Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and the angels know of us.
~Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Ephesians 1
Oh beloved, it is true.
We think we know who we are. We have a reputation to uphold, after all.
And we have no idea who we are. We think we do, but we don’t. We are so worried about what others think of us. We are so worried about our public image. We are so concerned about how we are reported on media. And the worst of it, is that we are quite concerned about how we even perceive ourselves.
We listen to the voices that scream from within.
You are not good enough.
You are a failure.
You will always be misunderstood.
You will never be truly happy.
You are alone.
The drumbeat hammers around in our heads. While the sound of it bruises our souls. But the worse the drumbeat, the more brazen our egos are in continuing to beat the real us, down. The irredeemable part of us, our flesh, doesn’t want to listen to the truth, so it is willing to lie even to itself, to try and induce enough shame and pain so that we will fall back into some sort of fleshly failure, and validate the lies.
So yeah, we worry about our reputation with others, but mostly we listen to our sense of who our old man keeps wanting to tell us we are. The old man is dead, but we often refuse to reckon him/her so. So, we keep getting ourselves into confusion about who we really are.
We have a new character; a new identity in Jesus.
Can we see it?
Read the passage above, again.
Paul was writing to saints. Not just those who had attained to some super-believer status. No, the letter was to any of us who had simply repented of our old ways of living and thinking and believed in Jesus.
He mentions that we are blessed (made more full and happy) with EVERY spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And notice the biggest blessing: God Himself is blessed (made more full and happy) simply in blessing us.
We have been chosen and adopted. If this is not something that heals our sense of just who we are, all we need think of is Whose we are. We are now, the very children of The Heavenly Father, and brothers and sisters of The Son.
Because of this new relationship, you are totally and completely accepted by G_d. Your reputation in other’s eyes, including our own eyes, is now completely overwhelmed by the opinion of our Creator.
Further, and this is huge: You (and this fool of a writer) have been forgiven of ALL our sins. This reality, by the way, is one of the only things that frees us from our failures. To know we are loved, impels us away from the darkness, and draws us into His Light.
So, are you battling your sense of how other people see you? Are you, worse, battling how you see yourself? Perhaps it is time for you to quit listening to these lies, and listen to The One Truth, Who speaks directly to who you really are, in Him.
Tonight is your night. Time to know who you are. Time to know Whose you are.
The best training for a soldier of Christ is not merely a theological college. They always seem to turn out sausages of varying lengths, tied at each end, without the glorious freedom a Christian ought to abound and rejoice in. You see, when in hand-to-hand conflict with the world and the devil, neat little biblical confectionery is like shooting lions with a pea-shooter: one needs a man who will let himself go and deliver blows right and left as hard as he can hit, trusting in the Holy Ghost. It’s experience, not preaching that hurts the devil and confounds the world. The training is not that of the schools but of the market: it’s the hot, free heart and not the balanced head that knocks the devil out. Nothing but forked-lightning Christians will count. A lost reputation is the best degree for Christ’s service. It is not so much the degree of arts that is needed, but that of hearts, loyal and true, that love not their lives to the death: large and loving hearts which seek to save the lost multitudes, rather than guard the ninety-nine well-fed sheep in the pen.
~CT Studd
