Who Do You Think You Are?

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he in behavior… — Proverbs 23:7a AMP

In my humble opinion, the two most crucial questions any human being can answer for themselves are these:

1. Who am I?
2. What is the purpose of my existence?

The answers to these salient questions are foundational to every one of our other thought processes and resulting behaviors. If we feel — whether consciously or subconsciously — our answers to those two questions are non-existent or inadequate, the likelihood of us sinking into depression — and possibly even resorting to suicide — are stratospherically high.

If our answers do not echo as Truth down into our deepest souls, we vainly embark on endless quests to find ones which do, typically leading to all sorts of addictions and/or other compulsive behaviors. Rather than bringing the peace we so desperately crave, those compulsions result in ever-increasing amounts of guilt and shame. Our incredible propensity to indulge in denial over the root cause(s) usually leads us to a point of despair, thus circling us back to the aforementioned issues of depression/suicide/etc.

That’s the bad news.

The astonishingly Good News is this: Jesus has answered those questions in spades — and truthful spades at that! — so we can have a solid foundation for our lives as we walk them out in a world whose darkness seems to increase exponentially by the day.

Who Am I?

The world system and the psychopath (Satan) ruling it spend a massive amount of time, effort, and money trying to make its narratives dominate our thinking. The jackal voices of our pasts — our parents’ expectations, our personal successes and failures, our insecurities caused by various forms of trauma — all combine in a chorus repeatedly singing the same refrain: life is all about your talents, your intelligence, your appearance, and/or your accomplishments — or lack thereof!

Since none of us are perfect, we all fall short in one or more of these four areas, regardless of how long/hard we try or how successful our efforts are in general, so guilt and shame become our emotional magnifying glasses on those failings.

The catch-all term for this dysfunctional chorus is “the human condition.” We all experience it and no one is exempt!

God’s answer to this question is actually quite simple, because ultimately it is the same for every human being on this planet, regardless of who we are, where we live, our ethnicity, skin color, gender, personal history, or the form of government under which we live.

Here is the only true answer:

• You are created spiritually and intellectually in the image and likeness of God.
• He longs to have an intimate personal relationship with you.
• You are incredibly precious and valuable in His sight, so much so that despite your lifelong rebellion against Him, He sent His Son Jesus to suffer shameful, excruciating torture and death to redeem you from the darkness, sin, guilt, and shame which besets you.
• If you were the only person on earth who needed rescue, He would have done it all for you alone.
• He offers it all to you as a free gift which you can never earn or deserve.
• All you need to do to receive it is humbly surrender to His rule over your life.

In other words, if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it!

Here’s the conceptual difference between “precious” and “valuable”:

• A lock of your baby’s hair is precious to you, but has zero monetary value.
• A barrel of oil has great monetary value, but is in no way precious to anyone.

With God, we’re both!

Now I could provide you with an extensive list of Bible passages to prove these assertions — and usually I would do precisely that! But the sheer volume of verses firmly establishing this would fill an entire book, not just an article!

Frankly, though, it will be far, far, FAR more valuable to you if you dug into the Bible and researched it for yourself, allowing the Holy Spirit to cement these foundational truths within your own heart along the way. I can assure you with absolute confidence He will speak to you and firmly establish you in this, if you humbly seek Him/them out.

We can also safely assume this answer’s corollary : any voice, any answer, from any source (regardless of who, or how ostensibly loving, authoritative, or renowned that source may be) proclaiming anything to the contrary is a lie straight from the pit of Hell. Whenever we find our thought processes dwelling upon such lies (the aforementioned “jackal voices”), we must renew our minds to replace those toxic patterns with whatever God’s Word says on the matter (Romans 12:2).

What is the Purpose for My Own Unique Existence?

This one is a bit trickier to deal with because some of the answers are generic to all while others are specific to each individual.

