Fighting from victory.

When you wake up to the reality of what happened to you when you became a Christian your life will radically change. That’s my testimony and experience of it. I was a Christian for many years but I hadn’t truly had a revelation of who I was in Christ and as a result, I was living in defeat. When I received a revelation of who I am in Christ (not who I was trying to become, but who I was already) my life radically changed. I started to flourish in Christianity and I started to enjoy Christianity. Legalism makes us feel like Christianity is this unattainable goal of becoming something that we are not but it’s really all about discovering who you’ve already become! When I started discovering who I was in Christ my life started to change.

The devil has sold us the lie that the goal of Christianity is to become like Christ. I remember being taught this in a Bible school years back: our goals as Christians is to be like Jesus but you need to realize that you’re never going to get there. You’ll only become like Jesus when you die, but you still need to try and attain this unattainable goal. That’s just disheartening to the max. That’s just terrible. To think that we’ve got an unattainable goal where God is expecting something of us that we could never deliver on? Thank God it’s not true. True Christianity is all about you being born again and enjoying a relationship with God. Being born again means that you are now born of God.

1 John 5:1 New King James Version (NKJV)
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God…

This is talking about the Christian. We are “born of God” which means we are His offspring.

1 John 5:4 New King James Version (NKJV)
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

Whatsoever is born of God – us; believers – overcomes the world. We can flourish in life because we’re born of God. We are not the overcome, we are overcomers. We have overcome because Jesus has overcome! We’re not trying to become children of God, we are children of God. We are victorious, we are not trying to be victorious. We’ve got to realize who we already are, and what we already have now that we are believers. We are not fighting for victory, we are fighting from a place of victory.

We’re not trying to get victory over the devil, victory over the flesh or victory over sin – that is not true Christianity. I lived like that for many years; I had a defeated mentality; I was trying to become what I didn’t realize I already was, and all it produced was frustration. I use to see what the Bible says that I’m more than a conqueror through Christ, but I didn’t feel like a conqueror and so I’d try harder to be a conqueror not realizing I already was one. The scripture says that I’m more than a conqueror through Christ who loves me, not through my effort to conquer but through Christ who loves me. My new identity is that I am a conqueror and when I start focusing on Christ’s love for me, it empowers me to overcome. I am already more than a conqueror, but focusing on His love empowers me to walk in it. We’ve got to realize that we’re not fighting for victory, we’re fighting from a place of victory. We’re waking up to the reality of what is, -that’s what Christianity is about.

Ephesians 2:1 New King James Version (NKJV)
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,

Ephesians is an awesome book with a lot of truth about our identity in Christ. In this verse, it says that He has made us alive. We are alive in Christ! The next couple of verses reveal more to us about our present identity.

Ephesians 2:5-6 New King James Version (NKJV)
even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

We have been raised up together with Christ and made to sit with Him in heavenly places. We have been (past tense) raised up (past tense) together and made to sit (We didn’t try to sit or aim to sit but were made to sit) together in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. I used to have this mentality of “I’m trying to get into a place where I’ve got all authority in Christ”. I thought that through my efforts and my performance I would get into a place where I deserved to sit in a place of authority with Jesus. But that is not what Scripture teaches. Scripture shows us that when we receive Jesus and are born again, in that very moment we are raised up together with Christ and made to sit with Christ. This position of being “seated with Him” is speaking about us being in a place of authority. As believers, because we are “in Christ”, we have authority “far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” (Ephesians 1:21) We didn’t do anything to earn this position of authority – we were born again into a family where authority is bestowed on every son and daughter because of identity, not performance. We were “made to sit” means that it had nothing to do with our effort. You can overcome the devil, overcome sin, overcome whatever because of your new identity in Christ.

You can walk in freedom and victory and flourish in every area of your life because of who you are in Christ. When you wake up to the reality of your new identity in Christ, you will start to walk in freedom and victory.