The Idol of Identity
By Mike Rule

I have noticed that many times we have a preoccupation with our identity. We all want to find something of value in ourselves. We all want to believe we are becoming something. This is normal. It is true that when we have accepted Christ, we have become something we had never been. He really does exchange our life for His. We understand that there is nothing of value in our flesh, but sometimes we take great pride in all that we have become in Christ.

God did not graft us into Christ so that we could glory in our identity in Christ. He grafted us to give us the life-sustaining presence of Christ. The life of the vine is to pass through the branch; as a result, the branch bears fruit. The difference between the knowledge of abiding in Christ and the experience of abiding in Christ is this; a person with knowledge glories in all that they have become because of Christ while a person that has the true experience of abiding is totally focused on Christ and oblivious to all else. The experiential abiding person is obsessed with Him. Thoughts of "self" matter less and less. It is not what we have become, but who He is that matters most.

It is so easy to become distracted from Christ by our experiences. Like the disciples on the mountain when Moses and Elijah came down to minister to Jesus, we want to build a temple and worship what we have experienced. But as God removed Moses and Elijah from the mountain, so He will remove anything that distracts us from Jesus. When all else is gone, Jesus remains. This is the true experience of abiding.