Our Universal Purpose

I’ll list these in what I personally feel is the order of priority, though admittedly some may dispute that order. The generic purpose of our existence is to:

• Love and submit to the Most High God
• Give glory to His Son Jesus through our worship and obedience
• Allow the Holy Spirit to transform our thinking — and consequently conform our behaviors — into Christ-likeness
• Love others as Jesus loves them
• Compassionately bear witness of God’s grace, love, and mercy to a lost and dying world.

Regardless of how you might care to order this list, anything in our lives not found in it are sins from which we need to turn away (repentance) and humbly seek His forgiveness.

That being said, please do not let Satan put you under condemnation over your failures here because we all have them — I’m certainly not! We are all works in progress as we stumble towards the Light together and such guilt and shame will not bring us any closer to the heart of God. Turn away from such things, receive His forgiveness for your willfulness (aka sin), appropriate His loving grace for the future, and move on!

Please note how God’s answer to our opening question in this article deals with our state of existence, whereas this list deals with our attitudes and behaviors. It is crucial to make this distinction because the former is foundational to the latter. In other words, if you don’t have the first one right, you’re going to spend a tremendous amount of wasted time and fruitless effort, vainly and hopelessly spinning your wheels trying to accomplish the second.

Fruit is grown, not manufactured! (Galatians 5:19-23)

Our Unique-to-Ourselves Purposes

This is where things get far more complicated because there are as many specific gifts, callings, and destinies as there are persons on this planet — literally billions! Though there is certainly overlap between many individuals (e.g., those who are called to be ministers, doctors, educators, homemakers, or business-people), no one is called to do precisely the same thing in precisely the same way in the same place with the same people. Each of us has been uniquely crafted and equipped — meaning our personalities, talents, mindsets, intellects, passions, etc., — by the Most High from before the foundations of the world to be who and what we are as well as how to perform the appointed task(s) He has set before us.

While there is certainly a commonality of tasks, burdens, anointing, and experiences among various callings, one of the dangers shared by all — especially ministers! — is a tendency to emulate — and define our success through — others, rather than seeking God’s face and allowing Him to guide and direct our efforts as well as set our goals. An even greater danger comes from those of us who have achieved a modicum of success to start believing our own press releases and touch God’s glory by taking credit for what He has done in and through us. Having done so in times past, let me hasten to assure you that dog doesn’t hunt and His correction for such hubris is exceedingly painful and embarrassing!

Yet another pitfall is the tendency for those called to do a specific task within God’s kingdom to judge others who do not possess that same calling as if those other folks were somehow falling down on the job. One example I’ve observed several times over the decades is how some believers having a passion for soul-winning (aka evangelists) and are willing endure incredible hardship and rejection to preach the Gospel of Christ door-to-door, on street corners, in parks, etc., can easily fall into the trap of judging others not sharing that same passion as somehow spiritually less-than (labelling them lukewarm pew-sitters and the like).

But I digress…

There are a variety of ways to determine God’s calling on your life. Most folks spend a lot of “knee-time” before God’s throne, seeking His face to receive their marching orders. However, it is a terrible mistake to assume that is the only way He works with us.

Why?

Because there are those of us with whom He imparts that same information in other ways and there is a lamentable tendency for the former group of believers to put such folks under condemnation because they don’t hear from God the same way they did.

For example, the only direct calling I’ve ever received from God was my call to the ministry received early on in my walk with Jesus. For some reason known only to Him, however, God has had me slip sideways into things through a combination of divinely orchestrated circumstances/coincidences. For example, I became:

• A computer professional through working as an electronics technician at Hewlett-Packard thereby discovering I had a knack for computers and programming.
• A graphic artist through purchasing my first Macintosh computer and applying my photographic composition skills to print design.
• An Internet professional through the marriage of those 2 careers, a career I actively pursue to this day.
• A Christian counselor through recovering from my own addiction to pornography.
• A published writer (which subsequently earned me my master’s degree and 2 doctorates) simply because I was angered by a former pastor’s treatment of the Book of Job in a sermon he preached. I started writing this blog as a response. Who woulda thunk it!

