Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to The Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen, podcasting from Clinton, North Carolina, where we are just beginning a war of special forces here and a Christian school in New Life Baptist Church here in Clinton. Looking forward to a great week, if you think of it. Please pray for us for our Wednesday, Thursday, Friday night rallies. We’d have a harvest of souls. Last week we were in Greer, South Carolina, and saw a lot of young people come and get saved. It was certainly a great week. God worked in the hearts of many of the Christian school young people. We had a wonderful prayer meeting on Friday, about a half an hour, a lot of tears, brokenness, young people crying out to God, telling him how much they needed him. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. I’ll be honest with you, a little bit of heaven on earth. Well, it’s good to have you here for this The Generation podcast, and most of you know that I’ve been listening on a regular basis. I’ve been in a series on my journey.

Now I may pick that back up, but in light of the fact this is just about a week and a half after our Victory Conference at Falls Baptist Church in Menominee Falls, Wisconsin, I wanted to take a little bit of a time out, tell you a little bit about the conference and give you some directives of where you can go if you would be interested in studying out or hearing some messages on the topic I’m gonna mention here in just a moment. The Victory Conference has now been a conference that Falls Baptist Church has hosted February, March, kinda in that window now for several years. I think it’s going on 30 years. And so a lot of Victory Conferences, but last few years particularly, God’s brought us on a journey, and I don’t have time to go into all the journey, except to say that this year, the Lord led us to a theme conference, excuse me, a conference theme, the I Am, of course focused on God. And one of the things about the conference was this.

Really, the fact is, most of our problems, if not all of them, come because we have a wrong view of God, which many times translates into a wrong view of ourselves. And several months ago now, the book was recommended to me a couple of years ago, and you know how that goes. I kinda put it on a little bit of a side list or side weight, and I can’t even remember what brought it back up to mind, but I ended up ordering it and began to read it. It’s called The Cure by a fellow named John Lynch, and there’s a couple of other authors on there as well. And I don’t know how to explain it. The book impacted me. It had a little byline, what if God is not who you think he is and neither are you? And really, lot of different things in the book. And again, I will say, there’s always a little bit of a disclaimer. There are a few things that they state in a way that I would certainly state differently, but the overall gist of the book was a tremendous blessing to me. And one of the blessings of the book was the understanding of who we are in Jesus Christ. The Bible says in the book of 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21, For he, (that’s God,) hath made him, (Jesus,) to be sin for us, who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. You know, friend, when you got saved, you were put into Jesus, and Jesus was put into you, and your union with Jesus Christ is a remarkable thing. And the Bible tells us as a result of that, we are literally in union with the righteous one, which means that we are righteous.

Could I put it this way? When you and I got saved, the old man died, and the Holy Spirit moved in and regenerated we were born again, regenerated us so that we became a new man in Christ. Now we have the flesh, but the flesh is not who we are. Who we are is the fact we’re in union with Jesus Christ. That is now our DNA, our spiritual DNA is in union with Jesus Christ. May I say that that’s not just potential, it’s reality. Now at the conference, I dealt with this theme in a lot more thorough fashion, I spent over an hour in a message. Do you know who you are? I also preached a message that night on “But without faith, it is impossible to please God” because it is faith that we’re gonna talk about in a moment that is important in really reckoning. That’s what the Bible uses in Romans six, or believing what God says about who we are in Christ. So it’s very important.

But I would recommend that particular message, and that afternoon, pastor Aaron Samples preached a message of what do you think about God? Many times we have a wrong view of God, and it affects our view of ourselves. Now all the messages will be a help, but I mention those two because they kind of focus on the either side. The wrong view of ourselves comes from a wrong view of God. I will say on Thursday afternoon, Pastor Johnny Pope preached a message on how to live on earth that deals with the Roman six passage that uses that word reckon, which is what we call identification truths or beginning to believe and live in the reality of who we are in union with Jesus Christ. 

Now again, I would recommend every message, but those would be primarily the messages that would focus on that particular theme. And the others, of course, are very much along the same line and adding supplemental truth into the whole thing, and it was really a package as a whole. Every message builds on each other in some senses and delivers a package, but if you’re really interested in understanding who you are in Christ, then I do recommend those particular messages. You may wanna listen to the whole conference in order, recognizing those messages gonna deal primarily with those truths of who we are in Christ comes as a result of what we think about God.

