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Just Who Am I?

Youth Development Studies on Personal Values, Goal Setting and Decision-Making
By Gary Petty

Who are you? You might answer this question by stating your name. But that's not really the question. Who are you as a person? What makes you...you?
If asked to list the 10 things that make you...you...what would they be? You might start with your age, sex, race, weight or grade in school. You might identify yourself as a cheerleader, basketball player, "computer nerd," member of a particular gang, or a "lone wolf."
Considering these factors, how much are you worth? How would you even calculate your worth? You might try and figure your economic worth—so you have a stereo, a skateboard and $7.37 in cash. Not really much, is it?
Everyone wants to feel valued as a person. Our society tends to judge a person's value by beauty or a perfect body. We also find value in what we own, stylish clothes, a car or how much money we make. Others find a sense of worth and appreciation in belonging to a certain group.
It would be nice to make our troubles disappear by dressing a certain way, belonging to the right group or being a lead singer on MTV. Wouldn't life be a breeze if you were a professional basketball or football player? But would it really?
You want to be successful. You want to have a good job, friends, clothes, a nice car and—most of all—have fun. But sometimes it seems teachers, parents, ministers and peers are all trying to define who you are.
You begin to feel like a contortionist as everyone tells you to keep your back to the wall, ear to the ground, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, while keeping a level head with both feet firmly planted on the ground.
The search for self
The United States was rocked by a social revolution during the 1960s that irrevocably changed society. Young people became disillusioned with their parents' belief that fulfillment is based in religion, duty to country, family, hard work and commitment to community. They became acutely aware of religious hypocrisy, racism, greed and the senseless governmental policies.
The result was a revolution in clothing styles, music, drug use, freedom from sexual restraint, a sense of rebellion and the belief that the purpose of life is the search for self.
Pop psychology espoused the same philosophy of life. It's expressed in a vocabulary of: self-esteem, self-actualization, self-acceptance and self-realization. Millions of people are trying to "get in touch with themselves."
The conclusion of this search for self is, "Since no one can determine who I am, except myself, then no other person has the right to determine right from wrong. What may be wrong for you may be right for me."
There's a fatal flaw in the belief that happiness is to be found in the pursuit of self with no concrete guidelines of right and wrong. This flaw is best illustrated by something that appeared many years ago in a major newspaper. The article told of a young man who seemed to have everything. He was a star athlete, a good student, handsome and one of the most popular boys in his school. One day he took his own life, leaving a simple note stating he just wasn't good enough. This young person had many good things in life, yet something was missing.
What's missing?
During the teenage years and early twenties a person begins to make decisions and pick his or her own course through this grand maze we call life. There's a tendency for young people to throw out the parental maps and attempt to "do it my way." But before you reject all adult maps, think about the fact that you are embarking on a dangerous journey with the only real resource you have...your own life.
The paradox is that no matter how hard you pursue pleasing yourself, life is going to be a mixture of happiness and sadness, joy and tragedy, success and failure, and all worthwhile endeavors and intimate human relationships demand self-sacrifice.
There is a map that can help you find your way through this maze. The Creator of life gave it to us. It's called the Bible.
In the Bible, God gives us reference points on how to handle life's problems; how to avoid destructive behavior and thoughts; how to enjoy life and face bad times with hope and faith. Happiness, fulfillment and contentment aren't things you find. These traits are developed in you by living a certain way.
Who are you becoming?
Sometimes life seems like the story of the mother who went to buy a toy for her small child. She commented to the salesman that the toy was too complicated for children. He answered, "It's an educational toy designed to prepare a child for today's world. Anyway he puts it together is wrong."
God has given us a way to put life together. There is a map.
You see, the real question isn't who you are, because all of us are in the process of learning and growing. The real question is, who are you becoming? If you really want to find yourself, look at the way of life defined by your Maker. It's in His map book the Bible.
God, the Creator of the universe, desires to have a Father/child relationship with each of us. Young people aren't excess baggage accepted by God only because of their parents! Each young person has personal access to God in prayer. God will be involved in your life if you want Him to be involved.
1. Genesis 1:27: The Bible says that human beings are made in the image of God. How are human beings similar to God?
How are human beings different from God?
2. Matthew 7:7-11: What does Jesus teach about what God wants for us?
3. How is God like a perfect Father?
4. What is prayer? What is the best way to pray?
5. Matthew 6:5-13: Jesus teaches His disciples about prayer.
Verses 5-6: What does Jesus teach about a public show of prayer? Under what conditions is public prayer acceptable?
Verse 7: Rewrite this verse in your own words:
Verse 8: If God knows what we need, why does He still expect us to ask?
Verse 9: List ways you can give praise or honor to God while talking to Him:
Verse 10: List ways you can ask for God's Kingdom to come:
Verse 11: List ways we can ask God for our daily needs:
Verse 12: We should always be reminded of our need for God's mercy. We're also reminded to forgive those who do wrong to us. Notice verses 14-15. How can you pray for someone who has hurt you?
Verse 13: What does Jesus mean by "do not lead us into temptation"?