I never deliberately set out to be any of the things on that list or heard “Thus saith the Lord!” from on high calling me to them but somehow God orchestrated all of it!

Who Are We as Believers?

For some reason which escapes me entirely, this topic is rather controversial when it should be as plain as the noses on our faces. The dividing line is typically drawn between those who actually study their Bibles and believe/teach/practice what it actually has to say and religious folk who tend to identify with traditional Christendom, the organized, institutional — and many times, corrupt! — expression of Christianity in the earth. The latter group tends to filter the Scriptures through the lenses of their denominational traditions, rather than trashing any of those traditions not lining up with God’s Word.

As a result, the vast majority of the second group live in bondage to sin, shame, fear, defeat, sickness, and poverty — essentially living what Henry David Thoreau described as “lives of quiet desperation” all the while deceived into thinking God is apropos-of-nothing inflicting those conditions to “teach us something,” for inscrutable reasons, all ostensibly for our own ultimate “good.”

I love how God occasionally gives me illustrations from various media, especially movies. The other night, my wife and I had occasion to rewatch an old Disney animated classic “Tangled,” the modern retelling of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale of Rapunzel. Here’s a quick plot summary:

• Rapunzel was a princess who had been stolen from her royal crib as an infant by an evil witch who thereafter had imprisoned her in a tower, raising Rapunzel as if she were her own child.
• The witch kept the child under control through an extensive fabric of deceptions which lasted until Rapunzel became a teenager and started thinking for herself — as teenagers are wont to do! — and questioning the lifelong assumptions she had held due to those lies.
• There came a transformative moment of clarity — revelation if you will — when she realized who she really was and that she was in fact being imprisoned through deception by the evil woman masquerading as her mother.
• The rest of the movie portrayed how Rapunzel had to fight further deception from the witch who was attempting to bring her back into bondage and how she eventually believed and acted upon the truth, thereby being set free.
• And yes, I’ve omitted whole hair schtick, but it wasn’t germane to this discussion.

The vast majority of the Body of Christ needs to seriously heed this message. God didn’t just send Jesus to get us into heaven after we die, though that is a huge benefit which cannot wisely or safely be ignored or minimized. Jesus also died and was resurrected from the dead to “reverse the curse” imposed upon mankind after The Rebellion in Eden.

If we do not actively pursue Jesus, allowing the Holy Spirit to transform our minds and thereby our behavior into Christ-likeness, we are doomed to emulate Rapunzel’s bondage by allowing the enemy to keep us captive to his deceptive schemes.

Victims or Victors?

Victims

One of the most pernicious of mindsets arising from Calvinism is a victim mentality.

Why do I say this?

Once we embrace its tragically flawed foundational concept that God is a cosmic child abuser inflicting death, destruction, sickness, poverty, and other calamities upon us for some “higher good,” we cannot help but also assume the passive role of victim as a direct consequence. After all, if God truly causes all our trials and temptations and we oppose them in faith, we would be found fighting God Himself — and we all know how that will fly — or should know, at least! So such folks passively accept such attacks, deceived into thinking they are humbling themselves before God.

Now don’t get me wrong here. Humility before God is a huge issue with Him and any sense of entitlement or ingratitude is a total non-starter before the Most High (I speak from hard, cold, painful experience here!). But He never said we were supposed to humble ourselves before Satan and his hordes!

Neither did He say we should ask Him to make us humble; He said we should humble ourselves before Him (James 4:6-7, 1 Peter 5-7) Our choice here is to either: 1) humble ourselves through surrender to the Most High, or; 2) for Him to humble us through pain.

There are no other options!

Whenever we pray for Him to make us grateful or humble, we are admitting to Him and ourselves that we are too proud to do it on our own and we need Him to break our self-lordship to bring them to fruition. He will oblige us and it won’t be pleasant!

