Radio Broadcast Wednesday 03/23/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P06 (03-23-22)

How to Develop a Proper Self-Image – How God Sees You

We are continuing on with A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ. As a reminder, we continue with a little of the last broadcast.

Christian’s need a solid foundation upon which to base their beliefs, and build their lives. The word of God declares that Jesus Christ is that foundation of Truth with that in mind, let’s now take a Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ.

Bob: All that human rights deal is, I am the center of the universe. Now, universe serves me. Government serve me. Family serve me. Ministry serve me. Pastor serve me. I am the center of the universe and I want to be served. That’s opposite of what Paul is saying because of what Christ did for us. Those of us who live in Christ, should no longer live for myself, but for Him who died for them and was raised again and in verse 16 or so. From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. In other words, I’m not going to look at me anymore from a worldly point of view. It really doesn’t make any difference to me what fraud Freud, excuse me, says about man. Or what Skinner or Lang or the rest of them say about man. I’m not going to look at man from a worldly point of view. Anyway, like Jesus said, I know man and I do not need the testimony about man concerning man. I don’t need man, your testimony about yourself. I made you. So Paul says I don’t either regard any one from a worldly point of view though. We once regarded Christ in that way. Just looking at him from human in human eyes. We no longer do so.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, and if you are out there, listening to me right now, have come to Him by faith, you are in Christ. And Christ is in you. If you are in Christ, it says, you are a new creation. The old has gone. So that old guy’s gone. The new has come. Well, who was that old man? It was me, it was Bob George back in 1968 without the Spirit of God living in me. Well, who’s the new? Bob George 1969 with the Spirit of God living in me. If any man be in Christ Christ, in you, you in Christ, you are a new creation. When did I become a new creation? The moment, the Spirit of God came to take up residence in me, restoring me to true humanity. So all of this it says is from God. I don’t have anything to do with it. That’s why it’s saying I don’t need to think more highly of myself than I ought to. I don’t have anything to do with this except receive it, recognize my condition and receive His provision.

All of this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and He gave us this ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. It’s good news, folks. And it says He’s committed to us this message of reconciliation. That’s why I have the ability on the radio and the right to get on and say folks, God was in Christ reconciling you unto Himself, not counting your sins against you.

That’s not, maybe that’s not temporarily. That is forever. Why do I have the authority to say that it was given to me by God who wrote it here in this book and said to me, and to you that Bob, you are a minister of reconciliation, therefore going to the world and give them the good news that God was in Christ reconciling them under themselves unto himself. Not counting their sins against them. Now He says He’s committed to us the message of reconciliation. He gave it to us, committed it to us.

And we are, therefore, Christ’s ambassadors. So, that’s another thing I need to understand about my identity is not only am I a new creation. But this place that we live in is not my home. I’m an ambassador here. My citizenship is in heaven. I live here on this Earth, but my citizenship is in heaven, and one of these days I’m going to go back to my real country in heaven and I’m going to live there. Without all this disturbance it’s down here. But in the meantime, he says, Bob in exchange for living with me, eternally, never to see sin again, death, illness, always in my presence. I want you to be my Ambassador. Want you to be a representative for me here on this Earth. So what is an ambassador? Folks, what does an ambassador say? I’m an ambassador to France, is my role to go over to France and picket Moulin Rouge? To tell all the French people how immoral they are and sensual and sexual and whatever else I could dream up? Go out and try to change the French government? Try to get somebody elected or appointed that I wanted rather than somebody else? Is that my job? As an ambassador, not announce my job as an ambassador to be in France, but not of France, you’re in the world, but not of the world. Your citizenship is in heaven. You’re an ambassador. What’s an ambassador there to do? Represent the United States of America. To be a representative in a foreign alien land of another country. What is our role as a child of God as an ambassador? The same thing? I’m here to represent the kingdom of God. I’m not here to change the government. Wouldn’t do any good anyway. I’m not here to repel against the government. That’s also stupidity. I am here to represent the Lord Jesus Christ. There are people who are spending their lives and rebelling against the government over certain issues. That’s a stupid to be rebelling against. The government is being enthralled with the government. The government is not the solution to your peace or anyone else’s peace. It’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s who we’re here to represent. We’re not here to talk about how lousy Clinton is or how good he is.

