GOD'S GREAT NEWS for MAN'S GREAT PROBLEM - Romans 1-8

Two Biographies

I love to tell my children about the biographies of great Christians. A biography is someone's true life story. There is so much to learn from someone's true life story. In that vein, I want to expand one of the true life stories I mentioned briefly in our last study, the story of Eugenia Price the bored sophisticate-turned-Christian author.

Eugenia's story is clearly divided into two biographies. The first biography begins with her birth in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1916. Her childhood was charmed: her father was a successful dentist who provided lavishly for his family. Eugenia grew up feeling very loved. She was the hub of her own world. She went to church like all nice girls of her era, but proclaimed herself an agnostic shortly after entering college. She was the only woman accepted into Northwestern Dental School, but quit after three years out of boredom. Soon an opportunity arose for her to write for radio shows. She was an overnight success, and for the next ten years she became a celebrated radio writer with her own production company. She lived in a stylish apartment in a fashionable neighborhood of Chicago, she wore the best clothes, travelled by limousine, and was quite a success. But as each year passed by, she became increasingly discontent. "Life is terribly heavy," she wrote, "when you have spent your life convincing yourself and everyone else that you are a success and then you have to be - or find a way out of it all."

At this point, she vacationed back home in Charleston and met a childhood friend named Ellen Riley. The two were instant friends, and instant opposites. Ellen did not drink. Eugenia did - quite a lot. Ellen did not smoke. Eugenia did - three packs a day. Ellen was kind, patient and loving. Eugenia was a pain. The two talked a great deal about God. Having been an avowed agnostic for over ten years, Eugenia fought tooth and nail until October 2, 1949 in a hotel room in New York, when she committed her life to Jesus Christ. That date marks the end of her first biography. It spans her life from 1916-1949. It marked the life and death of Eugenia Price, radio writer, producer and bored sophisticate.

But Eugenia's second biography began that same day, October 2, 1949. That was the day Eugenia Price, woman-in-Christ, was born in that New York hotel room turned spiritual maternity ward. From the very beginning of her new life, Eugenia felt keenly that she carried the reputation of Jesus Christ with her wherever she went. She turned down much of her previous radio work. No longer could she write murder stories for children, nor could she contrive to convince adults to do things she could no longer do as a Christian. Her old life had died -- soon her career too passed away. But her staggering debts remained. She and Ellen got an apartment together, and by taking menial jobs they slowly paid off all of Eugenia's debts. Finally, an opportunity arose to host a radio show telling true stories of transformation from the Pacific Garden Mission. The show, entitled Unshackled, was greatly successful in the 1950s. Then she turned to writing. Her first book was entitled Discoveries Made from Living My New Life. She has since authored 35 books with over 15 million copies sold. Here is how Eugenia Price summarized her life: "I am a believer in Jesus Christ. Since I would be bored to write a book which did not include Him, I attempt sincerely to show His divine intervention and involvement with all human life." (From More Than Conquerors, pg. 131-133)

How marvelously clear she was about her new identity in Christ: "I am a believer in Jesus Christ..." She could have said, "I am the daughter of a wealthy dentist ..." or "I have had a successful career in radio ..." or as a Christian, she could have said, "I am the hostess of Unshackled ..." or "I am an author ..." But she knew who she was in fact: "I am a believer in Jesus Christ." Her identity was firmly rooted in Him. Her second biography is all about Eugenia in Jesus Christ. This second biography is still being written: it is a neverending story of eternal life in Him.

Each of us has a biography, a true life story. The unique thing about Christians is that we have two biographies: a story before Christ, and an eternal story after Christ saved us by faith. We had an old identity, our old self, that died when we met Christ. And we have an ongoing saga about our new identity, our true self, in Jesus Christ. It is imperative that we view our lives this way: dead to our old identity in sin, and alive to God forever in our new identity in Jesus Christ. Our baptism into Jesus Christ becomes a hinge between our "BC" life before Christ and our "AD" life after Christ comes into our lives. Thus our lives are divided into two distinct eras, in the same way human history is divided. Today in Rom. 6:11 we are going to speak about the two biographies of each Christian.

