The Truth About Ourselves

I didn't know that this was the 10th or the 10th year celebrating the revival Hearts conference and I find it funny that that was showed before I spoke because 10 years ago in October is when the Lord rescued me from my sin and so in a year after that is when I met the woman that discipled me a woman by the name of Santeria and she introduced me to revive our hearts through the workbook that Nancy wrote called seeking him which is when I found out that I was more prideful that I could ever imagine and so I'm grateful to be here I don't think I ever would have imagined that God would have rescued me and given me given me to him but also that he would use me to empower other women to love him well so I'm grateful but anyway if you are on social media at all specifically Instagram and Twitter you've most likely noticed that everyone has a bio section on their page if you're not on social media the bio is the area where people put what they want you to know about them my bio for example says disciple wife mother writer teacher poet MC because that's what I do other folks might have bad cook great dancer I don't really know but you get the gist the bio is our chance to learn about someone before we choose to follow them or not for those of us who have written a social media bio there's usually some intentionality behind it one way we know this to be the case is that we don't write down the things that we are embarrassed about other things that we don't want people to know in our bio pages we typically leave the bad stuff out because if this bio is the way I will introduce myself to someone then this bio will be the version of myself that I prefer for them to know for them to see first for those of us who have written a social media bio so specifically by all the people we've never met we will read what they have to say about themselves and will usually take their word for it so if you read pastor's wife mother Bible teacher you might believe that to be who this person is and usually if you follow them long enough or if they post enough pictures you will eventually affirm them as that you might see them post a picture of them serving the church or cooking for their children and in the comments you will write you are such a great wife such a great mother with three heart emojis to follow and I am so encouraged by your servant leadership with the little emoji that does that I don't know what that means but that's it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that it's simply a picture of what is happening to us and with us all the time which is this we are constantly projecting to people who we believe ourselves to be and in turn we are constantly receiving from people who they think that we are but the question is this is who I think I am and it's who people are saying I am is it true and where do I go to find out the truth of who I am and who I should be let's pray God I'm thankful for your kindness I'm thankful for your gospel I pray that we would believe that you are good and you are right and your assessment of us in Jesus name Amen in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth as he did he made light he male and he made water he made vegetation and living creatures and if you were to just skim through Genesis 1 you'll notice that the language God used are used by God to bring these things into being is consistent if you have your Bibles and I would soon you do because you are a true woman by the way please turn to Genesis chapter 1 if you don't there is no shame I promise Genesis chapter 1 looking at verse 3 and I'm gonna read a couple verses after that I want you to notice some consistency here Genesis 1 verse 3 it says and God said let there be light and there was light Genesis 1 verse 6 says and God said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters Genesis 1 verse 9 let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear I'm going somewhere Genesis 1 verse 24 and God said let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds and it was so what are the two phrases being repeated they are oh praise God I thought it was rhetorical I'm glad you're ready I'm so glad they are God said and let there unless there be the entire world and universe is being made by the effectual Word of God he speaks and things happen let there be light and there is like God is God so he doesn't use his hands or any outside resource to create he just says it and it is so the interesting thing is that as God creates light land water vegetation and living creatures the language remember is the same but when we get to verse 26 the language changes the repetitive nature of how God brought all of the creation into being stops when God decides to make something else now verse 24 says and God said let the earth bring forth living creatures but verse 26 says then God said let us make man in our image and after our likeness the language is totally different as if God is saying what I am making now is altogether different than all that I made before and what is it that he made this time made man in His image and after his likeness so in talking about this concept of identity and talking about what it means to be you and talking about ourselves and trying to understand our own BIOS if you will we must all ask ourselves the question Who am I or who are we and if you want the answer you have to go back to Genesis 1 and there you will see that we are all image bearers of the Living God being an image bearer means many things for us today but I'm gonna briefly touch only one the first thing is that being made in the image of God means that we matter we as in human beings we have an innate dignity because we bear God's image I know for me though it doesn't take nearly as much effort for me to believe that I as an image bearer deserve honor and respect as it does for me to believe that of other people it is really my treatment of other image bearers that will testify to what I actually a believe about the doctrine of the imago day and also how much I value the one in whose image we are made let me explain in Genesis 9 God is making a covenant with note Noah after the flood water subsides in it God tells Noah that there will be consequences for whoever takes another man's life let me read it verbatim verse 6 says whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for or because God made man in his own image the value of human life is so high that God told Noah that if anyone would have the audacity to take it then their own would be taken as well why because humanity bears the image of the Living God when we move in the other direction into the new testament and you find yourself in the book of james over in chapter 3 