The Secret to Passion for Jesus….

by Mike Bickle - FOTB newsletter

Acquiring Passion
Do you want to be a lover of God? Do you want to have fiery love for God? Do you want to see your dedication increase? Understand God's dedication to you. Do you want your enjoyment of God to increase? Understand God's enjoyment of you. Do you want to pursue God more? Study how God pursues you.

I wrote a book titled Passion for Jesus. Since then, people regularly ask me how they can develop passion for Jesus. I give them the same answer each time: Your passion for Jesus will increase to the measure that you study and encounter Jesus' passion for you. The key to passion for Jesus is to know Jesus' passion for you. Sounds simple. It is not a mystery. The challenge is not in knowing this principle, but rather in filling your spirit with revelation and knowledge of God's passion and emotion.

Beholding Is Becoming

You cannot make this happen by yourself. It takes God to love God. It takes God's power for you to love God. If you want to become a fiery lover of God, you must understand God as a fiery lover of you. We see Him as a lover, and it makes us a lover. We see His emotions of fiery desire for us, and this is what awakens emotions of fiery desire back to Him. Whatever you understand about God's heart for you is what changes your heart for God.

We behold something in the heart of God and, in time, though it does not happen immediately, it then opens the pathway for those things to become a part of our character, nature and our behavior.

Trying vs. Enjoying

Exhortations to action are very ineffective by themselves. But exhortations to acts of obedience that flow out of a firm foundation of a revelation of God's heart become effective and efficient in our lives.

David was first and foremost a man after God's heart because he cultivated the revelation of what God's heart was like. It is only when we know what God's heart looks like or know what God looks like that we can know what we look like to God. When we know what we look like to God then we can successfully obey the commands of God in a consistent way.

Many people want to commit themselves to become lovers of God, to obey the commands of God's heart. This is a good thing, but they are sure to be very frustrated and disappointed by this method.

If your approach to becoming a lover of God is just to try harder, you will fail every time. I tell the young people in Kansas City "Do not try harder. Learn to enjoy more." They say, "What?" I say, "Do not try to love God harder. Learn how to enjoy God more, and you will automatically love Him."

They say, "How can we learn how to enjoy God more? If this is the key to loving God more, then I want to do it." I say, "There is one great principle to enjoying God more - understanding that God enjoys you in your weakness."

The Paradox of Grace

This is a very unusual idea to many traditions in the body of Christ today. Most of the teaching on holiness and dedication appeals to the people to try harder.

"Come down to the altar, cry, tell everybody all of your sins, and make promises to God like you have never made before." Then the person leaves, they wipe the tears from their eyes and say, "I will do anything to love you more!" During the next three months they fail miserably.

They go to the next revival meeting, and the preacher tells them to try harder. They come down to the altar, they cry more, they make more promises, and they will tell everybody all of their sins to prove how sincere they are. Three months later, they fail again.

They go to another revival meeting, and the preacher preaches on holiness. They come down to the altar, they cry, and this goes on for three or four years. Then something very, very terrible takes place. They quit. "I cannot do this any more!" they say, and their hearts get locked. They have so much pain because of their failure, and they quit.

They stay in the church and sit on the back row. They watch the young people come down and cry at the altar. They say, "I remember when I was young - I used to do that very same thing, too."

You will never love God more by trying harder. Gritting your teeth and making promises is not what makes your heart awaken in love. The way that you become a lover of God is not by trying harder. It is by learning to enjoy more.

You may say, "This is opposite of everything I ever heard. Enjoy more, enjoy what? How do I enjoy God more? How do you make your heart enjoy God more?"

I can tell you clearly from the Scripture. You gain understanding that God enjoys you more. When you understand that He enjoys you, it gives you the ability to enjoy Him.

David had more understanding of God's emotions than any other man in his day. I believe David had more understanding of God's emotions than any man in the Old Testament. This is why he is called the man after God's own heart. It is not enough for me to know that David was a person after God's own heart. I want to be one. I will, by the grace of God, and you can be, too.

