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 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.…