We’re here to represent the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the one that I know is good and always and He’s the only one that we could ever say, was reconciling you unto Himself, not counting your sins against you. There’s no president or vice-president that can do that. So, I’m an ambassador in an alien country in an alien world and we’re here to give out the good news of Jesus Christ. And that’s why he says that as though God, we’re making his appeal through us, we beg you on Christ’s behalf. Be reconciled to God, and tells you why. For God made Him who knew no sin to be sin or sin offering for us. So that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. That’s what we’re here to proclaim. We’re talking about ambassadors. We are in the world. We’re told we’re to be in the world, but not of it. And I wonder sometimes, as I think back, what in the world are we thinking about in this world called Christianity? He also said that our problem John said is we’re in love with the world. An, if we love the world that the love of the father is not in us.

And yet we become engrossed with this world. We’re just totally engrossed with them. And I look at that and say have we totally lost our perspective? Have we? Are we playing spiritual hopscotch through the Bible? Pulling out verses that we like to grab ahold of and not taking it in context of the whole. It is very clear my friends, that if we are Christ’s ambassadors, that an ambassador’s job is to represent another country. As we talked about, it’s very clear, is it not, you’re not going to argue with me on this that our citizenship is supposed to be in heaven. If truly you’re born again of the Spirit of God, and that means it’s not here.

So, I need to find am here and my citizenship is someplace else. It means that I’m an ambassador where I am, and I’ve been named one of those. And so, have you by the living Christ. It seems like that would be thrilling. If you got a presidential appointment to become an ambassador that I’m in a place, you’d be known as one big deal. And yet, here we are, as children of God who by God created this universe, has named you an ambassador here on this Earth. That’s who you are. Whether you want to believe that or not, you will act according to what you believe, but the fact of the matter is, that’s what you are, an ambassador. And what that means is, God is saying Bob, Bill, Mary, Amy, whoever it might be on this Earth that you’re in but not off, you’re my ambassador. You’re my representative. They’re in this foreign land that you’re living in in his alien land, that is not for me. They’re against me. In this land, that would rather believe the psychiatrist than to believe the terminologies of God, the truth of God. In a land that would rather believe lies than truth. In a land that says that human education is more valuable than spiritual education. And that it is more profitable to distribute condoms in schools than it, is to distribute the word of God. Now, that’s the world we live in, and I, quite frankly think the garbage can that we’re seeing today ought to be a benefit to us to see that isn’t anything new. This is always been there. This is what’s been underground. Maybe it’s more open today, but it’s only open because it’s always been there.

And the country in many instances is like a snow covered country during the winter months in New England. Where the ground is totally covered with snow and it looks beautiful and white. But underneath it is a garbage pit. And so all we’re seeing is the reality of the world coming forth in all glory. The evilness of man, coming forth in all glory. It’s always been there. It’s just coming forth.

I’ve seen that with people. That I have come in contact with people that I’ve worked around that what I see coming out today of spirits of unforgiveness, and slander, and conceit, and treachery and, and conceit, and no self-control and brutal. And all the things talked about in second Timothy 3:1-5. I say, where did that come from? And it’s like God said, it was always there. It was just being hidden. It was under a snow bank. What was always there.

2 Timothy 3:1-5
¹ But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. ² People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, ⁴ treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— ⁵ having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

That’s, that’s the heart of a person who has a form of godliness but denies its power that we talked about last week in second Timothy 3. It’s always there. It just now the snow just melted. You’re just now seeing it. And so folks, we have to come to grips with something that that we live in a world today, that even in this world that we sometimes referred to as the Christian world. That it is a world that many times, the so-called establishment, the leaders, the owners of stations and all kinds of things, not all. But some have substituted programs, that deal with social issues and psychological issues at the expense of people are trying to teach the word of God. In other words, that’s not important, let’s get a social issue on. Let’s get something where some money can be made to make a difference with people’s lives are being changed or not. That’s irrelevant. Let’s just get some money. Let’s get some issues out there because we’ve been conned into believing that’s what people want to listen to, it’s controversial and exciting. And so that’s all you hear anymore on so-called many times Christian radio and Christian television.

And folks, it’s a time to return to the classic Christianity. It’s time to get back to the original. It’s time that we wake up and smell the roses to realize that political solutions are no solutions and all that financial solutions are no solutions at all. That the problem with man is inside of his heart, not in his pocketbook, not in his voting record. It’s in the heart. Until you change the hearts of people, you’re never going to change people.

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People talk about having peace. You’ll never have peace in this world. You can’t. How can you have National peace until you have International peace? You know, if you don’t have National peace, how are you going to have International Peace? How are you going to have National peace till you have local peace? How do you have local peace, until you have peace in your family? How are you going to have peace in your family until you have peace in your own heart? And how are you going to have peace in your own heart until you have the Prince of Peace living in your heart? And that’s where Christ Jesus becomes totally irrelevant to not only your peace, but International Peace, or irrelevant to it. So it’s, folks, we’re just living in a Fool’s Paradise until we come to grips to begin seeing things from God’s perspective, rather than ours.

