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9. Sons, Not Slaves: Resting in Your Identity in Christ · Believe & Become | Ministry, Biblical Encouragement, God's Will, How to Change, Holy Spirit

• 0:00
  Speaker A: That was it. And I knew from that point forward I didn't have to continue to strive like that. I could just rest in my relationship with Him. And that doesn't mean that I don't, you know, fall back into performance or trying to do more. But I don't stay there very long because I know my relationship with him just as his son and we don't have to work for God. I love the verse that Karina shared with you, John 15:15 that it says we're friends and not servants because we can work with God. We don't have to, we don't work for him, we work with him, we work alongside of Him. He has invited us into that relationship where we're not, we're not servants, we're not slaves to him. And he invites us to co-labor with him. And that is beautiful. Welcome to Believe and Become Spirit Led breakthrough for transformation that lasts.
• 0:56
  Speaker B: We're Josh and Corina Greegor, authors, speakers and freedom coaches who help Christians like you break free from anxiety, burnout and spiritual frustration by renewing your mind and walking in truth.
• 1:08
  Speaker A: If you're hungry for real, lasting change and ready to grow in identity, peace and purpose, you're in the right place.
• 1:16
  Speaker B: Let's believe what God says and become who he created us to be.
• 1:20
  Speaker A: Welcome to the Believe and Become podcast. We're so glad that you're joining us today. Thanks again for listening. Thank you for following our podcast, leaving a review, a comment that helps us out so much and if you could share it with a friend that helps us even more. This message of hope that we have. We are excited to share with you today. We're talking about our journeys to understanding our identity in Christ better and we're excited to share some stories with you before we get started. I just want to share what I feel the Lord is saying over you today. I just want you to know that he sees you. He sees you as you're making breakfast, as you're packing lunches for the kids, as you're driving to work, writing emails, whatever it is that you're doing throughout your day. He sees you and he's proud of you. He says, that's my daughter scrambling eggs. I'm so proud of her. That's my son making coffee. I am so proud of him and it really doesn't matter what you do. He's proud of you. He sees you as you change that diaper. I'm so proud of you. Whatever it is you're doing throughout your life, your regular everyday life, God is proud of you, and he sees you, and even when you're doing something that doesn't feel significant, he's still proud of you. And it doesn't matter if you feel successful, if you feel like you're doing the right thing, if you're messing up and you know you're messing up, he is still proud of you because you are his child. You belong to him, and he loves you just because you belong to him.
• 3:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. That goes so well with what we're talking about today. I think so many of us so often know that we are God's children. Right? We especially if you grow up in church, you sing songs about being a child of God. We don't always know the implications. What does that really mean, to be God's child? To understand sonship from a biblical perspective, we often associate the idea of Father God with our earthly father. Maybe we associate the idea of being in a family with our earthly families. And unfortunately, none of us are perfect. And so we can get a skewed perspective of what that is supposed to look like. So some of the things that I hope we can communicate today through sharing our stories is that as a child of God, you are a son or a daughter. You are not a slave. John 15:15 says, no longer do I call you servants, but I call you friends. We are always going to be servants of God. That is a role that we play. But we are not to view ourselves like a slave. We are to view ourselves as sons in relationship, friends with Christ in relationship, as we obey him as we go throughout our days. We are sons, not slaves. And I love that picture because it can really quickly take you from that idea of I have to perform for his approval to I've already got it because I'm his kid. I think that's so beautiful. We are seated with Christ in heavenly places. Ephesians 2:6. We are seated with him. So as a child of God, I am already seated in heavenly places. I am already above all of the nonsense that is floating around, all the spiritual warfare. I'm already above that. I've already overcome that because I am in Christ. And as a child of God, you are deeply loved. You don't have to earn his love. Romans 5:8 says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So he loved us enough to die for us. Even before we had become part of the family, even before we had accepted our invitation to sonship. There's really nothing that we can do to earn that love. We just get to live in it. So there's. Those are just a few of the implications of being a child of God. But I truly believe that as you listen today, there is grace being imparted to you to fully accept your position as a son or a daughter and to begin to understand what that means and to begin to walk in that identity.