But, again, I digress…

Such spiritual passivity plays perfectly into the mindsets of most First-World folks proclaiming themselves to be Christians because they are equally passive in their involvement with Jesus. In other words, they may have proclaimed Jesus as Lord of their lives and even been water baptized at some time in the past, but have pretty much remained there spiritually, still babes in Christ having never developed a serious walk with God since. They tend to inhabit heavily defended comfort zones founded on the false religious traditions of men, self-righteously judging all who “fall short” of what and who they have been deceived into thinking a Christian should be. Tragically, much of the blame for this travesty can be laid squarely at the foot of their pastors who failed to provide them with the Bible teaching crucial to spiritual success and never challenged them to pursue Christ with everything they have.

When trials come, such Christians’ boilerplate response is:

I go to church (occasionally), I give faithfully (a dollar or two in the offering each week), I lead a moral life (mostly). Why is God doing this to me?

Then Calvinism and other flavors of man’s religion come along, providing them with the perfect excuse: God did it to me!

As a result of such faulty thinking, many become bitter towards God, and turn away from the faith. The whole thing sounds remarkably like the Israelites during the Exodus, whining, “You just brought us out here to die! We would have been better off in Egypt!”

The problem with such scenarios is this: that is not how Christianity works!

Victors

Here’s the real scoop:

Everything we could ever need for life and complete devotion to God has already been deposited in us by his divine power. For all this was lavished upon us through the rich experience of knowing him who has called us by name and invited us to come to him through a glorious manifestation of his goodness. As a result of this, he has given you magnificent promises that are beyond all price, so that through the power of these tremendous promises you can experience partnership with the divine nature, by which you have escaped the corrupt desires that are of the world.

So devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing your faith with goodness, and to goodness add understanding, and to understanding add the strength of self-control, and to self-control add patient endurance, and to patient endurance add godliness, and to godliness add mercy toward your brothers and sisters, and to mercy toward others add unending love.

Since these virtues are already planted deep within, and you possess them in abundant supply, they will keep you from being inactive or fruitless in your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately. But if anyone lacks these things, he is blind, constantly closing his eyes to the mysteries of our faith, and forgetting his innocence—for his past sins have been washed away. For this reason, beloved ones,[w] be eager to confirm and validate that God has invited you to salvation and claimed you as his own. If you do these things, you will never stumble. Peter 1:3-10 TPT

But the fruit produced by the Holy Spirit within you is divine love in all its varied expressions: joy that overflows, peace that subdues, patience that endures, kindness in action, a life full of virtue, faith that prevails, gentleness of heart, and strength of spirit. Never set the law above these qualities, for they are meant to be limitless. Galatians 5:22-23 TPT

Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship. Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you,[a] but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes. Romans 12:1-2 TPT

Put on God’s complete set of armor provided for us, so that you will be protected as you fight against the evil strategies of the accuser! Your hand-to-hand combat is not with human beings, but with the highest principalities and authorities operating in rebellion under the heavenly realms. For they are a powerful class of demon-gods and evil spirits that hold this dark world in bondage. Because of this, you must wear all the armor that God provides so you’re protected as you confront the slanderer, for you are destined for all things and will rise victorious.

Put on truth as a belt to strengthen you to stand in triumph. Put on holiness as the protective armor that covers your heart. Stand on your feet alert, then you’ll always be ready to share the blessings of peace. In every battle, take faith as your wrap-around shield, for it is able to extinguish the blazing arrows coming at you from the Evil One! Embrace the power of salvation’s full deliverance, like a helmet to protect your thoughts from lies. And take the mighty razor-sharp Spirit-sword of the spoken Word of God. Ephesians 6:11-1 TPT

To summarize:

• God has equipped us with everything required for life and godliness. Please note this is stated in the past tense, having been imparted to us at the New Birth as revealed to us by His Word. We realize His “everything” through our faith in His “exceedingly great and precious promises” (2 Peter 1:4 NKJV).
• From this foundation, we daily don the whole armor of God, exercising our God-given authority over the powers of darkness.
• The Holy Spirit “transforms us by the renewing of our minds” as we diligently surrender to and pursue Him. As we do so, we develop ever-increasing goodness, understanding, self-control, endurance, godliness, mercy, and love, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit.
• The end result of all this is the astoundingly remarkable promise found in 2 Peter 2:10b: “If you do these things, you will never stumble,” WOW! What a promise!

