“It is Finished”

I have been reflecting on the most transformational season of my life. It has changed everything for me over the last 2+ years. I look back at that time and marvel at what God did in me and taught me, and the amazing thing is that life with Him is from Glory to Glory. So I don’t look back and think, “Well, it’ll never be that good again.” No, I look back and remember a time when the Lord set me up to know and discover more of Him everyday! And that produces so much Hope for the Future. 

This is something I wrote in January, 2019 while I reflected on this particular season of my life:

— 2018 was a year of new foundations for me. God has brought complete restoration to me and healing to my heart. God has always been drawing me into deep friendship with Him and in the last year, I have pursued it as a child clings to his father. In the time that I have spent alone with God, pondering on the Word, and in beautiful community, a strong foundation of who I am in Christ has formed inside me. 

I’ve received a more profound realisation of what Jesus meant when He said, “It is finished.” He meant…“It is finished.” And when I said “Yes” to what Jesus did on the cross, I fully, completely, and definitively became a new creation. Thank you, Jesus, for my new identity that is in you! The reality that my “old man” that was of the sinful flesh is gone and I am now of the divine nature of God(Romans 6 & 2 Peter 1), has brought me into freedom that I didn’t know possible. 

In the past, when I would succumb to temptation I would immediately fall into a place of condemnation, beating myself up and wishing I wasn’t the way that I am. “Why would I go to God when I’m just a horrible, sinful person who is constantly turning my back on Him and indulging in whatever feels good in the moment?” That’s how I thought. I was ashamed of myself. How does an imperfect person who is ashamed of themselves go to a perfect and holy God? I tried to, but I just kept falling back into the same holes. 

But what if God means what He says? What if He isn’t lying when He says that I am holy and blameless and righteous and sanctified and perfected? What if He achieved exactly what He says He did by Jesus’ death and resurrection? What if the body of sin actually died with Christ in his death, and I was actually resurrected with Christ into new life? Doesn’t that change the way I see myself — when I believe that God isn’t just saying I am Holy, but I am actually Holy. This changes everything! It did in my life! 

I began to see myself as worthy and valuable. I began to see sin as a separate entity from me: that my desires are holy and Godly. And it was the devil that told me, “this is how you gratify these desires. Come, do it my way.” You see my desires are good, but the devil tries to trick me into thinking that his way is the way to satisfy them. Then he tricks me into thinking that my very desire is bad.

How can my desire be bad when I have been given the very nature of God? 

I truly believe that God has made me righteous, and now I’m learning to walk in my new identity. It’s a discovery of who I already am that changes the way I walk. If you are in Christ, then you are a new creation. You have become the righteousness of God as 2 Corinthians tells us. Christianity isn’t a behaviour management system it’s a discovery of what Christ did on the cross and inside you. So I provoke you to believe what Christ says He did in you. —

And If you don’t know God, I tell you this: If you say “Yes” to what He has done for you, you will find everything you ever needed and everything you were made for. Jesus did a complete work, a comprehensive job, when He gave His life for yours and rose from the dead. He has invited you into the most beautiful friendship for eternity where Love is the essence of it all because He is Love himself. To see the work that He has done manifested in you will be the most spectacular and wonderful thing you or anyone else has ever seen. You will be perfected in Him.