"Even So, You Consider ..." - An Emphatic Command for the Mind to Grasp

Paul begins Rom. 6:11 with a phrase meant both to summarize what he had been saying in Rom. 6:1-10, and to apply that truth. He says, "Even so, YOU CONSIDER ..." This is the first command found in the book of Romans. As such, we must give it great weight in our minds. Paul has laid a foundation of doctrinal truth unparalleled in the literature of the world, and now he asks us to start building the frame of our house on that foundation. The foundation is of hardest concrete, well mixed and perfectly poured, having hardened into an unshakable foundation. Now it is our turn to begin to build on that foundation. We now have a specific command to follow, a first step to take in applying all that Paul has said. This command may well be considered the first command of the Christian's life.

So, what is the command? First, it is emphatic: Paul wants to draw special attention to this command. Not having a computer to boldface the imperative, he emphasizes the YOU, the second person plural, by stating it explicitly when grammatically it is implicit. In Greek, the verb itself contains the person as one of its principal parts. Thus, to say "you all consider" would usually take only the verb logizesthe. But to emphasize this command to his audience, Paul says humeis logizesthe. In effect, Paul says *** PAY ATTENTION YOU ALL: CONSIDER ... ***

The root verb here is logizomai, which means "to reckon, to weigh in your mind on a balancing scale, to consider." This is the same verb we saw in Romans 4:3-24, where God reckoned Abraham to be righteous by faith. In that chapter, God did the reckoning, declaring the one who lives by faith to be righteous. That verb appears eleven times in Romans chapter four. It doesn't appear in Romans again until it is our turn to consider, here in Rom. 6:11. We are solemnly commanded by Paul to weigh in our minds, to reflect, to consider unto the point of certain knowing ... our identity in Jesus Christ. Paul's use of this word is telling: God considered who we are, declaring us righteous by faith in Jesus Christ. Now we are commanded to agree with our God, considering and knowing who we are in Jesus Christ, knowing our identity in Him.

This is one of the dominant themes running through Romans. We encountered the issue of identity back in Rom. 1:1, when we saw Paul's Christ-centered identity as a bond-slave of Jesus Christ, a called apostle of Jesus Christ, commissioned by God to carry the good news of Jesus Christ. Paul's identity was so rooted in Jesus Christ that his own life had become completely dissolved into the life of Christ, who in fact had become Paul's life. Paul wrote this into his letters in Gal. 2:20 and Col. 3:3, 4. Paul knew his identity in Christ, agreeing with God about who he was. It is no mistake, therefore, that Paul in his first command in this book asks us to likewise consider our identity in Christ, agreeing with God that we are in Christ, having died to sin and been made alive to God.

This is close to Paul's heart because Paul himself lived two distinctly sequential lives: the life of a Hebrew of Hebrews, rabbinical star student under Gamaliel, a Pharisee, the most zealous persecutor of Christians, until that cataclysmic day when Jesus Christ invaded his life on the Damascus road, blinding the man who thought he saw so well. On that Damascus road, Paul the persecutor died. On that Damascus road, Paul the Christian preacher was born. Paul's first biography ended on that road. Paul's second biography is still being written in the heavenlies. As Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." Paul had two biographies: one complete and finished, one being forever written. The same is true of every Christian. Our identity was changed forever at the point of conversion. This is how we must see ourselves, according to Paul's emphatic command in Rom. 6:11. Knowing our identity in Christ is the first step to Christian living.

But not only is this the first step in Christian living, it is a key to the ongoing Christian walk. This verb is a present imperative, meaning it could just as accurately be translated "CONTINUALLY CONSIDER yourselves to be ..." None of us can be complacent about knowing our identity in Christ: we often grow confused about where our identity is at various junctures of our Christian lives, so we must walk closely with Jesus Christ in the Spirit to ensure that we are considering where we derive our identity from throughout our Christian lives, from the date of our conversion until that best of all days when we shall see Him face to face.

Finally, this command is a direct appeal to our MINDS. In fact, Paul appeals to our minds four times in Rom. 6:1-11. In Rom. 6:3, he asked, "Do you not know ...," then in Rom. 6:6 he declares "Knowing this ...," and in 6:9 he states "Knowing that Christ ..." He then solemnly appeals to our minds here in Rom. 6:11, commanding us to weigh on the scales of our mind the weighty truth of our identification with Christ, that we will surely KNOW who we are based on who God says we are.