And I tell you, folks, it has to begin with how we look at ourselves, because how we perceive ourselves is going to totally affect the way we perceive others and that’s why this study on self-image is so vitally important, because it’s dealing with forcing you to see, whether you’re going to see things from your vantage point, or whether you’re going to see it from God’s.

So, as we stated, and on page 9 of our book in order to determine a proper self image, we must first decide who we’re going to listen to; whether we’re going to listen to Satan and the world, or to God and His word. We’ve already seen that Satan and the world are in direct opposition to God in His word concerning how we should think about ourselves, as well as others. But unfortunately, we live in the world and are constantly bombarded by philosophies and psychology, and religion that has nothing at all to do with true Christianity.

So what I’m going to ask us to do is let’s examine some of the ways that we do determine self-image from the world’s perspective. And then we want to counter those, with what God has to say about all this. So let’s start first of all, how do we develop this proper self-image? And some people say, well by our appearance. Well, let’s take a look at that and see if there’s any credence in that. How we look is certainly one way that we can determine our self-image. What will your self-image be if you think that you’re pretty and handsome? Well, I’m going to be walking around thinking about how pretty and handsome that I am. Well what if you think you’re ugly when I’m going to walk around thinking about? Well, if you’re truly are pretty or handsome, then what’s going to happen to your self-image and your self-image is predicated on the fact that I’m pretty and handsome. What’s going to happen to your self-image when you grow older, and you start sagging and bagging, and don’t look the way you used to? Or if you were in an accident of some kind and your face and your body was marred and the whole, your whole appearance was changed through a terrible accident? What would your self-image be with something like that occurring? So in other words, your self-image is predicated on something that could crumble in an absolute split second if your self-image is determined on what I look like, or what I don’t look like.

And then you have to say to yourself. Well, who is it that helps me determine whether I’m prettier or whether I’m handsome or whether I’m ugly? Well, normally, you’re not going to hear your ugly from your mom and dad. They’re, you know, they think gargantuan was cute. So you’re going to normally hear your mom and dad say, oh, you’re such a beautiful little girl. You’re such a fine-looking young boy. So you’ll kind of hear that from friends and complete strangers can also echo that sentiment and from these opinions, it’s also easy to develop what is referred to as a positive self-image. And then you have people who would say, well, you got to think positive and that’s the key to everything. Think, positive think, positive. So you stand in front of the mirror and say, I’m beautiful. I’m beautiful. I’m beautiful. I’m beautiful. And think, well, I’ve had to tell myself that long enough, why then I’ll start believing it and, you know, I could try that. But I find, my eye gate is much more accurate than my ear gate. So it’s alright, I could stand there all day, telling my ears how beautiful I am, but I still gotta look in the mirror and say I think I’ve got an argument going here. So, but at any rate, that is so flimsy of a stuff because it didn’t amount to anything. So, one day you may have decided that yourself, that you’re good-looking. Well, does your opinion of your appearance ever change? Answer to that is yes, it does.

I tell you, I look at myself sometime today, not too often, I try to avoid that as much as possible, but the other day, I did a television deal and just tuned in. It was doing a pre-recorded program that was playing later in the week. It just basically tuned in, it just for backup, so much as I could stand, about five minutes. And I look at that and I say is that Bob George? Because you see, in my mind, I still perceive me as like in college or maybe a young businessman or something. I in my mind, I don’t think of myself as being 61 years of age. I don’t think of that and then I see myself in the television thing. I said, man, that guy looks older than my dad did and you’re looking at it. So I’m just almost shocked at what you see there. Well, if my self-image was predicated on looking like a teenager, I’d be a mess but it isn’t. I’m 61, praise God. And that’s what you look like when you’re 61. And so, you know, you just say, well, praise God. It’s all part of life, but my self-worth is not dependent on what I think about myself.

So we’re talking about the fact is, can you predicate your identity? In other words, who I am predicated upon what I look like. And if that’s the case, why you’re certainly basing that on some pretty shallow things. You will see that but I sometimes will think about movie actresses and models that have to make their living, by their beauty, or by their, how handsome they are. And I look at that type of thing and say what a scare.