• 6:02
  Speaker A: So good. We just want to share some of our story with you about stepping into this identity that we have. For me, I spent a lot of my life just trying to be perfect, trying to earn God's love. I was a straight-A student in high school, except for that one pesky A minus that I got. And yes, and I mean, that's. That's just kind of a silly thing that I say, but that wasn't out of my relationship with God trying to be perfect. But that's, that's my mindset that I had. I was going to try to be perfect. I was going to try to do all the right things.
• 6:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:39
  Speaker A: As I became an adult, it, you know, I felt like I had to do all the right things. I had to follow all the rules in order for God to be pleased with me. And when I messed up, I felt like he was mad at me.
• 6:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:51
  Speaker A: And that is a very difficult way to live because we can't be perfect. And God doesn't expect us to be perfect. He created us. He knows everything about us and he knows when we're going to mess up. And you know what? He still loves us. We don't have to be perfect. We don't have to earn his love. He just pours it out on us because we belong to Him. We're his children and he delights in us. And as I was struggling with this, I had a time with the Lord where I heard him speak over me. Matthew 3:17, which says, this is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. And that's when Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River. This is what the Father says over His Son. And the beautiful part about that verse is that Jesus had not done anything. He hadn't started his public ministry yet. He was just a son, and God the Father poured out his love on him. And so that moment that I heard the Lord speak that over me was so powerful because. Because even in the midst of my brokenness, even in the midst of all the things I felt like I was messing up and I wasn't doing enough or I wasn't good enough, I knew in my heart, I knew he was pleased with me. Yeah, He Loved me. And that was just a pivotal moment in my life. I mean, I had experienced the father's love many times leading up to that. But that, that was. If I could point out one time in my life that really made a huge difference, that was it. And I knew from that point forward I didn't have to continue to strive like that. I could just rest in my relationship with Him. And that doesn't mean that I don't fall back into performance or trying to do more. But I don't stay there very long because I know my relationship with him just as his son. And we don't have to work for God. I love the verse that Karina shared with you, John 15:15 that says we're friends and not servants because we can work with God. We don't have to, we don't work for him, we work with him, we work alongside of Him. He has invited us into that relationship where we're not, we're not servants, we're not slaves to him. And he invites us to co labor with Him. And that is beautiful.
• 9:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:15
  Speaker A: You know, we were in ministry for a really long time and I felt like I didn't do that out of co laboring with God. I did a lot of that trying to serve him out of my own strength. And it was tiring, it was exhausting. And it wasn't until I started to understand this idea of I get to work with God and a funny illustration or cute, I guess. We have a little guy, he's six years old, but this was probably about a year ago. He likes to help take the garbage out. He's not big enough to move that garbage can by himself, but he goes, daddy, let's take the garbage out together. And I would just let him put his hand on the handle. You have the rolly cart, you know, garbage cans. And I would tip it back and he would put his hand on and he's like, we're taking the garbage out together. And I felt the Lord speak in that moment. I heard him say, this is you and me and we get to do this together. You don't have the strength to move the garbage can on your own. I do all the heavy lifting, but we're doing it together. And I just love doing that because we're together. It's the same with my son. I just enjoy. In fact, it's a little harder when he helps me put the garbage out because, you know, it's just kind of awkward to have two people moving it. But I just love doing that with him. Because he's my son. And just like I said at the top, I just hear the Lord saying that we get to do this together. You're my child. I'm excited to be with you. He just loves being with us as his children. We don't have to do anything. He just wants to be with us.
