Today, we are going to take a posture of peace by being lifted up in our low places.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything.
Together, we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
In Romans chapter 8, verses 6-11, it says the mind governed by the flesh is death, but
the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God.
It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.
Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh, but are in the realm of the Spirit,
if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.
And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.
But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin,
the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.
And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised
Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of the Spirit who
lives in you.
As I was preparing for this episode, Holy Spirit brought to my remembrance a conversation
that we had together in a very low place.
Maybe one of my lowest places ever.
And so I felt prompted to share that story today.
Before I share the story, let me share the ending.
I'm not in that low place anymore.
In fact, I could not find my way back to that low place, even if I tried.
And I know it's weird to start a story at the end, but I want you to know that if you're
in a low place right now, it's not your permanent address.
You're not staying there.
You're not stuck there.
Remember, Colossians 3.3 from last week, it says,
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
When you choose Jesus as Lord, many of those that call it their salvation experience,
With Christ in God became your permanent place.
So no matter what place you find yourself in right now, whether it's low or high, valley
or mountaintop, you are in Christ.
Christ is in you in that place.
Your identity in Christ, your place in him, is not situational.
It's relational.
Your identity is not coming and going based on what's happening to you or around you.
Your identity is secure in the relationship that you now have with God.
And it's in a secure place, it's in a secure relationship because it's a relationship that
he initiated, not you.
You do not have a worldly relationship with God that can fizzle out or break up or break
down over time and leave you all alone again.
No.
What you have with him is an eternal spiritual union that changed who you are before anything
around you changed.
Second Corinthians 517 says, in Christ, you became a new creation.
The old is gone.
The new is here.
Now, you may feel more attached to the old right now, maybe through memory or habit or
the environment that you're surrounded by.
But the evidence of your new creation identity is Christ, not your current circumstances.
Jesus is the proof.
You and I, we can never lose our real life in Christ.
We can't lose our awareness of it.
And this often happens when we become more astonished or overwhelmed by what is happening
around us than what is happening, the one who is living within us.
When we believe that we are more body and soul, you know, our emotions, our mind, more
body and soul than we are spirit, we live life really upside down because we're living
life from the outside in instead of from the inside out.
Remember what Paul wrote in Romans 8, verse six, I just read it.
It says for the mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the spirit
is life and peace.
I get asked a lot in my comments, my DMs, how did you overcome anxiety?
Like what did you do before any I did anything differently?
I became aware of something and that changed everything.
So a few years ago, I was in a very low place and I was having a bad day in a low place,
which is worse than just being in a low place.
Having a bad day in a low place is no good.
I was physically sick.
I was emotionally burnt out.
I was mentally overwhelmed and I was so disappointed and discouraged and actually really, really
scared because the Christian life that I was living didn't seem to be working.
I was doing all the good things.
All the things.
I thought a good Christian should be doing.
I was serving, I was leading, I was attending,
I was praying, I was declaring, all good things.
But those things seemed to only bring temporary relief
to what I was experiencing in my body and in my soul,
you know, my mind and my emotions.
I wasn't totally free.
So on a day when I was having a flare up
from my physical sickness, I was in pain,
I was exhausted, I was anxious,
I remember I was in my bathroom
and I was looking at myself in the mirror.
I was just looking at myself.
And I was thinking, am I always going to be this way
the rest of my life?
It's a scary thought,
probably not an uncommon one though,
for those of us who have been in long battles,
who find ourselves having bad days in low places.
But in that moment, I sensed the Lord asked me a question
and he said, Linz, why do you identify most
with the sickness, with the anxiety, with the bad days?
Why do you believe that your good days
are just an exception but your bad days are your normal?
And I was honest with him, I said, Lord,
because I identify with those bad days
because I don't feel like it's authentic
to pretend that the good days are my normal.
Because at the time I was having more bad days
than good days and when I was having a good day,
it was tainted by the fear that a bad day was coming,
that the good day wasn't going to last,
another flare up could happen,
another anxiety attack could happen.
So he asked me a second question.