Self-Inflicted Wounds

The tragic truth of the matter is most of the trials we face are all too often due to the person staring back at us in the mirror each morning, either through our:

1. Willful refusal to obey and do things His way, or;
2. Permissive inaction by our taking no preventive action against the devil through prayer.

Disobedience

It is crucial to cement into our thinking that resisting the devil will never work when we are doing our own thing in our own particular idiom aka “doing what is right in our own eyes.” The promise “resist the devil and he will flee from you” is predicated on the conditions that we humble ourselves before God and submit to Him:

But He continues to pour out more and more grace upon us. For it says, “God resists you when you are proud, but continually pours out grace when you are humble.” So then, surrender to God. Stand up to the devil and resist him and he will turn and run away from you. James 4:6-7 TPT

Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. 1 Samuel 15:22-23b

Wrong Theology

There are those Christ-followers who are utterly dedicated to obediently walking in obedience, praying regularly, and reading their Bibles daily (albeit through the distortion filters of their religious traditions) who suffer totally preventable and/or reversible assaults simply because their doctrinal position misinforms them of those attacks’ source and purpose.

In other words, if we mistakenly assume the trials/temptations coming from the powers of darkness designed to steal, kill, and destroy in our lives are actually tests sent from God to develop some kind of spiritual virtue in us, then our response will be completely ineffective. Yes, God’s grace is sufficient for us to endure them either way, but I can’t help but imagine God shaking His head at such folks, saying the divine equivalent of, “Well, bless their little hearts! I gave them promises in My Word to be victorious over that! Why aren’t they standing on them?”

These two issues illustrate why so many professing Christians are regularly getting their spiritual rear-ends kicked by a defeated foe.

Stop and selah on that last sentence for a bit!

Does this mean if we pray and believe hard enough, long enough, loud enough, often enough, fast enough we will never again face trials and tribulations?

Not a chance!

I do have to confess there have been some folks who have taken the message I’m presenting here to an unscriptural extreme and taught precisely that.

[LOUD BUZZER] Sorry, wrong answer. Thank you for playing!

I say this because — as I’ve already covered in depth here and elsewhere — we live in a fallen world populated with selfish people, the vast majority of whom are tyrannically governed by the aforementioned hate-filled god-of-this-world (Jesus’ label, not mine!). His #1 goal is to steal from us, kill us, and destroy whatever it is we cherish using any and all means at his disposal. In my humble opinion, the only reason every human being on the planet has not already been destroyed outright is “he who restrains” (2 Thessalonians 2:7) has not been taken out of the way, whoever “he” may be.

Yet again, I digress…

My point is this: many — but not all! — trials can be completely avoided. Those proving unavoidable are overcome-able. Cases in point:

• I rarely have problems with people with whom I do business. Why? Because my daily prayers include declarations that I have favor with men because I have favor with God, no weapon formed against me shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17), and that everything I put my hand to prospers (Deuteronomy 28).

  Contrast this with my late mother who could go on and on for hours recounting how she had been cheated, mistreated by, ignored by, experienced incompetence from, and/or been rudely treated by salespersons, mechanics, plumbers, government functionaries, office coworkers, and just about everyone else with whom she interacted. She walked into every situation fully expecting to be handed the crappy end of the stick and she got what she was unconsciously praying for every time!