• 10:53
  Speaker B: Well, that flows so well into what I wanted to talk about, which is abiding, abiding in him. John 15 talks about the vine and the branches. It talks about abiding in him, abiding in his words. And I have found that I'm not very good at abiding. I'm much better at doing. And I was recently talking to my son about this idea of creating margin in your life. He's in high school and thinking about his future. And we were talking about how busy his schedule is this year. And I was telling him how important it is to make sure that you create some margin. And remembering a time in my life when I was in college and I had. Because I was a music major and several of my classes were only one unit. I had approximately 10 classes, and I was on, I think, five worship teams, because why not? And I busied myself into the ground. I kept getting sick that whole first semester until I started to take things off of my schedule. But really, when I look back on it, I was so overwhelmed with the activity and the responsibility that I didn't have time to abide. As I moved into my professional life and getting married, I paired things back. I would take things off my schedule or I would say no to things. But that propensity to just be busy was still with me. And so I would continue to fill my schedule, fill my time, and didn't really know how to just be with the Lord. And so when we came to Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, I had the opportunity given by the Lord to not do anything, to not be on any teams, to not have a bunch of extra activities or classes that I was involved in. I mean, being in school was enough. But I really felt as I came to school that my job was to rest and I had to simply be with the Lord. And that was hard for me. That was hard to get alone with him and learn how to process my emotions instead of avoiding them. I had to learn how to talk to him about the hard things instead of just casually mentioning it as I fall asleep at night and then hoping that he'll fix it. There was some intimacy that that had been missing. And as I mothered our kids early on and I just Had a lot of responsibilities with being a mom of littles. I had to learn to cultivate intimacy into my day. And so just like you were talking about every activity that I did, whether it was changing diapers or washing dish or preparing meals, I was doing it with the Lord. And so we were having conversation throughout the day. But I hadn't really learned the art of sitting with him in quiet and letting him minister to my heart and dealing with all of the things that he wanted to deal with in me. And so as I didn't have any choice but to do that throughout school, I began to see more clearly who I was made to be. And it's funny because when you have the servant slave mentality, you're, you're, you think that when you get alone with him, he's going to tell you all the things you're doing wrong, but instead he pours his love on you. And I spent many mornings, especially during our first year in ministry school, just sitting on the porch with him and my coffee, just letting him love on me and speak over me, what I meant to him and how special I was. And that was hard. And it seems like that would be something where you're like, oh, that's amazing. And it was amazing, but it was equally difficult to just receive love for no reason. But when we think of, When I think about our kids, especially the little ones, right, they expect to receive love for no reason except that they're your kids. I've made the habit recently of one of our children in particular, seems to have a little more trouble receiving love. And so I have made a point of randomly just grabbing him, hugging him, and kissing him on the cheek like 10 times in a row and just saying, I love you. He, he doesn't resist, which I think is really interesting, because if we just say I love you, he rarely will say it back. But when I grab him and kiss him the last couple of times I've noticed, he. He starts to smile before I even start kissing him. It's the sweetest thing. And I think that we, we've all got that innate desire to just be loved for no reason. For some reason, it's really hard to receive that. But when we are able to abide in the secret place with him, and when we allow him to lavish his love on us, then our identity can begin to flow from that place. So now my, my activity isn't for affection, but it's from affection. I'm not performing for him anymore. Like you said, I'm going to work with Him. I'm doing the things that I see him doing because I'm just following him around because he just loves me so well. And so that's a bit of my journey into identity. I don't, I wouldn't say that I have been at a loss for who I am or what I was created to do, but really more of that, what does it really mean to be his daughter? To just be 100% love, to just know that I know that he loves me because he loves me, because he loves me for no reason at all. And so for me, that has really been transformational.
• 17:21
  Speaker A: Not so good. Well, if you guys can't tell, this is very important to us and it's been a journey we've been on through our whole lives. I think it's so important as believers that we understand who we are in Christ. That's the most important thing. I think that's one of the main reasons we're put on earth is God wants to have that relationship with us. He wants to show us just how much we mean to Him. So. But it's, it's one thing to know it like I knew all the scriptures, I knew in my mind that I was his child, but to experience it in your heart, it's a totally different thing. And it's transformative and it's a journey. I don't think we're ever done knowing what we mean to Him. We're never done knowing our identity in Christ, knowing what he's deposited in us, what he did for us on the cross. We continue to learn every single day of our lives more about what Jesus did on the cross for us and how much that means and how much that opens up to us. The access that we have. Yeah, to the Father is incredible. It's incredible.