Anything that would be knowing full well that just life itself, that age, that old thing called aging is going to set in. And one of these days what you are so proud of today is going to be gone, going to be something new. And, you know, on the other hand, I look back and I see pictures. And when I look at this, I see pictures of Amy and I, when we were young and newly married and everything and I look at Amy. And, of course, the picture, she’s a lot younger than she is today. But when I look at Amy again, just as I never think of myself as older. I never think of her as any older and even though today both of us have wrinkles where we didn’t used to have them and all those things. I don’t see those things. I see her as beautiful today as she was when she was a teenager and you’re just looking through eyes of familiarity and in so doing, I also get a glimpse at that sometimes and I just kind of look at her and I just see the beauty that I always saw, it’s never faded. And I think, you know, that’s the way God looks at us. He never sees us any other way, except the way that he made us, in His Son. And there’s no fading that there’s no aging, they are physically we are but with someone you love, you don’t see that. I see my daughter and my son today. They’re, you know, in their 30s and things and they’re older. They work with fewer kids, but to me, they’re just the same that back there. It’s just when I’m talking to Debbie. It’s just Little Debbie, you know, that she’s older. But the real her is just what she always was. And the real him is just what he always was. And you start getting a glimpse of maybe this is how God shows us what eternal life’s all about because it never changes, never changes. So I don’t want my appearance to be what and how I predicate my self-worth or my identity.

Now in Psalms 139 again we said, well I can either look at this from a man standpoint or let’s look at it from God’s. God said for you created. David said you created my innermost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb and I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made and your works are wonderful, and I know that full well, well you see he didn’t say my looks were wonderful. He said your works are wonderful. Think about humanity for a moment. Are we something else or not? Is the human being unbelievably made, or isn’t he fearfully and wonderfully made? It is the most unbelievable machine that you could ever imagined, to be able to have cameras in your head, to enable you to see anything sticking on the side of her head called ears, to enable us to hear. And a mouth that can speak. And when I watch her little grandkids learning how to talk and you’ve certainly seen that with yours as well. And you start seeing words being formed and they start understanding what that is. You start seeing understanding take place and you see there’s a kid learning the language. He’s learning how to communicate verbally. And to me, I look at that. It’s like a miracle.

I had the privilege of watching my newest boy, born and that was probably a little embarrassing to my daughter after it’s over. But the fact is that Amy and I were there to watch that and I had never seen a human birth before, and I’ll never be the same after seeing it and seeing that human little life coming out of a mother’s body. Breathing and able to see and hear and smell and taste, touch and move and cry and everything else. I say, how would you ever see a bigger miracle than that? And answer that as I don’t think you could. I don’t know where you could see a bigger miracle. I don’t know how a doctor even though this is true, a doctor or a nurse could ever observe something like that and not give their hearts to the Lord. But again, you’re just looking at it and not thinking about the war. Because it’s a miracle. You see an animal being born. It’s a miracle. It is another life being produced! And it just seems to me that anymore I see so much of that. I see animals and I see a little life there and you see a butterfly and you see a little life there and everything. It’s living, and moving, you can see God gave life to that. That thing He made it, He created it and enabled it to move on this Earth as a living being. So, it’s a phenomenal thing and a little bit off the subject, but it was a phenomenal thing.

So, again, are we going to judge our day, our self-image based upon our looks? I don’t think so. Well, what about our abilities? The world says well, okay, then base your self-image predicated upon your abilities. Well, is that how we’re going to have our identity by what we do? Have an identity on what I look like. I’m beautiful. I’m ugly or we can say I’m a businessman. I’m a housewife. Well, I’m a football player. I’m a pro athlete. I’m a minister. Well, if that’s who you are, in other words, if who you are as Mr. Beautiful or Mr. Ugly, or if who you are is predicated upon your abilities, what you do, I’m a businessman, I’m a housewife, I’m a football player or whatever else it might be. Then again, you have to ask yourself the question just like you do with aging or an accident destroying your looks. Who are you going to be if you can’t be this man anymore? If you’re a doctor and that is your identity, who are you going to be when you’re not practicing medicine anymore? If I’m a surgeon and you get your hands cut off, who would you be? You’d lose your identity. And there are many business people who as an example, who have gone up, climbed up the corporate ladder who have become executive vice presidents or whatever it might be. And that’s your identity. You know, I’m vice president of General Motors or whatever it might be. And all of a sudden, General Motors decides to retire them, or they reach retirement age. I believe if my statistics are correct that the majority of people die within two years after that retirement. Why? Why? I believe it’s because we don’t know who you are anymore. I used to know I was, man, I was Executive Vice President of General Motors, however today an ex. Man, I want to tell you people don’t care. They’re interested in who’s there now, not who you used to be. And so as I’ve said, you need to get your identity formed in being a child of God.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity, with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord, find more information online at shop.BobGeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs, and bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.