To Follow Jesus

by Rocky Fleming

Day Four – A New Identity

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” 1 Peter 2:9-10 (ESV)

It is two days before Thanksgiving when I am writing this blog. Perhaps you will read it on Thanksgiving Day. Today, I feel God’s leadership to point our eyes toward He, who gives us great reason to be thankful. The thankfulness for this celebration began in 1621 with a three-day harvest festival. Present were fifty Pilgrims and ninety Wampanoag Native People who attended. However, we need to go back to 1620 to understand the dreadful, starving condition of the Pilgrims until the gracious Wampanoag people intervened to teach the English men and women how to plant crops and where to fish and hunt. They also taught them survival skills that would prove necessary for existence. These things drove the Pilgrims to their knees to thank God for His abundance to them and for the people He sent to help them with their survival.

I find it interesting that Wampanoag means People of the First Light. It doesn’t escape my thought that these people provided a light of goodness to the Pilgrims. It doesn’t escape my thought that God shed His light and protection on these persecuted Christians who left England to find religious freedom. I’ve seen how God sheds His light in many situations, whether it’s through people, such as the Wampanoag, or divine revelation that challenges the religious status quo when a church loses its heart and demands compliance, which was the case with the Pilgrims and the Church of England. That’s a history lesson for all of us to know, and I recommend your research on it. But I want to get back to the present day, and the primary reason to be thankful, at least for me.

In the passage above, we see the gift of becoming sons and daughters of God. We are called God’s people, a royal priesthood, a people for God’s possession. What does this mean? It is how God sees us. It’s how He identifies us. This is how He picks us out of a crowd today. This is the identity that He has granted to those who follow Jesus Christ. But do we embrace this identity, or do we still hold on to our old-man identity? Do we hold an orphan spirit in our life that keeps away God’s gift of a new identity? I find that many Christians do. How foolish this is. Think of the Pilgrims being willing to accept the Native People’s help. The Wampanoag people knew who they were. They saw themselves as alight in darkness, and they lived out their identity with the Pilgrims. They could have been suspicious, cautious, distrusting. But that was not their identity and they lived up to their identity. What if the Pilgrims refused their help? How would they be identified a year later? Dead and no longer existing. Instead, they are known as the first colony in New England and for shaping the future of the American colonies. As the people of the First Light did for the Pilgrims, and they received it, let us also let the Light of Christ shine over our need to embrace the identity He gives us. The benefit of this will indeed create a thankfulness in us that goes beyond one day out of the year.

I have discovered that there are a lot of joy robbers in life, and great effort is given at times to attack this joy and take it away. Would you agree? But I have also found one joy that cannot be removed from me, which is the joy of being identified as God’s beloved child. God granted this title to me, and no man or demon or any other power can remove this designation. It is secured and paid for by my Savior, Jesus Christ, and because of this, nothing can change it. Of all the reasons I have to be thankful, and there are many, the most important one drives me to not only celebrate Thanksgiving with a grateful heart but to my knees to worship my King. The joy of sonship is the greatest reason to be thankful. But I do like it when my family gathers to do what we’ve done all our lives … to celebrate Thanksgiving together.

I share my personal perspective in hopes that someone who needs to read and take in these thoughts about your identity will do so. Let the light of Christ envelope you with His love, a love of a Father for His child that brings you close to Him on this day.