Well, in that message, I deal with Romans chapter 12, verses one and two, verses most of us are pretty familiar with. If you know the Bible, I’ve been saved very long. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed, (that’s a key word,) by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Now, many of you may know, you may not, but the word transformed comes from a Greek word we get the word metamorphosis from. Now if you recognize the word metamorphosis, of course, it’s talking about that caterpillar who climbs up on a tree, spins a cocoon, and then a certain amount of time later comes out of that cocoon but no longer looks like a caterpillar, it has become a butterfly, a beautiful butterfly. It’s totally been transformed, metamorphosed. It is certainly different, and we all understand that. We’ve had some training, I’m sure or education in science on that particular process. But that is a great, great truth. In other words, friends, that little caterpillar has the DNA of a butterfly. And that DNA doesn’t change. Now it’s slowly working in that caterpillar to bring that caterpillar to a point where it transforms into a butterfly. Now, the difference between that caterpillar to butterfly process and you and I’s Christian life process is it’s not automatic It’s not just a DNA setting in emotion. The Bible says we’re transformed. Here’s how by the renewing of your mind.

 In other words as we stop thinking on Biblical thoughts about who we are in Christ or who we are and begin to think biblical thoughts about who we are in Christ We begin to renew our mind so it becomes biblical thinking that maturity process that DNA begins to do what it was meant to do. Now DNA is a remarkable thing, and it certainly is something that’s beyond my comprehension, but we all know what it does. For instance, if you’re born with DNA that you’re gonna have blue eyes, you’re gonna have blue eyes, blonde hair, you’re gonna have blonde hair, et cetera. We all understand what DNA does, and what features you’ll have from different relatives that you are descendants from. That’s the DNA.

But spiritually speaking, that DNA is always there. It’s real. But it is not activated until we believe it, till we renew our mind. So, can I say this? The Christian life is a process of maturing in understanding who we are in Christ. That’s a very vital part of the transformation process. And when we begin to see our mind renewed by the truth of the word of God, particularly on who we are in Christ, that maturity process kicks in, and we begin to see God transform us. Now understand, that little caterpillar who’s lowly and on the ground, he has the DNA of a butterfly. What’s the problem? He needs to mature. And again, that’s a natural process in that situation, but as a Christian, God says, the renewing of our mind is essential. And we renew our mind from the word of God, helping us understand who we are in Christ. 

Now if this intrigues you at all, I would encourage you to listen to the message of the Victory Conference on who you are in Christ, or do you know who you are is actually the title. And that can be accessed at Apple Podcasts. I’m pretty sure there’ll be a link on this particular podcast to a place you can go and listen to these messages at no cost. And I encourage you to do that if God struck your heart about, “man, I’d like to learn who I am in Christ. I’m righteous, it’s not potential, it’s real.” Sometimes we feel so unrighteous, but the Bible says the flesh lusts against the spirit. Spirit against the flesh, these are contrary, one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. In other words, friends, what God is saying is we’re locked in a conflict, and when we don’t understand who we are in Christ, we don’t do what we could have done. It’s a possibility or a probability that we won’t be all that God wants us to be, or do all that God wants us to do because we are not living in the reality of our union with Jesus Christ. 

Wonderful truths, I know I’m just opening this up for some of you young ladies, you may be interested in listening to the December podcast of Faith Talks, where my daughter, Janna Faith, and her cousin, my niece, Anna Faith, about halfway through the podcast begin a discussion on this very truth. And my daughter Janna reads a little poem she wrote on I’m a Butterfly Inside. I would encourage you to go listen to that; I think it would encourage you in that wonderful truth of who we are in Christ. The DNA is set and it’s a wonderful thing. So friends, the problem with our Christian life is often we don’t know who God is and we don’t know who we are. But that can be remedied as we begin to get a hold of what the Bible tells us in regard to the fact we’re in Jesus Christ, we’re righteous in Christ, we are dead to sin in Christ, we’re alive unto God in Christ. We’re triumphant over sin in Christ. We’re complete in Him. We are old things are past, we all things are become new in Him. hallelujah. Thank God for the great inheritance we have in Jesus Christ. 

And I’ll tell you friend, the reaction to that is a total surrender to that truth. And dependence on the Jesus that lives within us to enable us to be the Christian that God wants us to be.