The chief battleground for the Christian is always the mind. This is true in coming to Christ, as Chuck Colson once wrote, describing his conversion: "My biggest problem had always been the intellectual reservations. I knew there was a God, but I could never see how man could have a personal relationship with Him. But the intellectual case for Christianity became powerful to me after reading Mere Christianity. At the end of the week I could not imagine how you could not believe in Jesus Christ."

But the mind remains the chief battleground once we become Christians. As John Stott says, "So the major secret of holy living is in the mind. ... We are to recall, to ponder, to grasp, to register these truths until they are so integral to our mindset that a return to the old life is unthinkable. Regenerate Christians should no more contemplate a return to unregenerate living than adults to their childhood, married people to their singleness or discharged prisoners to their prison cell."

This is why we have been studying through Romans. Romans is the book that appeals to our minds, persuading us that our God's great news is not only great for sinners but great as an intellectual argument. The case for Christianity is intellectually incontrovertible. It is only controversial on the moral level, when sinners do not want to believe in sin and salvation by faith because it impels us to make strong moral choices. In starting out at this church, I wanted our minds to be well trained, because in these days men and women need a very firm grasp on God's truth. It seems everything in our culture today is mind-numbing: TV, movies, the politically correct media that predominantly spouts only one view of the world and current events, and an educational system that increasingly teaches us what to think not how to think at the higher levels of public education. But against this "closing of the American mind," let us follow God's command through the Apostle Paul and consider well who God says we are in these days of endless confusion. May our minds be strengthened by the mind of Christ that we may know and walk in our identity in Jesus Christ.

"Yourselves To Be ..." - Knowing Your Identity

I do not think it possible to overemphasize the importance of knowing our identity in Jesus Christ. Paul makes this the sole object of the deep consideration to which we are called here in Rom. 6:11. We are to "consider yourselves to be ..." In other words, we are to reflect on and come to know beyond a shadow of a doubt WHO WE ARE, based on all that Paul has said in Rom. 1:1-6:10. This is Paul's language of identity: consider yourselves TO BE. We are no longer to ask, "Who am I?," but to ask "Who does God say that I am?" We are not to be asking ourselves as Hamlet did, "To be or not to be? That is the question ...," ending up as confused as he was. Instead, we are to weigh on the scales of our minds who we are based on who God says we are. No one else's opinion really matters in the end. I am to know who I am in Jesus Christ as surely and confidently as I know my own name. I am Dorman Followwill, believer in Jesus Christ, by the grace of God.

The reality Paul wants our minds to grasp is that our identity changed absolutely at the point that we believed in Jesus Christ and were placed into Him. The change is so absolute that only the language of death and new life can even approach a description of it. I have often thought about how awesome that moment of conversion really is: one small choice unleashed an instantaneous change of such magnitude that we will spend eternity fathoming it.

One man quickly began to grasp the magnitude of this great change at his conversion. He was a Czech believer during the days of the Iron Curtain. Here is Jan Chelcicky's conversion story: "'At 16 I was an atheist. At 18 I was organizer of Communist Youth in our factory. Now today I had been elected national president of the Communist Youth. I drifted off to sleep and dreamed. Out of the sky came a voice: "Take heed that ye be not deceived; for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ ... and then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." I awoke with a start. My heart was pounding fiercely. I tried to tell myself it was only a dream. But God's presence was there in the room. Dropping off the side of the bed onto my knees, I prayed, "Oh Lord, forgive me. Accept me."

"'I spent the rest of the night in prayer. Then as the first light of dawn appeared, another voice spoke inside me. "What have you done? You will have to give up everything you worked for. Your former friends will mock you, despise you, persecute you. Turn back now before it is too late." I was full of fear, but inside God said, "Have no fear; my Spirit shall witness for you."

[I went before my comrades]. "'"... I am resigning my functions as your leader for I can no longer be a Communist," I said. "You are a fool," they replied. "Why do you wish to take such a stupid action?" "I can no longer follow Marx and Lenin," I said. "Because I am now a follower of Jesus Christ."

"'Today I am pastor of a small church near the Russian border. If I go to prison, it matters not; for wherever I am I serve Him, and He strengthens me. Lenin taught that you change man by changing society. Jesus, however, teaches that you change society by changing man. I serve in God's "new world order," introduced by the greatest revolutionary of all time -- Jesus Christ.'"

