaries, but halfway through they say, “Turn the train around. I want to go home.”

To me, home is being the expressed image of Christ.

So continue on. Get to the end.