james is talking about the tongue and how it is a fire and a world of unrighteousness and how it is a restless evil and do you know with example he gives for how this evil looks he says that we do this evil when the same tongue we used to bless our Lord and father becomes the same tongue that curses people and he doesn't just leave the sentence at people he qualifies it by saying people who are made in the image of God in Genesis 9 there are consequences for what is done to a person made in the image of God and James 3 there is consequences for what is said about or to a person made in the image of God the point is that every person alive black white asian Hispanic gay straight immigrant elderly poor privileged mentally ill mentally disabled singled married whatever or whoever they are they all bear the image of God so we must think twice before we even try to think that we shouldn't treat the message image bearers image bearers matter to God so they must matter to us do you know what the fact that we even have to be exhorted and challenged to love other image bearers well tells us that something isn't quite right all things must not be as they should be when it comes to our being made in the image of God because if they were we wouldn't have racism we wouldn't have abortion we wouldn't have abuse we wouldn't have murder and we wouldn't have this earring getting on my nerves he's done we wouldn't have disrespect and dishonor in our marriages we wouldn't have gossip we wouldn't have pornography we wouldn't have sex trafficking how is it that we are all made in God's image and live in a world surrounded by image bearers and yet the world looks so much like the devil in Genesis 1 after God blesses Adam and Eve verse 31 says that God saw everything he made and that it was very good Adam and Eve were included in what God called good but in Romans 3 while Paul is talking about our unrighteousness he says that no one is good and in mark 10 Jesus himself says that no one is good except God so what happened between God calling the people he made in his image good and Jesus and Paul telling us that no one is good how did we get here where we can see that goodness is not in us nor is it always around us what happened to the image bearers of the Living God deception happened if you can turn with me to Genesis 3 or click whichever you'd prefer verse one says now the serpent was more crafty than any other beasts of the field that the Lord God had made he said to the woman the God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden then the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden neither shall you touch it lest you die but the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate then the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths there is so much here but I want to talk about one thing and that is did you notice that when the devil came up to Eve and was tempting her to distrust the word and personal God that one of the ways he did it was by telling her that she could have another identity look at verse 5 it says for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open and you will be like who you will be like God knowing good and evil what an intoxicating idea that somehow eating a little bit of fruit could make her like the one that created it and her when the devil told Eve that she would be like God knowing good and evil he wasn't telling her the whole truth God being God knows good and evil because he knows everything so in a sense her eating from the tree would give her a knowledge of good and evil that she did not have but what the devil didn't tell her is that she would not know good and evil in the same way that God does because she would know evil experientially God is holy he has never and will never know evil from personal experience he only knows goodness this way he knows evil like a doctor might know cancer something he fully under stands but as something that is totally outside of himself but when Eve disobeyed the commandment of God she would not know evil like a doctor knows cancer but she would know evil like a patient those cancer she would not be the physician she would become the one who is sick it is in this deception that she didn't realize that by sinning against God she would come become inherently unlike him because this evil would not be over there somewhere it would be in her and in it being in her and in her in in in in her husband this image that they were made and would be blurred you would see the image of God marred by expressions of sin which inevitably would take the glory that God intended to get out of humanity and put all of that glory that he deserved into the hands of people that had never even belong to and this same deception isn't us even though we are still very much image bearers of the Living God when we were born into this world we were also born as sinners who sin against the Living God and it is this deception this sin that then shapes who we think we are when we are deceived we go about life gathering information about ourselves from everyone but God I am Who this relationship says I am I am what my bank statement statement says I am I went to an Ivy League school so my personhood is centered around my intelligence I have children so everything that I do all that I am finds its completion in my being a mother I'm over 35 and still single so I must not be worthy of love I've been married for 25 years and my husband still hasn't changed I deserve another spouse we allow our life stages and difficulties and accomplishments and blessings to become the things that name us but it all might be so the good things that God has given us and the hard things God is taking us through it's not the basis of our personhood sin wants you and me to listen to what everyone else has to say about who we think we are and who we should be just as Satan did to Eve in the garden he dangled the possibility of her being someone else before her do you know why she took it it's not because she forgot who she was she didn't sin because she wasn't looking at herself but because she didn't know herself or because she had low self-esteem if anything she had way too much esteem she sinned against God because she stopped believing the truth of who God was we don't find out about ourselves by looking to ourselves we find out about who we are by looking at and learning from the one we were made for if Eve would have remembered would have believed that God was the one - that she should desire to be made wise that God was pleasurable to the sight that God could satisfy the body and that before anything was made God had always been there so having a right theology about God would have told her that if he is