Who are you? Do you know? The only way to know who you were created to be is to know your Creator and learn what he says about you. The devil and the world will speak a false identity to make you conform to the world. But God, the source of truth, reveals your true identity. Your identity is not your assignment – what you were created to do – but rather who you are to God. It cannot be found in your work, although your work will flow from your true identity because it shapes your values and desires. Your identity is found through relationship to God, specifically who…
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Puzzle Piece 4: Jesus, Our Bridegroom
When God delivered Israel from slavery, he led them to the wilderness where he made an everlasting covenant with them. God describes his covenant with Israel as a marriage. In Jeremiah 2:2 God says of those early days, “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown” (NIV). God commanded Israel to celebrate the anniversary of their deliverance each year with a festival, called Passover, and the anniversary of when they entered into covenant with God in the wilderness at the festival of weeks, also known as Pentecost. Each of God’s appointed festivals points…
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Puzzle Piece 3: Jesus, the Word of God
Note to Parents: At the end of the small group guide (linked below and on the Discipleship Book page), you will find a fun, interactive family lesson enabling you to teach your children what you’re learning about your identity in Christ each week. The gospel of John opens with the declaration that Jesus existed before the world and spoke it into being as the very Word of God. “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He existed in the beginning with God. 3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. 4 The Word gave life to everything that…
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Puzzle Piece 2: Jesus, Our Redeemer
When God’s perfect creation was marred by sin, God set in motion a plan to redeem it. Isaiah 61 describes Jesus’ assignment as God’s chosen Redeemer. “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed” (Isaiah 61:1). Who are the captives and from what prison are they set free? In Genesis 3:13 the Lord asked Eve why she ate the fruit that was forbidden, and she replied, “The serpent deceived me.” The word for deceive in…
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Puzzle Piece 1: Jesus, the New Adam
When God created the earth, he put into place a physical principle of seed-bearing plants whose seeds reproduce that plant. It’s also the principle of reaping what you sow. If I open a zucchini and plant the seeds it contains into the ground, I will get more zucchini plants and annoy my neighbors all summer by trying to pawn off on them a mountain of zucchini. This principle of reproduction also applies to people since the Bible uses the word seed to refer to reproduction in people. Just like heat and water activate seeds, the DNA “seeds” we inherit from our parents can be activated to express certain characteristics present…
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Festival of Shelters
In lesson one we learned about how Jesus fulfilled Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as a sacrifice for our sin so that our sins could be removed from us. We all have turned away from God to go our own way, so God sent his Son, born of a virgin, to redeem us and give us a new beginning with him. Because God’s only Son voluntarily paid the penalty for our sin on the cross, our sin is nailed to the cross and our old self dies as we repent of sin and receive God’s forgiveness through the shed blood of Jesus. We are then reborn by the Holy…
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The Day of Atonement
The Bible makes an astounding promise: “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18). Contrary to the American dream, we don’t work hard to get this new life through our own effort. It is a gift from God. Why would he give us a new life as a new person? Because he loves us so much that he’s willing to do for us what we could never do for ourselves, which is to make ourselves righteous in his sight.…