He said, okay, who are you trying to be authentic to?
Are you being authentic to the permanence
of your identity in Christ, your kingdom reality?
What I've said over you, have promised and spoken over you?
Or are you being most authentic
to your temporary pain and suffering?
Now he wasn't condemning me in this conversation,
he was calling me up.
Because somewhere along the way,
I had begun to believe that authenticity
meant cleaving to my brokenness,
instead of fully embracing and identifying
with Jesus's wholeness, even in the midst of brokenness.
Why is it so easy to identify with brokenness
and so hard to identify with wholeness?
I think for me, it was because it seemed
like the path of least resistance.
I mean, the hardest thing to do
in the midst of pain and suffering
is to go against the tide of despair
and believe in a greater destiny.
At least I thought that it was hard.
Remember what Paul wrote in Romans eight, verse seven,
or let's say verse eight, he says,
those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
But then he writes, you, however,
are not in the realm of the flesh,
but are in the realm of the spirit,
if indeed the spirit of God lives in you,
which is what happens when you make Jesus your Lord.
In my low place, my mind was so set on the flesh,
what was happening in my body, in my mind, in my emotions.
But I'm not in the flesh, I'm in Christ.
I'm in the spirit.
So that's where my focus should be.
Because as a new creation, that is the most real me,
the most authentic me.
The old is gone, the new is here.
Now, sometimes we're so scared of living in denial
of what's happening to us or around us,
that what happens is we end up living fully denying
the life of Christ in us.
So that day, I made a choice, a different choice,
and I started choosing the truth.
That day, I just refused to live another day
in denial of Jesus in me.
Now, I still had to deal with things in the flesh, right?
We live here in this world, I had to take care of my body,
and my mind, and my emotions.
There's actually a lot to be enjoyed here in creation.
The body, the mind, and emotions are not negative things,
they're not bad things,
they're all good gifts from a good father.
But everything I experience here in creation,
good or bad or ugly, I do so from a place of authority
and power as a spirit being who is one with Christ,
because that's the real me.
I'm not a body and a soul, I am a spirit.
And I am not subject to my body, to my mind,
or to my emotions.
Those things are subject to Christ who is now in me,
and who is now in you.
And it's time that we discover what that means.
This is a journey of discovering ourselves in Christ
that is actually a dynamic adventure,
not a boring Sunday school lesson.
We have been invited into the most majestic relationship ever
the one that's shared between the Godhead,
Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit.
We've been brought into that relationship.
Read Colossians 2, 9-10.
through 10. It is now our reality. And you know what? If I were our enemy, I want us more engaged
and familiar with the circumstances of our lives than in the divine life-giving relationship we
have in God. If I was our enemy, I'd want us so aware of our low place, more aware of our low
place than of our permanent place in Jesus. But even though we have an enemy who wants us aware
of all the wrong things, we've been given power and authority over him. And I took that power and
authority and I made a different choice after I had that conversation with God. Now when I had
that conversation with God that day, the suffering didn't instantly change. But what changed in that
moment was that I became more aware of the truth of who Jesus is and who I am and him. And I made
a choice with that awareness. I chose the truth. Jesus is more true about me than the sickness,
than the anxiety. And I became lifted up in my new creation identity even while I was still
walking in that low place. But I began to walk through that low place instead of feeling buried
by it because I became aware that the low place was in fact under my feet, not over my head.
My point is this, you deal with suffering differently when you realize you are not subject to it.
Paul writes here in Romans chapter 8 and verse 18, he says, I consider that our present sufferings
are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. So I want to encourage you today,
choose the truth and allow that truth to lift you up in every low place.
And if you need some help today on getting a grasp of what's true about you, I'd love to help.
I've put together a free resource. I've shared it before in past episodes. The link to it is in the
description of this episode. It's a simple PDF, but it has a powerful list of who you are. Not
because I say it's true about you, because of what God's word says is true about you. So feel
free to use that resource, read it, pick one, pick several, pick all, meditate on the truth,
meditate on his word and become more aware of what's true about you and allow the truth to
lift you up in every low place.