everything then how could a created thing make her whole and that if he is eternal and she's not then there is nothing that she could possibly do to become him it is the faith that comes by looking to Christ that makes us women that are satisfied with being exactly what we were created to be and that is namely his so where do we go where do we go to find out the truth of who we should be in who we are we go to God and as you do remind yourself that it is Christ - is the exact image of the invisible God if you have seen Christ you have seen the Father because they are one and it is this Christ who being God and the flesh could not blur God's glory he was and is sinless so not once which you look at him and see any expression of sins towards God or people even though we all have used our tongues and our thumbs to both bless and curse he became like a lamb that was led to the slaughter and he did not open his mouth but he remained silent he did not need people to tell who he was because he knew who he was and what he come to do and that was not to save the righteous the folks I think they are just as good as God that their works would somehow give them a righteous identity but no he came to call sinners to repentance people who were made in His image and living like the devil that's all of us by the way it's in our repentance it's in our turning from all the lies that we've allowed to define us and turning towards God in faith believing in all the truths that describes him that sets us free because don't you know that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom and that we all we all with unveiled face beholding not the glory of us but the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another God is restoring his image in us so it doesn't matter who they say you are who you think you are when matters is do you know who God is and if so believe him when he tells you who you should be now I have a poem that first guy with my story in my testimony being one of lesbianism gender confusion I didn't know what it meant to be a woman I didn't think that womanhood was a good thing I thought it was a true thing but not a good thing and I had to figure out what it meant to be me what it meant to be a woman in this body especially when I had a daughter I figured that I would be the first Titus - that she would ever read so I knew that I needed to live it out before I ever thought I could preach it so I wrote this poem because I wanted women made in the image of God - fine joy and being all that God made us to be the other day a young lady brown as the melanin in my daughter's eyes said by the mic that she hated being a woman she wanted to know what it meant to be one and I have often wondered the same looked around for the teaching of such to tell me of myself we all learn to be by imitation or indoctrination mama and media can't help but train tutor us into carbon copies of themselves so then knowing who we are or what we should be is really understanding whose costumes we wear on most days whose skeletons we switched with when Adam took his nap I was told a woman cannot truly be herself that is and for herself is not light enough dark enough of her hair is no Rapunzel replica or cb2 Underground Railroad for those kind of acting men to stomach I was told that my body is neither belonging of me nor its beauty and Nate's but I am NOT gorgeous then let's told by another woman's son to be so when did the amount of men in whose image women are not made and begin to damage us so silently maybe it was when we began believing the voices they have no deity in it I was told a woman should not submit should not be meek that that type of behavior was only for women who treated their voice like a secret I was told not to be a secret but a siren to be his machete as I can and honor my opinions at the expense of respect while some men may believe themselves to have liberty of a woman's body has taught how to destroy there's only depravity could predict we have equally learned how to tear and rip and undo dignity with a mere sentence or a squint it's called strong by society they tell us that's what a backbone looks like but beautiful is the spine that remembers where it came from unless it's knowing of self not be determined by every wind of doctrine and dust but God himself we must unlearn the deep misunderstandings that compose themselves as empowerment as freedom liberation has never come by way of unbelief evening not at a life by finding beauty and lies for only a naked body and the husband that forgot her first name we women must be smarter must be wiser must be bent on loving truth no matter contradicting it is to a dying culture I tell you a woman is no fool unless she chooses to be if you asked me what is a woman I would tell you that she is a bone made alive with distinctions that set her apart as does the difference between a firefly and a new poem a woman is not a man her calling is not a synonym of inferiority her distinctions are not the child of patriarchy they come from a creative God did you see his fingerprints in your hips the Whistling shadow of his mind when your body became home to another name that called you mommy while all the gladness you forgot could exist a woman submits that to her God her husband her church she is no weak willed or brittle back woman but only as strong as humility and faith may identify her to be they say submission sounds like surfing they say that sounds like something to rebell against I say ain't it funny how being a servant was repulsive to everyone but God and we wonder why we can't recognize his face if you asked me what does a woman I would tell you that she is a sister to all even those whose blood is not of the same roots but who would steal as keen as her mama's firstborn and she treats these sisters like a wintered quilt making sure her mouth does not unstitched that which was made to keep cold hearts woman we are made up of nurture and everything comfortable and that is why we feel so deep why we cry so sudden because the emotions that make us woman don't make us unstable but turning us refuge to the chaos while our ribs once sat we are necessary and nuanced at best but a woman should be nothing more or less than what God made her to be anything that defines our being that does not shimmer and sing of Christ and his wisdom is a definition destined for flames if you asked me what is a woman I would simply tell you acts the God who made her thank you

Channel: Revive Our Hearts

Views: 101,104

Rating: 4.9715457 out of 5

Keywords: Jackie Hill Perry, True Woman 18, truth, lies, gender, sexuality, identity

Id: EE7ZgNXb2jM

Length: 25min 10sec (1510 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018