Jan knew immediately that Jan Chelcicky, Communist, follower of Marx, follower of Lenin, had died the night of his conversion. Jan also knew that Jan Chelcicky, Christian, follower of Jesus Christ, was born into a new life in a new world order that same night. Jan knew who he no longer was, and who he will forever be. His first biography was finished; the old Communist Jan was dead. The new biography about Christian Jan is still being written.

"Dead Indeed to Sin ..." - Your First Biography: Birth, Life and Death

Paul ends verse eleven by telling us about our two biographies. Our first biography is a completed work, with the exhaustive tale of our birth in Adam in sin, our life in Adam in sin, and our death in Christ to sin. That first biography ends on a strangely wonderful note: we died in Christ. We were entombed with Him in the special tomb newly hewn for Joseph of Arimathea. The curious thing about the first biography of every Christian is that it concludes the same way for everyone:

Then he believed in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. At that moment, He became absolutely united with Christ in all things, across all times. He died with Christ to sin. His old identity, his old self, was crucified with Him, that his body of sin might be done away with. He is no longer a slave to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

THE END

That life is over. That old biography is on the bookshelf, and we can read it with the freedom of detachment. If you could read and reflect on the story of your life before you met Christ, you would be reading the biography of someone who has died. You can be freely detached in reading that story, since that person is dead and gone. It is no different than reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln or Fanny Crosby. Any sin that person committed, any sin committed against that person, no matter how heinous, is the sin problem of a dead person. That life story is self-contained; it has a definite end.

To consider this as Paul has instructed us to do, consider going home and pulling out old family photo albums, especially those from the time when you were not yet a Christian. Look at the pictures of the person you once were but are no longer. Look at each picture, and KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that that person no longer exists from God's perspective. Every sin that person committed in the past has been confessed, paid for in full by Jesus Christ, and freely forgiven. Every sin committed against that person was buried in the tomb when that person died. All those sins, my own and those inflicted upon me, are nothing more than historical footnotes to a true life story of a person that once lived but is now dead.

This is the key to profound personal freedom for the Christian. The one who died to sin is freed from sin, both the sin the old "me" used to commit and be identified in, and the sin committed against the old "me" as a result of living in a fallen world.

I have often wondered if one of the best things we could do for a new believer is to issue a formal Death Certificate in regards to his old life in sin. Listing the specific date and time of death would be helpful in bringing closure to that old life and old identity. That person DIED at such and such a time. Cause of death: union with Christ in His death to sin. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Death Certificate to register in our minds our death to sin? Wouldn't it also be nice to have a Birth Certificate to register our birth into new life in Christ, a life lived to God? We may not have a physical Death Certificate and Birth Certificate, but we do have water baptism as the symbol representing this spiritual reality. We get a Death Certificate of sorts when we are lowered into the watery tomb as we are lowered in baptism. We die when that water fully covers us. Then we get a Birth Certificate of sorts when we are raised up out of the water into newness of life in Jesus Christ. Water baptism thus symbolizes for us a Death Certificate complete with cancellation of all sin debts, and a Birth Certificate signifying our entrance into newness of life in Jesus Christ.

The best illustration I know of to show this truth comes whenever we adults go home to visit our parents, usually going back to the home we grew up in. What I am about to describe has happened more than once in my own life. Wives, think about the way your husband acts when he gets back around his mother and father in his boyhood home. That home represents his old life, the way it used to be and the way it will never be again, because he is now a man and not a boy. Doesn't it drive you crazy when he quickly reverts to the behavior of a high school boy? The man you know him to be in your own home seems to vanish into the familiar air of his boyhood home, and you stand there looking at him like "Who is this guy? How revolting!" And for us as men, we had to leave and cleave in order to become our own men, and it is tough when we return home. We hate the influence our old situation has over us, and we chafe under the yoke of our parents when they don't really allow us to grow up, when they don't respect us as men. And we go crazy when our wives point this out to us. Both husband and wife end up shaking their heads at this: this behavior is NOT WHO I AM.