• I rarely get sick. I literally cannot remember the last time I suffered from a cold or the flu. Why? Because at the first appearance of any symptom(s), such as a cough or itchy throat, I don’t ignore the symptom(s), but immediately pray, claiming God’s healing promises, and standing in faith believing, cursing those symptoms and commanding them to leave my body I the name of Jesus.
• One of the few times my symptoms did not respond to prayer was when I started peeing blood back in late 2011, thus leading to my diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma, a large tumor engulfing my right kidney.
  Rather than praying for grace to endure, I stood on God’s healing promises.

  Even though I had to have my kidney surgically removed, they got it out while the tumor was still a few millimeters away from encroaching into my lymphatic system thus eliminating any need for chemotherapy. After my surgery I was immediately declared cancer-free without having to undergo any further treatments and have remained so ever since.

  Because I had obeyed the Holy Spirit’s leading months before to enroll for my VA medical benefits, the entire $100K+ Mayo Clinic operation was payed for with only a $1,000 copay!

• The most recent instance had to do with our car. We had owned a top-of-the-line Hyundai Sonata Turbo since we bought it new in 2015. At the time of the incident, it had about 97K miles on the clock, though we had taken excellent care of it maintenance-wise. My wife and I had been discussing how much we wanted to trade it in for a Hyundai Palisade because we wanted AWD for winters and the cargo capacity/convenience of an SUV.

  As I was driving home on I-17 from the Mesa, Arizona airport one early July afternoon in 116° heat about 25 miles north of Phoenix, the engine suddenly died at 85mph. Despite significant traffic, I was able to quickly and safely pull to the side of the road, only to discover the engine would not respond at all — good electrical power, zero starter!

  I immediately prayed along these lines:

  “Heavenly Father, You are Lord and I’m not. You haven’t fallen off the throne in surprise at this event. You saw this moment from the foundations of the world and have a plan to resolve this to my benefit and for Your glory. I surrender and humble myself before You to receive that plan now in the name of Jesus. I position myself to participate in whatever way You choose. What Satan intended for evil, you can and will redeem into good. You’ve always had my back and I trust that You have it now. Satan, get your hands off my car in the mighty name of Jesus! Amen!”

  During this whole process, that was far from the only time we prayed such a prayer!

  Here’s how it all came down without me going into all the gory details:

  • 3.5 hours later — it took that long to get a wrecker on scene — the car was towed back to a Hyundai dealership in North Phoenix because home was too far away.
  • After some difficulty, I finally obtained a rental car and drove home.
  • Within a few days, the service department discovered the engine had seized. Because I had performed proper maintenance, the repair would be free of charge because it was completely covered under Hyundai’s excellent powertrain warranty.
  • As my wife and I discussed all this, we realized what we really wanted was a new car, so I approached the dealership to see if they would accept the Sonata as a trade-in.
  • They were not only willing, they were willing to do so even before the engine had been replaced! Talk about divine favor!
  • After about 2 weeks of prayer, family discussion, and negotiations with the sales department, Tess and I walked into that dealership on a Friday morning and took possession of our brand-new 2021 Hyundai Palisade!

  Glory to God!

  I am convinced that, had I reacted with the typical, whiny, “Why me, God!” bitter complaining exhibited by most believers facing such situations, we would still be driving our old Sonata to this day. But because I responded with humility towards God and faith in His promises, His grace was able to prevail and bless us.

Let me again hasten to give every ounce of glory to God for all this because I could never earn or deserve any of it! These accounts are not testimonies of my “great faith” or any moral/spiritual excellence on my part, but of God’s astounding faithfulness, limitless grace, and infinite goodness.

Conclusion

As I have a tendency to do in my articles here, I would like to cement these truths in you through music because singing God’s Truth is an excellent way to get our souls in line with God’s Word on whatever topic is at hand.

Rise Up (Lazarus)

This is what I believe the Lord is commanding us, His children, a Last Days call to arms for a mostly smug, mostly complacent, and mostly harmless-to-the-devil American Church:

RISE UP!

