The Miracle
From the Series—ID: The True You
September 15, 2004This evotional begins a new four-part series titled ID: The True You. Here’s where we’re headed the next four weeks. This week’s evotional focuses on the miracle: there never has been and never will be anyone like you. Next week we’ll explore the process: it’s never too late to be who you might have been. Week three will focus on the challenge: true freedom is having nothing to prove. And we’ll finish up with the goal: you become what you worship. ID Problems Let me put a frame around this series of evotionals. Your self-concept - the way you see yourself - is determined by what you base your identity on. And you have lots of choices. You can base your identity on how you look. You can base your identity on what you have or what you do. You can base your identity on your resume - what you’ve done. You can base your identity on the different roles you play. You can base your identity on what you’re good at or bad at. You can even base your identity on what you wear or what you drive. As crazy as it sounds, you know it’s true. Some people define themselves by the brand of clothing they wear or the model of car they drive. There are a million factors that make up our self-concept, but all of us base our identity on something - consciously or subconsciously. Now let me get to the point: identity problems are the result of basing your identity on the wrong thing. I have a theory. It may seem counterintuitive at first, but I think it’s true. I think it’s the people who look better or have more or who are more successful who have more identity problems because too much of their identity is found in those things. Here’s another way of saying it: the more you have going for you the more potential you have for identity problems. Here’s why. It’s easier for you to base your identity on the wrong things - how you look, what you have, or what you do. I recently read a fascinating interview with the singer-songwriter Michael Card. He went through counseling a few years ago and said the biggest discovery he made was that his gift wasn’t his identity. He said, “If it is, I’m an idolater.” I think for too many people their gift becomes their identity. Then Michael Card said something so profound. “The greatest impediment to spiritual intimacy is your giftedness.” If anything is going to undermine your reliance upon God and become a source of pride in your life it’s going to be your gift. So the more you have going for you the more potential you have for identity problems because it’s easier for you to base your identity on the wrong thing. We reduce ourselves to how we look, what we have, or what we do, but you are so much more than that! The goal of this series is pretty simple - I want you to see yourself the way God sees you. Romans 12:3 says, “The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and what he does for us.” As a follower of Christ I need to find my identity “in Christ.” My identity is not based on who I am or what I can do. My identity is based on who Christ is and what Christ has done for me. At the end of the day you have a choice: are you going to base your identity on who you are - how you look, what you have, what you do? Or are you going to base your identity on who God is and what God can do? That choice will determine who you become. Like the rest of you, I’m a work in progress. But I sense an exciting shift in my life. About five weeks ago I had this thought - it’s not about what we can do for God, it’s about what God can do for us. And it has totally revolutionized my life. I think about it almost everyday now. So much of my life was based on performance - how I did in school, how I did on the basketball court, how I did in the pulpit. But I’m basing more and more of my identity on who God is and what God can do. In the Know If you want a healthy self-concept you need to see yourself the way God sees you. And if you want to see yourself the way God sees you, you need to look in the mirror of Scripture. Psalm 139:1 says, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You chart the path ahead of me. Every moment you know where I am. You know what I am going to say before I say it. I look behind me and you’re there. I look ahead of me and you’re there too. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.” God doesn’t just love me. He knows everything about me and still loves me! There is such freedom when someone knows the worst thing about you and still loves you. No one knows me better. No one loves me more. God knows every thought, every feeling, every word, every dream, every sigh. He knows your past. He knows your future. God knows you better than you know you. I want you to follow the logic of this passage. Everyone reading this evotional “knows” me - at least you know my name. But you don’t know me like my friends know me - they know my history, my hobbies, my hang-ups. But my friends don’t know me the way my family knows me - they see another side of me. But my family doesn’t know me the way my wife knows me - after twelve years of marriage you can almost read each other’s minds! But my wife doesn’t know me the way I know me - I’m with me all the time. I know myself pretty well, but even I don’t know me the way God knows me. God knows me better than I know me, which means, if I want to get to know myself I need to get to know God. St. Teresa of Avila said it this way, “As I see it, we shall never succeed in knowing ourselves unless we seek to know God.” If you don’t know God you don’t really know yourself. Sandor McNab said, “Nothing determines who we will become as much as those things we ignore.” You can choose to ignore God, but nothing will determine, to your detriment, who you will become as much as ignoring God. Ephesians 1:11 says, “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for his glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.” I love that phrase - “had his eye on us.” Our toddler, Josiah, had his first day of playschool this week and I went with Lora to pick him up. Before we walked through the door I looked through a window and watched him for a few moments. I’m not sure how to say this, but I love observing my kids in their natural habitats - on the playground, in the classroom, at sleep at night. I love watching them when they don’t know I’m watching them. I think it’s a parental instinct. I think God the Father is looking through the window watching us. He has his eye on us! If we could see Him, there’d be a smile on his face! Causality Within philosophy there are two critical questions. Causality asks the question: where do we come from? Teleology asks the question: where are we headed? How you answer those two questions will determine how you look at life and look at yourself. When considering origins, you really only have two choices to choose from: either you are the byproduct of random chance or intelligent design. I don’t enough faith to believe in random chance! Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the world’s leading astronomer’s was speaking at the British Academy of Science several years ago. He said, “Let’s be scientifically honest. The probability of life arising to greater and greater complexity by chance through evolution is the same probability as having a tornado tear through a junkyard and form a Boeing 747 jetliner.” He calculated the chances of life being the result of random chance as being 1 in 10 40,000. Charles Darwin said in On the Origin of the Species, “Man with all his noble qualities still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” I couldn’t agree with anything less. We aren’t accidents! We are miracles! Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.” I choose the later. A Jillion Gazillion In his book, The Arithmetic of Life and Death, George Shaffner looks at life through the lens of mathematics. The first chapter calculates the mathematical probability that you would be you. Shaffner calculates the probability that you would get the twenty-three chromosomes you got from your mother as ½ or .5 to the 23 rd power - that is 1 in 10 million. The same is true for the twenty-three chromosomes you got from your father. If you multiply the two of them, you realize that from a biological perspective, the chance that you would be you is 1 in 100 trillion. But you have to factor in that your parents had the same probability, and their parents, and their parent’s parents ad infinitum. George Shaffner concludes that chapter by saying that the probability that you would be you is a jillion gazillion. He says, “Every life is a miracle of immeasurable proportion.” Psalm 139:13 says, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Did you know that if you could unravel your body like a ball of yarn, there would be enough DNA-string to reach the moon and back ten thousand times! Approximately six trillion reactions are taking place in every cell every second. You heart will pump about 100,000 times today without skipping a beat. You’ll take approximately 23,000 breaths. A hundred things are happening in your body right now that you pay no attention to - breathing, digesting, growing new cells, purifying toxins, maintaining hormonal balance, converting storied energy from fat to blood sugar, and repairing damaged cells. Let me just cut to the chase. You are a walking talking miracle! And that isn’t a testament to you. It’s a testament to the God who created you. I think this series would be a disaster if you walked away patting yourself on the back. Your uniqueness has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the God who created you. Naked Existence In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. One of the first things the captors did was strip the prisoners of their personal effects - wedding rings, pictures, medals. Even their names were taken away and replaced with a number - number 119,104 in the case of Frankl. Frankl recalls his first day this way, “While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was brought home to us: we really had nothing now except our bare bodies - even minus hair; all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.” Let me ask you a question: when everything is stripped away, who are you? When your possessions are taken away, your home is taken away, your family is taken away, your name is taken away, your clothes are taken away, who are you? The Nazi captors tried to strip Frankl of his individuality and reduce him to a number, but it had the opposite effect. He emerged with a renewed appreciation for the “uniqueness and singleness” of every individual. He said, “When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude.” There never has been and never will be anyone like you. So what? That means that no one can worship God like you. No one can take your place. You are invaluable and irreplaceable. I know there is part of us that feels like what difference does it make? There are more than six billion people running around the planet. Would God really miss my worship? Let me put it in human terms. If you said that two out of my three kids would love me, do you think that’d be good enough for me? No way. I want all my kids to love me. I don’t love my kids the same. No one does. Each of my children is unique and I love them uniquely. God loves us uniquely. God finds joy in each unique expression of worship. We may sing the same words when we worship, but God doesn’t hear the same song. We worship out of the uniqueness of who we are. No one else can worship God like you! The Choice At some point each of us has to make a choice and it’s the most important choice that any of us will ever make. We have to choose between us and God. Am I going to live for myself - my glory? Or am I going to live for God - His glory? Here is what is so tricky about that decision. We mistakenly think that the way to find fulfillment and happiness is to live for ourselves. But if you live for yourself you’ll end up a miserable person because it’s not what you were created to do. You weren’t created to worship you. The truth is that most of us would run out of stuff to worship pretty quickly! You were created to worship someone so much bigger and better than you. We sometimes think that living for God will somehow narrow our lives, but it infinitely expands our horizons. In the words of A.W. Tozer, “Eternity won’t be long enough to learn all that God is or praise Him for all He has done.” The Westminster Catechism says, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” I love John Piper’s take. “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” Life starts when we die to self. Stop living for yourself. Start living for the One who died for you. Dying to live!
