Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
As leaders, we set an example as those who allow God to visit the weaknesses of our lives to transform our hearts and minds by the power of His grace. By embracing the internal change that comes by God’s grace we become a message of hope that can then lead others into embracing the same. God heals our iniquities and thus He eradicates our transgressions and demonstrates our freedom from sin. This is our freedom from a disconnection with God. We become a testimony of Christ’s light because we walk in the light.
Ephesians 5:13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. 14 Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
Leaders lead others into finding their true identity in Christ. When we find our true identity, we live with our true testimony, and we walk in the purpose that God intends for our lives. When we allow a characteristic of a crook or a bent of weakness to become the character of our lives, we move beyond merely a potential characteristic, and we become someone we were not destined to be. We become a testimony of twisted truth of who we are intended to be as a man or a woman of God. When we do this, we think we are being real to who we are, but it is a distortion of who we were meant to be. Each of us are responsible to turn to the Lord in our hearts and see God transform our iniquities to testimonies of His healing grace.
Our identity comes from our connection to God in our hearts. When we discover our identity, we make ourselves available to God for His heavenly testimony in our lives. That testimony empowers us to walk in a partnership with God for His purpose beyond our own. As leaders we must lead others into embracing the presence of God in their hearts with a willingness to be transformed by God. We do not lead into legalistic law, nor do we run to the ways of our own hearts. We live and lead others to partner with God to become who He declares each of us to be for the glory of His name.
Each of us are accountable for what we become in life. We are not limited by our past nor bound to the past. If we choose to find love in things other than God, we will be responsible for what we become (Ezek. 18:10-13).
Ezekiel 18:21-23 “But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord GOD, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live?”
God’s desire is that each man and each woman find’s the goodness of His love and the testimony of His character, nature, way, power, and authority in their lives. He wants to meet us in our weaknesses and transform our lives by the power of His grace. He wants our characteristics of iniquity to become subdued by the power of His life-changing grace. His justice system is based upon our embracing Him in our lives so we become a testimony of who He is, not who we used to be or could have become had we not encountered Him in our lives.
Leaders lead others into their true identity, testimony, and purpose in Christ. This is the testimony of our redemption in Christ. When we know who we are we sing the song of the redeemed to bring about the testimony of the purpose of the family of God in our world.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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