Rise Up

Verse 1
In the dark and all alone 
Growing comfortable
Are you too scared to move
And walk out of this tomb?
Buried underneath 
The lies that you believed 
Safe and sound, 
Stuck in the ground,
Too lost to be found! 
You’re just asleep 
And it’s time to leave! 

Chorus
Come on and rise up!
Take a breath, you’re alive now!
Can’t you hear the voice of Jesus calling us
Out from the grave like Lazarus?
You’re brand new!
The power of death couldn’t hold you!
Can’t you hear the voice of Jesus calling us
Out from the grave like Lazarus?
Rise up! Rise up! Rise up!
Out from the grave like Lazarus! 

Verse 2
When He said your name 
The thing that filled your veins 
Was more than blood,
It’s the kind of love
That washes sin away!
Now the door is open wide 
The stones been rolled aside 
The old is gone 
The Light has come
So…

Chorus

Bridge
He’s calling us to walk out of the dark!
He’s giving us new resurrected hearts!
He’s calling us to walk out of the dark!
He’s giving us new resurrected hearts!

Chorus

Outro
Rise up! Rise up! Rise up!
Out from the grave like Lazarus! 

Hello, My Name Is

The second selection is one of my favorite Matthew West tunes. It is a bold, fearless anthem proclaiming who and what we are as Christ-followers.

Hello My Name Is

Verse 1
Hello, my name is Regret.
I’m pretty sure we have met.
Every single day of your life
I’m the whisper inside
That won’t let you forget.

Verse 2
Hello, my name is Defeat.
I know you recognize me.
Just when you think you can win
I drag you right back down again
‘Til you’ve lost all belief.

Chorus
Oh, these are the voices. Oh, these are the lies.
And I have believed them for the very last time!
Hello, my name is Child of the One True King!
I’ve been saved, I’ve been changed, I have been set free!
“Amazing Grace” is the song I sing.
Hello, my name is Child of the One True King!

Verse 3
I am no longer defined
By all the wreckage behind.
The One who makes all things new
Has proven it’s true.
Just take a look at my life!

Chorus

Bridge
What love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called His children?
I am a child of the One True King.
What love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called His children?

Chorus

Outro
I am a child of the One True King!

Believer

Our third and final piece is Believer by Rhett Walker, another bold, fearless anthem of who and what a Christ-follower is and the attitude we should exhibit as we walk with Him.

Believer

Verse 1
I walk a bit different now,
Now that my heart’s been found.
Nothing really feels the same!
I hold my head a bit higher,
I lift my voice a bit louder,
Yeah, something inside has changed!

Chorus
I am a mountain-mover, water-walker,
More than just an overcomer,
‘Cuz I’ve been set free!
I am a Gospel-preacher, heart-on-fire,
Freedom-singing testifier,
‘Cuz I’ve been redeemed!
I am a believer!

Verse 2
I know this is not my home.
I know I don’t walk alone.
No matter what comes my way!
I have peace through the trouble,
I have joy though the struggle,
And now my hope’s in a brighter day!

Chorus

Bridge
I am a child of the Father,
An orphan no longer,
No doubt about who I am!
I’m in the hands of the Healer,
The arms of the Savior,
His grace makes me who I am!

Final Chorus
I am a mountain-mover, water-walker,
More than just an overcomer,
‘Cuz I’ve been set free!
(repeat 1x)

I am a Gospel-preacher, heart-on-fire,
Freedom-singing testifier,
‘Cuz I’ve been redeemed!
I am a believer!

If you have already settled these issues in your heart, excellent!

If you haven’t, though, I pray this has been a creative way of motivating you (Hebrews 10:24 TPT) to crack that Bible of yours, seek His face, and thereby discover both who you are in Christ as well as His destiny for the rest of your life on this planet. Once revealed, pursue that with everything you have by His grace!

Thanks for reading!