God's Revelation - Our Core Beliefs

Yikes! It's been a while since I've had so many positive comments on what was preached on a Sunday. Maybe I'd been getting a bit stale! I'd have liked it to have been recorded, in retrospect, and I cannot reproduce what I said, for it was "off-the-cuff" stuff, but much was based on what I had experienced last week on retreat.

Basically it was centred around what God thinks of us, and what God says to all of us. Let's call them God's revelation, or our Core Beliefs!

• ·         I have been made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1)
• ·         I have sinned but have been redeemed (Gen 3 and 2Cor 5:17)
• ·         I am precious in God’s sight (Isaiah 43:4)
• ·         I have been made little less than a god and crowned with glory and beauty. (Psalm 8:6)
• ·         I am reborn of water and the Holy Spirit  (John 3:6)
• ·         My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1Cor 6:19)
• ·         I am God’s work of art (Ephesians 2:10)
• ·         I am part of the Body of Christ  (1Cor 12:27)

     This is what Scripture tells us, and to protest that we are "only human" does God a great disservice. It may even amount to heresy! Our humanity is precious and loved, a work of art, in the image of God indeed, and we have been made little less than a god and crowned with glory and beauty. How wonderful is that? 

      

      Yet, we are plagued by the Inner Critic. Our lives are full of dialogue, with all sorts of people who will use negative words to tell us how they perceive us, but the rest of the time we have an inner dialogue, and that is when the Inner Critic comes to life. It will tell us that bits of our body, or our whole body is ugly, or that we are useless, that we should have done better, that we are no good and bound to fail, that we are forever falling short. Ad infinitum it goes on and on, whispering lies to us, and the Core Beliefs are shoved to the side as we listen to the Inner Critic which magnifies all our shortcomings, especially if someone else has sown the seed in us! 

      In truth, we need to banish the Inner Critic and see ourselves as God sees us, worthy, loved precious, a work of art, etc etc, which are all part of God's revelation to us. The Inner Critic will destroy us if we let it. 

      We are children of God, and we need to drag that truth from the bottom of our souls and keep it at the top of our inner being, where it belongs, and refuse to let the Inner Critic bury it again!