God has not given us a spirit of fear

It saddens me to see the extent of fear that is being generated in the Body of Christ in the present Financial Crisis - certainly I am not suggesting that it is not serious. BUT, we are not of the world, we belong to a different Kingdom - the Kingdom of God.

Of late I have been inundated with messages by every prophet (and loss) of doom and gloom. It's funny how a crisis brings out every weirdo and kook. But what saddens me is when Christians believe what the world is saying and not the Word of God. How's this quote. "We are not going to say, ‘Yahoo, this is over,’ and extend credit like we did without fear," Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, said in a recent conference call. "If you’re not fearful, you’re crazy." Sadly this was sent to me by a Christian

Now I have lived through a crisis or too, one of the most memorable was the Y2K fiasco. Remember? When the prophets of doom were speaking the end of the world, every computer was going to crash and throw us back into the Dark Ages? Remember? The planes were going to drop out of the sky. Sadly the worst instigators of fear were some Christian prophets - one newspaper even credited them with creating more fear and panic than anyone else. Christian authors of doom capitalised on the fear big time - they sold 45 million books - that's million, not thousand. How sad! The result? Not a computer crashed - remember! There was merely a hiccup throughout the world! Yet not one of the Christian authors of doom have ever apologised for helping create that fear that pushed the world to the brink of total panic!

My family and survived Cyclone Tracy - the prophets of fear had a field day then. They prophecied that the Lord was going to send a second cyclone (and Tsunami) to finish off the job. I know people who sold their homes and bolted because of the fear and panic those people created. None of it ever canme to pass and not one of the prophets of doom ever apologised for their part in creating panic.

Should I go on? How about the numberless prophecies of earthquakes wiping out almost every city in the western world (in recent times). I can remember specific prophecies of doom about Adelaide (again people sold up and bolted in fear), New Zealand - and get out your notebook when it comes to prophecies about California dropping into the sea. Should I go on?

May I ask you a simple question - are we believers or are we doubters? Are you part of the answer or part of the problem?

May I remind you - if you are a believer - the Bible tells us not to worry about the things we need to eat, drink and wear - the necessities of life, but to seek first the way His Kingdom operates and all of these other things shall be added to us. The Message Translation puts it this way: "What I'm trying to do here is get you to relax, not to be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God's-provisions. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don't be afraid of missing out.You're my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the kingdom itself." (Luke 12:28-32).

The principles of the Kingdom of God operate radically different to the ways of the world. I love the way 'The Message' Bible puts verse Matt 5:48: "In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it..." Amen to that, and may I add we need to pray like it and speak like it!

Yes here is a lot of fear out there at the moment, but this isn't the time to become pessimistic or afraid. The fear is so strong that it is tangible! It's self perpetuating! But unlike the world, we have a promise from our God to stand on! Don't forget that the Kingdom of God is not in recession, it's not now, never has nor ever will be! The economy of God's Kingdom is guaranteed!

The greatest problem we face is fear itself! Even the world's leaders recognise this fact! But this not the time to succumb to fear and panic - God has not given to us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind! Remember - the righteous are as bold as lion! DON"T FEAR! If Y2K, September 11th, Cyclone Tracy, SARs, Chook Flue and many other things couldn't finish us off - then this current crisis wont do it either! When the smoke and dust of battle settles, we the believers will still be standing!

Remember the Kingdom of God is not in crisis, and we must not allow the world's thinking and fear to shake our faith. Don't allow the numerous prophets of doom to cause fear and panic in your life. Certainly we need to pray about the situation - BUT PRAY IN FAITH! SPEAK FAITH WORDS!

Jan and I encourage you to stand strong in this season of your life! To seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things - the necessities of life - shall be added to you!

Remember, we are the head - not the tail! You're going over - not under!

Be Blessed...

The Key of David.....

Rev. 3:7 "And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, 'These things says He who is holy, He who is true, "He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens".

Nobody goes anywhere or gains access to anything these days without keys - Keys for the house, car, work locker, desk, filing cabinet - everywhere you go you need keys. In todays computer age you need ID keys to LOGIN, and passwords to gain access to member sites or areas of privileged information. The key represents ownership of something or permission to use something. It also gives you permission to go somewhere or do something you otherwise would not be able to do. It can give you access to privileged information, answers to questions and insight to things otherwise hidden. Very useful things and essential to have. Not until we lose a key - and we find ourselves without access to something we have generally taken for granted - are we suddenly reminded of its importance. When our credit card is stolen, we suddenly have a fresh appreciation of the power we have lost, now in someone elses hands, which must be retrieved at all costs, with no small measure of urgency.