As much repulsion as I have at that thought of reverting to old, boy-like behavior is the same repulsion I should have for sin. Sinful behavior is not fitting for a royal prince or princess in the family of God. It is beneath us; it denies the great dignity God gives us in Christ.

Stronger than that, it is U-G-L-Y. When a Christian sins, it is simply NOT WHO I AM. It makes us fold our arms and shake our head. When we see each other sin, we can boldly go right to each other and say, "Brother, why are you saying those things? Sister, what are you doing? That is NOT WHO YOU ARE." We all know this to be true. We need each other to be bold enough to confront these things, so that we quit the behavior of our old life, and move into our new life and live in Christ and with Him as a Godly man or woman in Christ.

Our old life is over. It is dead and gone. We are new creatures in Christ, behold, the former things have passed away. When we still live in these old things, when we still act or speak like we did before Christ, it is like dressing up a corpse and trying to make it presentable. The very thought is disgusting. It causes us to fold our arms and shake our heads. We ought to see our sin as clearly as this: WE HAVE DIED TO IT. When I sin, please remind me, "Dorm, that is NOT WHO YOU ARE." We need each other to help see ourselves this way, to know our identity. Our old journey has ended; a new adventure has begun.

I read the conversion story of a convicted felon named Leo D'Arcangelo this week, and he recalled the very punctuated end of his first biography. Leo had become a heroin addict, and was arrested countless times. At one point he jumped bail, and was arrested yet again. While in that prison cell, he paced back and forth nervously, trying to figure out a new angle. As he paced he noticed a few lines roughly scribbled on the wall: "When you come to the end of your journey and this trouble is racked in your mind, and there seems no other way out than by just mourning, turn to Jesus, for it is Him you must find." He realized right then that "This is the end of my journey. What have I got to show for it? Nothing except a lousy past and a worse future. Jesus, I need Your help. I've made a mess of my life and this is the end of the journey, and all the crying isn't going to change my past. Jesus, if You can change my life, please do it. Help me make tomorrow different." After that prayer, for the first time, Leo felt something other than despair. He went on to have a fruitful prison ministry, travelling widely to speak at churches and youth conferences. When Leo accepted Jesus Christ, it was the end of the journey. Leo the criminal died at precisely the moment Leo the Christian was born.

Oh Lord, let us know our first biography has ended!!! Let us know we are dead to sin in Christ. Set us free from our sin and any bondages from our old identity. May we be free indeed in Jesus Christ, because we are "dead indeed" to sin.

I am intrigued by the repentant thief on the cross who died with Christ, probably only a few feet away. That dear man is one of the clearest pictures of a Christian in the Bible. He died on a cross along with Christ, dying that day to his old identity in sin and dying physically. But his dying day was not the end: it was a new beginning. He was born that day to a newness of life, with an eternal identity in Christ. His new identity was revealed by Jesus on the cross: "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me ..." And his eternal destiny was also revealed: "... today you shall be with Me in Paradise." Identified with Him, destined for Paradise. Now THAT is a glorious new identity! The man died a thief on a dirty wooden cross, but he began living as a prince on that same dirty cross.

In Jesus Christ, our conversion marks in one instant a death and a birth. It marks the end of our first life, and the beginning of our eternal life. Having finished our first biography, our great Author immediately opens a whole new book, gets out a pen and writes a better, eternal story.

"Alive to God in Christ Jesus" - Neverending Biography of Your Life in Christ

Curiously, if we could read that second biography, it would begin rather familiarly: "In the begining, God created the heavens and the earth ..." The first 66 chapters of your biography as a Christian is the Bible itself. Once you are placed in Christ and united with Him, His story becomes the beginning of your story. The first promise made about Him in the distant past incorporates you in the present. God spoke first of Him when He cursed the serpent in the garden in Gen. 3:15, saying, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." Paul sees that prophecy directly applying to his readers in Romans in Rom. 16:20a: "And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." The ancient story told in the Bible is the beginning of our biographies as men and women in Christ.

Paul says that we are to consider ourselves to be alive to God in Christ Jesus. My new life story is exactly that: the tale of a new life. Paul summarized his own second biography in Gal. 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me."

In reality, Jesus Christ Himself IS our new identity. Jesus Christ Himself IS our new life. We are so melded into Him and Him into us that we must abandon any misconception about living a solo life any longer. We have died to the solo life, and life forever in union with Jesus Christ. Our lives are united together forever.

