I was reflecting on my identity as a child of God and thought: do I look like my father ? What do I have in common with him ? What personality traits did I inherit from him?
The Bible says that, not only are we created in the image of God, but that we also have the spirit of God in us. God himself lives in us (1 Cor. 3:16).
But does that reflect in our everyday life ?
In the sermon on the mountain, Jesus explains how it works in his kingdom. Children of the kingdom are different and act different. For example, he commands us to love our enemies :
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and send rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you great only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. Matthew 5: 44-48.
In other words, do more, go the extra mile, look up, the common thinking is not your standard. Read the sermon on the mountain again and see how Jesus wants us to deal with anger, lust, divorce, oaths and retaliation. You will see that the standard is high for us, sons and daughters of our father.
1 Peter 1: 15 even reinforce that :
But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.
Be perfect, be holy. Just as your father. That sounds out of our reach, isn’t it? Don’t we say that perfection is not of this world? Yes, but remember that our standards are higher that the world’s. And the good news is, there’s no pressure on us! We have the Holy Spirit, God himself in us. All that we need to do is to let him work in us in every area of our life, and overtime, his work in us produce the fruits and we grow to look like him slowly but surely.
And what does it really mean to let him work in us ? Once you acknowledge that your ways are not worthy of a child of God and you sincerely wish for that to change, pray for transformation, ask God to change your heart and actually let go off your resistance to God’s ways when, before circumstances, you have the choice to act your way or God’s way. The holy spirit is our helper. If you really want to change and that you pray about, he will make the transformation happen, and you will look like your father more and more everyday.
Prayer : Father God, I want to look like you. I want to love like you love, forgive like you forgive, speak like you speak. Holy spirit, work in me. I open my heart to you, so that you change in me everything that needs to change on that purpose. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
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