Daily Devotion
With Pastor Ancel Presnell
“I KNOW WHO I AM”
One of the most important things that we can ever learn in our Christian Walk is learning who we are. When I was a child, some of the most memorable moments that I recall are playing make believe. I make believed that I was so many things in my childhood. I was a police officer, soldier, airplane pilot, and I was a professional basketball player; In my mind that is. It is obvious that all those personas were make believe because I ended up driving a truck for a living for several years and the past 13 years up until now, I have been a full-time pastor.
Imagine if I were still pretending to be all those things and expected to provide for my family based upon those make-believe personas. It would not work out very well. You see, we can pretend to be something that we are not and the truth of who we are will always reveal itself. This is true in our spiritual walk with Jesus too. We are not anything special and we certainly do not have the power to meet God’s standards. We can believe that we can all that we want, but at the end of the day, that belief is nothing more than make-believe.
If we believe that we are good enough for God and that we deserve His grace and mercy, we are living a spiritual life of make-believe. If we believe that our salvation is contingent upon our ability to “live right”, we are living a spiritual life of make-believe. We cannot trust our heart with spiritual things, our heart will lead us astray. Jeremiah 17:9—”9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Apostle Paul made a declaration concerning himself. This declaration is true for all of us. Romans 7:14 “but I am carnal, sold under sin.” What does it mean to be sold under sin? We cannot eradicate the presence of sin nor our tendency to sin in this carnal flesh that we live in. We are guilty of sinning, and we continue to sin because we are still in the flesh and its nature.
We can play make-believe about who we are spiritually, and that will not help us at all. We can play off as if we are sinless, pretty good people, or that our continued salvation is because of how good we are. None of this is reality! We are all sinners, sold under sin, and we desperately need a Savior! May we never kid ourselves by playing make-believe with who we are when lined up beside the Law of God. Make-believe will not help us at all. We must know who we are and what we need! We need Christ the Savior!