Marriage is the great picture of this. When I got married on June 7, 1985, I died to the single life. I have now lived these last eleven years and a little more as a married man, in daily intimacy and fellowship with Blythe. For me to try to live like a single man, as thought I was not married, would be a disaster!! It would be selfish, a denial of reality in my life, and it would make me miss the riches of living in union with another person. I have no other reality than to live joyfully and wholeheartedly as a married man, talking with my wife, laying down my life for her, considering how my choices affect her. I am alive to a new relationship with her for my whole life, and who would ever want to go back to living any other way? More than that: going back to live life like a single man is selfish sin; it denies who I am as a married man. Likewise, going back to make solo choices apart from Christ is selfish sin; it denies who I am as a man in Jesus Christ.

As Major Ian Thomas said in one of the concluding paragraphs of The Saving Life of Christ: "The only Person whom God credits with the right to live in you is Jesus Christ; so reckon yourself to be dead to all that you are apart from what He is, and alive unto God only in all that you are because of what He is (Romans 6:11)." Amen and amen!!

I think the secret to being alive to God is enjoying and resting in Christ IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. We get bogged down too much in mulling over the past, or obsessing about the future. Sometimes we need to reflect about our past in intimate communion with Christ, but only when He leads us there. Sometimes we need to plan responsibly for the future, but only when He leads us to do so. But the vast amount of the Christian life can be reduced to enjoying millions of present moments with Jesus Christ. In Christ, our life is hidden with Christ in God, as Paul says in Col. 3:3, 4. I don't need to worry about "my life" for one moment more, having spent most of my life obsessing about "myself" and "my life." All that is over, and the present moment with Christ is now my life. My past and future is in His hands, and I am to consider myself to be alive right now to Him; listening to Him; looking for how He is working; looking to trust and obey Him for this moment; living in the present in intimacy with Him. That is being alive to God in Christ; alive every present moment.

I must stop to say how EXCITING and ADVENTUROUS this life in Christ is! Every morning dawns with new adventure. Getting up with Him means rising not just to a day of cranking through a "To Do" list of neverending chores; it means waking to a day of living with a "To Be" attitude of constant rest. Constant rest and endless listening. This "listening rest" will not result in INactivity, but in HIS activity accomplished through you while you rest. Our joyous task is to rest and BE ... His certain promise is that He will undertake and DO through us. With Him at work, there is rest and peace for us, as well as endless adventure and discovery. Eugenia Price described her new life in Christ this way: "Since then, day by day, life with Christ has been a continuous experience of one new discovery after another. Now I like to get up in the morning. He is my reason for waking up!"

But we must also know that anything that is exciting and adventurous is rarely easy: there are storms in any adventure, thrills and spills galore, tragedies and glories, battles that rage constantly but always curiously conclude with His triumph. But in the end, His life IS LIFE. There really is no other. Everything else is death.

And every way we think about ourselves now apart from Him is hereby declared death. If I get my identity from my career, saying, "I am a carpenter, I am a doctor, etc.," then I have chosen to view myself apart from Christ. If I get my identity from what people say about me, then I have missed the point of this passage: who I say I am must echo who God says I am. If I get my identity from my achievements, I have forgotten my Christ and His achievements in saving me. Instead, I am in Christ, dead to sin and alive to my God. That is the sum statement of my identity.

Conclusion: Knowing Your Identity as One Alive to God in Christ Jesus

I want to close by asking us some questions. When you stand before the mirror, what do you see? Do you know who God says you are as clearly and as easily as you know your own name? Is your life defined more by your sin or victimization, than it is by your Savior, your Christ? Have you known that you are dead indeed to sin, that you are indeed a new creature in Christ? Does your identity rest in Christ alone, or in what you do or what you look like or what other people think about you? Are you quiet and content in your heart, knowing who you are?

Unless you answered these questions easily, then you are like me and we have some more learning to do in this area. We have more of our minds that need to think like the mind of Christ. May we take these things and consider them deeply and well, obeying our great God and His first command in the book of Romans, that we CONSIDER OURSELVES TO BE DEAD TO SIN AND ALIVE TO GOD IN CHRIST JESUS!

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