Peace in Believing — Week 4
By Reverend J. Carla Northcutt, Ed.D., Marietta, Georgia

My youngest sister and I were sitting in the trauma emergency room with our mother recently.  It was late at night and we were talking about Mother’s fragile health.  Because of my own health issues, my siblings know that it is difficult for me to give proper care to our aging mother, even though she lives with me and my husband.

Talk turned personal to my own health situation when my sister said, “Do you know that you tell everybody you see about your cancer—even perfect strangers?”  I started to correct her, as an older sister might do; but then I realized that she was right.  Then I tried to justify telling my story to everyone I met.  I came to the conclusion and confessed to her that I had let cancer, chemotherapy and the events of the last two years identify me.  In other words, “I was my cancer.”  And I didn’t like hearing that come from my own mouth.  How many times had I said, “I don’t even like to say ‘my’ cancer.”  I didn’t know I had cancer until I awoke from emergency surgery so it wasn’t anything that I had lived with in dread for months as some people do.

How had I forgotten the words of Scripture that my identity is in Christ.  It is in Him I live and move and have my being.  We are not identified by the tragedies of life.  However, we often find ourselves turning inward at personal loss, whether it’s our own health, the loss of a child, a parent, a spouse or a dream. 

When we are the most vulnerable to the work of the enemy is when we most need Christ.  When we allow the world and its burdens to empty us, to intrude upon us; when we turn our focus upon ourselves and leave the Master out of the picture, we have left behind our greatest source of strength.

Our identity is not in us; the world system does not define us; our sins and sorrows are not who we are.  In Longing for More:  A Woman’s Path to Transformation in Christ, Ruth Haley Parton reminds us:  “Our identity is rooted in God’s unconditional love for us.”  Do not let sin have dominion over you (Romans 6:14).  In spite of your circumstances in life, remember that it is Christ in you, the Hope of Glory.  It is He who defines us.

In your inward person “delight in the law of God” (Romans 7:22).  The same spirit “that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you” (Romans 8:11).  Let the Holy Spirit of God rise up in you.  It is He who made you and not you yourself.  There is nothing, no nothing that can separate you, dear Sister, from His love:  cancer, financial disaster, loss of love—“height, nor depth, nor any creature”—and that includes you!

Rest in the promise of Jesus being formed in you and let Him shine forth from you.  Let the confession of your mouth be salvation (Romans 10:10) and by the power and strength of the Holy Spirit, let your mind be renewed (Romans 12:2).

You are not your cancer, you are not your sin, and you are not your loss.  Do not let the world impinge upon your identity in Christ.  “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Dear Father, so saturate us with Your love that there will be no room for doubt, no place for fear, no quarter for the things of this world.  Let us see ourselves through Your eyes.  We are healed and whole and renewed in Your image.  Amen.

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