There’s genius in Jesus telling us to lose our life to find it.
I will profit a man and gain the whole world and lose it.
So if any man comes to me, let him deny himself.
No man’s forsaken houses and land, mothers and fathers, wives and children.
Go sell all, give to the poor.
There’s genius in this conversation because what he’s really getting us to do is to forsake these false identities that we’ve built based on our experience. So there are identities or measures or thought processes or responses or false instinct that we’ve built based on whether it be trauma, whether it be heartbreak, whether it be disappointment, whether it be confusion, deception, whatever the word is, whether it be something with our family, something with the relationship, something with our career, something with the way that we feel about ourselves, something with guilt or let down, whatever it is.
Each time there is a false thing that exists or that we experience, we build some kind of identity or mentality or character or characteristics towards it. We’ve done this since we’ve been younger. And then we pieced all these things together almost like a — this may be before y’all — but like a Voltron, like a Transformer, like the different pieces that come together, like all these different things that come together to make one piece, right? It’s like we pieced all these different protective measurements in our mind and our soul based off something that happened to us that may not have been the truth or may not have should have happened or just maybe something that we experienced that wasn’t necessarily — or not even necessarily, but wasn’t the truth.
And so then we built the characteristics off of it. The problem with this is that although honestly it seems like a good thing that we built to be a protective measurement against something that was negative to us or something that wasn’t supposed to happen or whatever, however you want to fill in the blank, it’s still a false identity built off of a false reality — which means that that thing that you have become accustomed to, maybe something that was repeated or whatever, right? But now we’ve become accustomed to that thing so much that we’ve latched on and then really believe that this identity was who we are, but it was built off of false reality.
It wasn’t built off of truth. It wasn’t built off of a true experience that we should have either had or gone through. It wasn’t built off of a true experience, right? I mean, this goes the same way on the other side of the ditch, with fantasy or overstimulated imagination. And they’ve done that to us a lot in the movies or with the music or with the music videos, or with romantic comedies or these movies, these horror movies or these things that we watch on TV or whatever it is. They overstimulate our imagination to another ditch.
So now you’ve got two different realities going on inside of you at the same time. And then Jesus knows that on all sides — left and right, good and evil — there’s a false identity, a false reality that you built for whatever reason, and then you stuck with, and because there may have been no truth present to expose the lie or expose the false identity, then you went on with it as if it was the real identity.
So there’s a lot of things that we got. A lot of mentalities, a lot of attitudes, a lot of hidden attitudes, a lot of hidden mentalities about things, about people, about situations, how we react to certain mentalities. There are certain things that we have hidden on the inside of us. The only person that really knows that is the Christ in us. That’s why they say the Holy Spirit will show you things that you do not know. It’s really talking about things you don’t know about yourself, right?
The Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. These conversations make you understand that Christ in you is searching you out, searching you out and figuring you out and excavating you from the inside. And so surrender is imperative and important because there are a lot of things that unless there is a surrender, you won’t let them go.
A lot of personalities, a lot of things that are almost like — I was about to call it clickbait — but it’s almost like a click. It’s like a knee-jerk reaction, right? As soon as something happens, you jump right into that mold, right? Or you become that person. Maybe you’re there all day long and you don’t even realize that it’s happening to you because you’ve been like this for so long and been doing it for so long.
But you should know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Free from what? All these false identities that you built within yourself. Now your mind is going to tell you while you’re listening to this that you don’t have any false identities. “That’s not about you. That’s for somebody else.” And that’s exactly you that I’m talking to.
The truth — or the truth or the conscience of Christ in you — makes you free. “You shall know the truth.” “I’m the way, the truth, and the light.” That’s what he says. “You should know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Free from who? Free from these false identities that have become a false imprisonment of you.
The worst kind of prison is an organic one or the one that looks like you because you don’t know it’s a prison. The worst kind of prison that there is is the one that holds you in, but it seems like it’s holding your hand. It’s holding you in, but it seems like it’s protecting you. Yeah, the gates of hell should not prevail, right? It seems like it’s a barrier around you to protect you from things on the outside, when in actuality it’s imprisoning you on the inside.
And so now the nature of Christ can’t be realized in you as you, by you. So surrender is imperative. Yielding is important. And the way that we yield is we say the same things that Jesus says: “I know where I come from. I know where I’m going. The one that sent me is with me.” At the top of my consciousness I know this.
I begin to repeat to myself the truth that I see in the red. And I say those things. “And the one that sent me is with me.” When I say these things, it begins to expose me. The enemy identities — oh, that’s good — the enemy identities. And begins to expose these false things that I created on the inside of me.
When Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan,” to Peter, that’s the conscience of God in you talking to you. Because Satan means evil influence — the lower influence. The lower influence in you has created these ideas and concepts and these mindsets, and then you begin to live by them, not even knowing that you live in the lower reality in Christ.
And that’s why it’s so refreshing when we read the red word. That’s why it’s so refreshing when the conversations come up. That’s why it’s so refreshing. It’s almost so liberating. It’s almost like, “wow,” right? Because we’re being exposed to the true nature of God on the inside of us.
And when we’re exposed to the true nature of God — the true nature on the inside of us — then it begins to expose the fake identities and the false lies that have been keeping us imprisoned and not allowing us to be free, to function, to flow, to flourish, to be fluent, even fluid, in whatever God is calling us to do. Out of our belly flows rivers of living water.
Once the freedom is, we free up the dam of insecurities. We free up the dam of false identity. We free up the dam of illegitimacy. We free up the dam of all those things. And we begin to flow in the true nature that originates the God-nature on the inside of us.