• 18:26
  Speaker B: That's so good.
• 18:27
  Speaker A: And I just, I just feel the Lord right now breaking off this idea that we have to do something for Him. God doesn't need us to do anything for Him. He is self sufficient, but he invites us into partnership with Him. He invites us into friendship and he has adopted us as sons and daughters. I love adoption because it's a choice and it's intentional. He has chosen us and we are born reborn into his family. And that's so powerful and it means so much. So I just feel the Lord breaking off that idea of having to do something for him. And he is releasing his own grace, his own supernatural power for you to rest in his presence and just be, just be you. And he says, I'm proud of you. And one thing I've been doing lately is I've been going for walks in the morning with the Lord and just talking to him. And I'd invite him, Jesus, come on a walk with me. The other thing I've been doing on those walks, normally I would pray a lot. And I realized sometimes we talk a lot in our relationship with God. We do all the talking. And he wants to talk, too. He wants to talk to you. And so I've just been going, God, what do you want to talk about today? And the subject has not changed much. It's always, I'm so proud of you. I just love you so much. Yeah, God doesn't want to change the subject. He wants to pour out his love on you today. He is proud of you. So right now I just see the Lord giving you grace to go on walks with them and ask him what he wants to talk about. And actually, he's pretty good at leading the conversation. And just follow. Follow him where he goes. Follow him where he leads you in the conversation and allow him to speak and just say, God, I'm listening. What do you want to talk about? And we talked in a previous episode about hearing his voice. If you feel like you struggle with that, go check that out. But you're. You're his sheep. His sheep know his voice. You were created to hear his voice. And he's always speaking. There's a couple things that I learned in ministry school, and that's one of them. He is always speaking. It's just a matter of making sure we're tuned into Him. And the other is that we're always connected to him. You are always connected to him because you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. And when we know those truths that he's always speaking and we're always connected to him, that is the foundation for the type of intimacy that God wants to have with each one of us.
• 21:12
  Speaker B: So because of this breakthrough that we've had, the ways that we've seen God work in our lives, we really believe the Lord has called us to walk others through this same transformation, to help other people discover their identity in Christ, to overcome the lies and the limiting beliefs that are holding them back. And maybe that's you. Maybe you listen to this episode and you're like, wow, I struggle with that, too. I don't fully know who I'm supposed to be, what I was made to do. Or maybe you don't fully believe that God loves you that way, that that love just feels too good. And so we created a coaching program. It's transformational beliefs program where we spend 10 weeks together walking you through this mind renewal process and helping you to discover your identity in Christ one who he's called you to be, but really and more importantly how much he loves you and what he thinks about you and learning to find that truth and replace the lies that you're believing with the truth that he has to speak over.
• 22:22
  Speaker A: So you can find more information about our coaching program at josh and karina.com coaching that's C O R I N A the links are all in the show notes if you're interested in that. We also have some free resources available on our website so you can read more of our stories in our books that we have available. So go check that out. As always, thank you so much for spending this time with us. We hope that it's blessed you. In fact, I just pray a blessing over you Father. I thank you for the person that's listening to this. We just release a revelation of the deep, deep love that you have for this person. Lord, I pray that even today they would encounter you in the everyday, in the mundane parts of life, that you would show up unexpectedly and just say how much that you love them, that they would feel your pleasure as they wash the dishes, as they drive home from work, whatever they're doing. God you delight in them and we just thank you God that you chose each and every one of us. Thank you that you delight in us and we just thank you God in Jesus name. Amen. So as always, follow leave a comment. And if you want to share this episode with a friend that needs to hear it, we would really appreciate that. Thanks for tuning in.
• 23:47
  Speaker B: Bye.