Worthy

We are His portion and He is our prize...

Ever since I heard that line from the song "How He Loves," by David Crowder*Band, I've been running it through my mind. "We are His portion," what does that mean? Dictionary.com defines "portion" as "the part of the whole allotted to or belonging to a person." That sounds similar to the definition for sanctify. "Sanctify" means to "set apart for sacred use," (Standing Firm, Partow, 137). We are His portion...we are the part who God has set apart for His sacred use, His divine purposes. In Romans, Paul talks about who we are in relation to God: "Because those who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. and by him we cry, 'Abba, Father,'" (8:14-15). We cry out to our heavenly Father, because that is what He is, our Father. He adopted us through the most expensive adoption ever and claimed us as His own (see Luke 23). In Romans 8, Paul continues to describe what this adoption means for us: "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, the we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory," (16-17). Did you catch that? We are brothers and sisters, co-heirs and equals, with Christ. We are God's adopted kids and He loves us so much! If God is the King and we are His kids, then that makes us princes and princesses.

So why, then, do we not walk upright and proud, like we know who we are to our mighty King? I think it's because there is sin in the world and we allow lies from the devil to steal our true identity from us. In God's eyes, we are all like Superman, but I think we've believed the world's lie that we are only clumsy Clark Kent. We don't feel worthy enough to take on our true identity, so we have allowed ourselves to be conformed to the identity that the world says that we are. "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind," (Romans 12:2). That is not a request; it is a command. We must change what we believe and take on our true identities, the one that God gave us.

God designed and created us long before we were born. "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb," (Psalm 139:13). "Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered," (Matthew 10:30). "I have summoned you by name; you are mine," (Isaiah 43:1). Long before we were born, God knew how He wanted to design and create us. He birthed in us exactly what He would need to accomplish His will in this world. And through His adoption of us, we are co-heirs with Christ and "...we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord," (Romans 8:37-39).

We are God's kids. In our church, we say, "God loves you, but I'm His favorite." God sent His only Son to dies as a sacrifice so that He could adopt us, so we are His favorite. You don't need to feel unworthy any longer. God has made us worthy through the sacrifice of His Son, "it is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God-that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption," (1 Corinthians 1:30). Through Christ Jesus, we are the very definition of worthy. We are His righteous, worthy, portion.