Shattering Toxic Beliefs And Discovering The Real YouSample

Jerusha Clark:  Shattering Toxic Beliefs and Discovering the Real You  Devotional Day 2

Wonderfully Out of Control

Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:11-16

Too many times I’ve taken “Jesus is everything” to mean “Jesus is everything I desire.” Jesus’ “I am” statements affirm that he does bring peace, justice, love, and freedom. But he brings them on his perfect terms.

More often than not, our struggles with faith arise because our expectations of God neither match reality nor come to fruition. Understanding Jesus’s “I am” statements helps us to actually experience the life of lavish abundance Christ died to give us. Enjoying this, however, requires total surrender, and most of us are slow to sign up for that. 

According to 1 Timothy 6:15, Jesus is the blessed controller of all things. He must be in control of your life and mine because—brace yourself, here—you and I have no power whatsoever to save ourselves. Why? Because we need to be saved from the one thing we can never escape: ourselves.

A good deal of the time, I can get away from situations, locations, and relationships, but I can never escape myself. Neither can you, my friend. We cannot outrun what we’ve done, what we deserve, who we are. Our only hope is in a God who draws near, a God who comes down, a God who is not only in control but good at controlling everything. 

This is—praise be to God!—precisely who Jesus is. He is the God who enters our world and refuses to leave. He refuses to leave us alone, refuses to leave us in our sin, refuses to leave even when we push him away. Jesus’s “I am” statements radically transform who I am. In each of these seven claims, Jesus reveals core truths about his character, our heavenly Father’s character, and the character of the Spirit who dwells in us. You and I cannot remain the same after encountering the Great I AM. God never intended us to.

Describe a time when God didn’t give you what you wanted but gave you something even better. What does this say about his character?