The Kingdom of God has keys, given to certain individuals to operate in the power of kingdom authority, and withheld from others whose use of them would be undeserving or inappropriate. King David in the Old Testament had one of these keys. His use of it and understanding of its importance we now associate with the key itself - we call it "David's key" or "The key of David." What was the key of David? A study of the man's life will help reveal the answer to this question.

He was firstly a man after God's own heart. That means whatever He did with whatever keys he got was not going to be about himself, there was a higher purpose beating in the heart of David.

He was a worshiper. He thought it was important enough to make sure it never stopped. He organised 24 hours continuous worship in the tabernacle, and wrote many of the psalms we still read today. "Ever praising thee" was definitely one of David's keys.

"Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them." Psalm 84:4,5

The Gift of longing.........

After spending many hours before Jesus one night, I left the Friday night "Watch of the Lord" sulking in discouragement. Once again, He had not come as I desired Him to. As I got into my car, anxious tears freely streaming down my face, a dear friend came up to my window. I voiced my pain that I desired the Lord so much, and yet He still was not revealing Himself to me. To my surprise, she smiled. She leaned in and whispered, "It's happening. You love Him! You love Him so much you weep for Him. Your heart is moving in love just like you've been praying for." Her unexpected angle of discernment struck me. I thought of the prayer I liked to pray over and over again throughout the day, "Cause this heart to love You. Cause this heart to love You." Suddenly, I realized that my longing was His answering of my requests. My tears were love for Him, the very thing I had been asking for. I loved Him by longing for Him. My heart was beginning to actually move in love, to be tenderized in love and to feel love for my Beloved rising within.

Our journey begins with longing. And before longing is the longing to long. It is the yearning to desire Him. We find in our hearts an awakening that beckons longing and paves the way for desire. It begins with the Lord Himself placing His divine drawing upon the heart of the one who loves Him. We find ourselves desiring to desire Him and pained by the present shallowness of our hearts. He awakens us to the great obsession of Himself, and we find this new ache within our hearts: our lack of love and absence of tenderness. We begin to hunger for the capacity to hunger. We begin to thirst for the ability to thirst. The longing to long is the escort into longing itself. It is the God-ordained gateway into the true gift of God to crave Him with all of our beings.

To long for God is to give witness to the Transcendent One. Longing is the echo of eternity within our souls. It is that which sets us apart and makes us pilgrims on the journey. This world is not our home, and our inner ache gives testimony to the brevity of life and the weight of eternity. "I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me. My soul breaks with longing for your judgments..." (Ps. 119:19-20). Something within us reaches for One who is other than and for a realm that is beyond. We long for One whom we have not yet seen but we love (1 Pet. 1:8). With hearts empowered by a divine ache, we cry out for more of God. We search for any sign of Him. This is the precise position that He wants us to be in. It is the hungry that He fills. It is the desirous that He satisfies.

All divine longing is a gift. It takes God to love God, and He Himself must place within us the love with which we love Him. "...For it is God who works in you both to will [desire] and to do for His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). Longing is the beginning of that gift of love. We imagine this gift to be only the actual experience of intimacy with Him. Part of the actual knowledge or experience of Him in intimacy is the longing for that experience. The longing prior to the felt-experience is just as much a part of loving Him as the experience itself. They go hand in hand and cannot be separated. The initial longing is an irreplaceable part of the eternal intimacy. Both the craving and the satisfaction are equal parts of the gift of intimacy. It all plays a role in the impartation of Divine Love to our hearts. Oh, the gift of longing for God! Oh, treasured companion on the journey! For surely we need this Helper for the entirety of our way forward in love. Longing and our ache for His greater revealing are here to stay.

Love's Delay
"Tell me, O you whom I love, where you feed Your flock, where you make it rest at noon. For why should I be as one who veils herself by the flocks of your companions?" (Song Sol. 1:7).

In Song of Solomon 1:7, the young maiden inquires of the Lord where He feeds His flock. She has just told the Lord in verse two that His love is better than wine. She knows His love far exceeds all other pleasures. Her whole life vision has changed because of this foundational revelation. Yet the mere acknowledgement of His love's superiority is not what will ultimately satisfy her hungry heart. Though she has been overcome with the vision of His great love, her heart is still hungry to actually experience it. Only He Himself can answer the craving in her soul. She must personally partake of His love in order to find satisfaction. She must drink in order for her thirst to be quenched. She asks with desperation, "Tell me where can I go to drink of You; where do I feast upon this love?"

