Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

Seeing Ourselves As God Does

Zephaniah 3:17 – The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

THEME OF THE DAY. SEEING OURSELVES AS GOD DOES. I am not sure there is a more encouraging verse to lift up the downcast soul, to recover the Satan-buffeted believer, to strength the bruised reed, and enflame the heart of a flickering wick than today’s scripture. Go back and read it again slowly, asking the Spirit of God to warm your heart with its truth.

In the course of living out the Christian life, we encounter many spiritual foes and incur many spiritual blows. The Christian who sincerely wants to know Christ and leave a mark in their world for Him will receive battle wounds and battle scars from the devil. And in the course of these intense spiritual conflicts, the devil will attack the mind with near constant reminders of our many failings, our much sinning, and try to get us to look inside ourselves and see nothing but worthlessness. Should he begin to achieve success, we will begin to believe his lies and instead of rejoicing in the Lord, we will become questioning of the Lord. This questioning will be toward how He sees us; the view He has of us. And should this persist, discouragement and lack of assurance of our relationship with the Lord will quickly come. But we fight and we fight with His truth of how He sees us not how we feel or perceive He sees us. Today’s scripture is a great “sword of truth” to defeat the devil as well as the four things God says we are in our relationship with Him.

First, we are HIS PURCHASED POSSESSION – “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Friends, it cost our Heavenly Father the life of His Son to possess us. There is no way for Him to look at us other than we are – His prized and purchased possession that He loves with an everlasting love.

Next, we are THE APPLE OF HIS EYE – “Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wings” (Psalm 17:8). Five times the phrase “the apple of His eye” appears in scripture and three of those point to His people. God delights in us. He enjoys us. He really does see us in His Son as the “apple of His eye”. Rest here when the devil would seek to cause unrest in our souls.

A third way God sees us is as HIS DESIRE COMPANION – “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am, to see My glory that You have given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). It is okay if right now you get up from your seat, look to heaven with raised arms and say, “Hallelujah, what a Savior!”. Get this, hurting believer. Jesus longs for our company. He is eager for us to come face-to-face with Him. Yes, we sin. Yes, we fail, but He paid for all of those failures and sins and longs for that glorious reunion with failure and sin will be forever banished and fellowship with Him untainted.

The final way God sees us is MEMBERS OF HIS ETERNAL FAMILY – “For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:18-19). When God adopts us and makes us “members of His household”, He never reneges on the membership. We don’t get kicked out or abandoned. The God who is forever has a forever family and that is well, forever!!! And He knew we wouldn’t be perfect children in the family so don’t listen to the lies of the devil. We are not in the family of God because of what we did and we are not kept in the family for what we do. It is a grace-established family and a grace-kept family from start to finish.

Yes, we have strong spiritual foes who want us to think of ourselves not as God does. Fight them diligently with the unchanging truth of what God says is how He sees us. It will produce spiritual maturity, strength and joy as we do.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to renew my mind to see myself through Your eyes and not my flawed spiritual eyesight.”

QUOTE: “God takes delight in us because we are in His Son who is altogether delightful.”