Spiritual Formation

What is the purpose of understanding our strengths as Christians?  This two-part series will examine why Christians need to understand our strengths and how Christians can talk about them without appearing boastful. Understanding our strengths teaches us to lean into and utilize our God-given talents and abilities to glorify God through our work.  Recognizing our…

In the early 1990’s, I was sitting in Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York City, listening to Tim Keller preach. In that sermon, he said something to the effect of “the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only the way to be saved but is the primary way we grow.” I was captivated by that…

Ok, now we have the word Gospel defined as good news, and we saw the dilemma that though God loves us and desires us to always be with Him, our sin demands that an eternity’s worth of God’s wrath be poured out to satisfy justice.  Now, let’s get into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The…

In yesterday’s post, we learned that the word Gospel means good news.  What about the Gospel of Jesus Christ that makes it good news? To answer that question, we need to go to the beginning. God is the Creator. As with any creator, He knows our purpose and how we are designed.  Out of all…

As we saw yesterday, unhealthy drivenness can be a symptom of shame. Despondency can also be a symptom of shame. Instead of feeling the pressure to validate our worth through achievements, we can feel so defeated and hopeless about who we are that despondency becomes ingrained. Ironically, we can be unhealthily driven in one area…

Shame often manifests itself through either unhealthy drivenness or despondency. Today, we’ll look at unhealthy drivenness, and tomorrow, we’ll look at despondency. In Scripture, we see that God Himself rested after He worked to create our world (Genesis 2:1-3). But as fallen humans, we can work obsessively without rest to fend off shame and prove…

To go from shaming yourself to believing your true identity in Christ will be a process.  The power of our sinful nature was destroyed when we were united with Christ on the cross in salvation (Romans 7:1-6). Now we have received a regenerated heart that is the true us (Romans 7:22). However, even though our…

Now that we understand our identity (both the Macro and the Micro), its source (Christ, not our performance), and how our identity is based on God’s efforts, not ours, let’s look at shame. On Day One of this devotional, when Jack made identity statements like, “I suck,” “I’m hopeless,” and “I’m a failure,” he was…

Today, we will look at the fifth step in our process of fighting shame and getting grounded in our identity in Christ. As we saw yesterday, the first four steps were: Now, let’s get into our fifth tool. This must be done repeatedly until the truth sinks into our hearts. For example, I might ask…

Yesterday, we talked about our Macro identity: who we are as Believers through the work of Christ. Today, we’ll discuss our Micro identity. Our Micro identity is the part of our identity that is unique to us, the way no human is the exact same as another human. Our Micro identities were determined for us…