She is saying, "Where do You cause my heart to be satisfied with You and You alone? How is it that a soul drinks deeply of You? For now I am ruined for lesser pleasures. You are my Reward. Now I know that You are exceedingly broad. Who can know the vastness of Your personality? I know that there is more to You than I can fathom or imagine. You are an Ocean, and I stand gazing from the shore. I have been ruined by an awakening, but now my pain is greater than before. The high vision is before me, but I know only hunger and desperation as my reality."

She had not anticipated a delay in experiencing the pleasures of His love. She gave her wholehearted "yes" to the life vision of holy passion yet now finds herself in an unexpected quiet. Here she waits, ruined for lesser pleasures and kept from Divine consolations, in the boundless space between her passion and the beautiful experience of His. He is cultivating longing in her heart. He desires more than a recognition of His greatness; He wants a desperation and lovesick yearning to come to maturity within her. And so for a time she remains in this breach between the reach for and the fulfillment of superior pleasures. She is ruined by the vision of His beauty. She now knows He is altogether lovely and that no other pursuit will ever satisfy the deep cravings of her heart. Yet He keeps her here in this Divine delay for a season and she only knows the ache of longing and not the pleasure of its answer. She only knows the wound of love and not the actual experience of His healing cure.

This is the pattern of His way with our hearts; knowing this should bring great consolation to our hearts. He is actually drawing us in the delay. He is enlarging the capacity of our hearts to experience the pleasure of His presence by withholding it. This is the perfect, Divine wisdom of the Lover of our souls, to bring us forth, to His side, leaning and loving, a pure and spotless bride!

The Way of the Yielded Heart

The Way of the Yielded Heart

It seems to me that God makes use of all kinds of persecutions to test our hearts in the matter of our affections. If our hearts are attached to worldly things - wealth, reputation, the affections of men and a multitude of other earthly comforts, then our reward is here. But if by the proving of various persecutions we gladly suffer the loss of all things, then it is evident that our real affections are in things not of this world. Our claim to the eternal and true riches promised in the after-life is affirmed by our loss of the counterfeits offered by the first. We suffer loss of the first to prove our love of the second. We suffer loss of the temporal to gain the eternal. We lose but a day to gain eternity. "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose."

Our brief time on the earth is for the examination of the soul. It is here that we choose for ourselves a place in the realm of eternity. Pity the poor soul who only sees the present day, and spends his life for the things designed only for the testing of his suitability for the next.

I do believe in prosperity. I believe the gospel is a "good news" gospel. But I believe we should "seek first the kingdom of God" in all that we do. I would rather seek the face of God than the hand of God. I believe the promise of prosperity has a purpose of testing the hearts of those who seek it. For "those who desire to be rich" such gain may prove to be to their eternal loss, and pierce their hearts with many sorrows. For those to whom the riches of this earth mean nothing yet to whom such riches come, "fearing God they shall come forth with both of them."

"Do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them." If, in the Providence of God they fall your way, your stewardship of it will be required on the day when the hearts of all men are made known. But not having sought after it, the heart is still pure of its gain, and so suffers no loss in eternity for having had its earthly benefit. But those who seek after such things betray the true motive of the heart, and their loss in heaven will be in proportion to their treasure laid up elsewhere. As the first book of Timothy says, "those who desire to be rich fall into temptation ( they fail the exam )..... they have strayed from the faith ( missed the point of being here ) ...... and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." ... if not in this life, certainly the next.

That is why Paul could say in Phillipians chapter 3, "I have suffered the loss of all things. ...what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ." Whatever we gain in this life, whether it be reputation, fame and fortune, comfort, possession and power, whatever we have in this life, we must hold them loosely with a yielded heart, if we are to lay hold of that which is eternal

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

That I May Live...

My God, my God, what have I done?

The sin in my life has killed your Son.

Despised and rejected, how could it be,

A king so pure should die on a tree.

He stood before Pilate, no fault was found.

Convicted of nothing, beat to the ground.

Crown of thorns placed on his head.

A purple robe, blood stained red.

The soldiers mocked and spit in his face.

“Hail, king of the Jews”, said in that place.

They led him away, he carried his cross,

His energy draining, endured for the lost.

Carrying his cross, not easy to bear.

Simon of Cyrrene was forced to share.

On top of the hill and nailed to the cross.

The ultimate sacrifice, made for the lost.

With his last words, the curtain was torn.

“It is finished”, a new era is born.

Placed in tomb, the stone was sealed.

On the third day, God did reveal.

His Son is alive for all to see,

Sacrifice made for us to be free.

My God, my God, forgive my sin.

I accept your gift that I may live.

C. Dakota

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