Living Hope

Pastor Philip Miller: Jesus went to the cross and he took all of our broken identity upon himself, didn't he? All of our sin, all of our shame, all of our broken orphan-hearted living, and he died on the cross in our place for our sake and in exchange gives us his identity.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Welcome to Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. I’m Pastor Larry McCarthy and we’re so glad you’ve joined us for this series on identity traps. Now, Pastor Philip, this is what we were made for, right?

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah, well, we can’t escape searching for identity. We’re created to find identity somewhere and, of course, we were meant to find our identity in God alone and to know who we are in relationship with him.

But in this series, we’re really diagnosing the ways that our hearts, our orphan-hearted living, has actually distorted our own sense of identity. It’s destroying us because we’re looking to all the wrong things instead of God to know who we are. And so here comes the gospel into our lives and it gives us a whole fresh new way to understand who we are—that Jesus is enough, that we are in him, and he gives us the identity that we truly need. And that’s what we’re made for. That’s what gives us real life and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: All right, I hope you’re ready, beloved. Now, stay tuned after the message because Pastor Philip and I will discuss how a child of God interacts with people and power and possessions in a totally new way. But now, let’s go to the pulpit of the Moody Church for part three of the sermon, Mapping Our Hearts.

Pastor Philip Miller: If you look at this, there's actually nine permutations of orphan-hearted identity, nine identity traps that we can fall into because we can pursue significance, security, and satisfaction through each of these three strategies of people, power, and possessions. There's nine permutations, nine different traps here.

And this is really important because three different people might each be building their identity around possessions but be doing it for very different deep needs. So, in other words, you can go out and buy a new car and one person is buying it for significance as a status symbol. Another person is buying it for security so they feel safe on the road. Another person is buying it for satisfaction—I worked hard, I deserve this. The same outward action, but it is manifesting differently in the interior of their identity, of their heart.

And so, friends, these are our default settings apart from grace, apart from God. Orphan-hearted living, looking to people, power, and possessions to meet our deep identity needs for significance, security, and satisfaction. But then comes the gospel. Then comes the power of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. In God's mercy and grace, he sent us Jesus.

Think about it. Jesus went to the cross and he took all of our broken identity upon himself, didn't he? All of our sin, all of our shame, all of our broken orphan-hearted living, and he died on the cross in our place for our sake and in exchange gives us his identity. A righteousness, he clothes us with himself in order that we might be accepted and loved and approved in him. He fills us with his Holy Spirit.

Listen to what Paul writes in Romans chapter eight, verses 14 to 17: "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!' The Spirit himself is bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if we are children, then we're heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with him in order that we might be glorified with him."

And so, friends, by grace through faith in Christ, not only are our sins forgiven and not only are we justified freely by his grace, but we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God in Jesus. Talk about significance: you're a child of the King! Talk about security: you are safe in his love now and forever! Talk about satisfaction: we wake up every day in the smile of our Father, whose delight rests well-pleased upon us for Jesus' sake!

Remember what the prodigal son was given by the father when he came home? He got a robe—significance, clothed in the garb of his father. He got a ring—security; that was their credit card, he could go buy anything he wanted. Fatted calf—satisfaction; the party, the food, the rejoicing. Friends, do you realize what this means? It means by the mercy of the Father, in the grace of Jesus Christ and the power of his Spirit, we no longer have to live as orphans. We can live as children of God!

Which means now I can live from the deep resources of my good Father as a beloved child. That he gives me significance—he honors me. He gives me security in his love. He gives me satisfaction in his pleasure and joy over my life. And having received deep nourishment from my Father for my deep identity needs, I can now move out into the world in strength and overflow.

I can go love people, not expecting them to secure my identity, which means I can even forgive them when they let me down. I can move out and use power now, not to secure myself, but to serve others in love. I can move out into the world and have possessions that don't possess me, and I can hold them open-handedly and give them with generosity to others because of this childlike identity in Christ. It is an ever-expansive, brimming, self-giving, full of love and generosity way of living.

But this way of living out our new identity as a child of God, it doesn't happen like that. It's not an automatic thing. Friends, we have deep muscle memory, ingrained habits. We have so much to relearn about how to live and how to build an identity in a world like this. We have lived so long as orphans. We forget how to live like ourselves, our new selves, our God-given identity as children of God.

And in many ways, friends, that's what sanctification is all about. We're simply learning to live not as the orphans we once were but as the children we now are. Every day we have this choice before us: who am I? Am I an orphan that has to fend for himself using people and power and possessions to meet my deep identity needs, or am I a child of God who by grace through faith is resting in and metabolizing the deep significance, the utter security, the profound satisfaction that are mine in Jesus Christ so that, having been filled up, I can go pour myself out for the sake of others?

Am I an orphan or a child? That's the question. Orphan or child. As an orphan, I have to go get and achieve my identity. I got to wake up every day and go after it. And so I live in desperation and striving and fear and I feel utterly alone. Or as a child, I can simply receive by grace an identity that has already been secured for me, that has already been won in Jesus Christ, and I get to have it as a gift.

Friends, this is amazing! All my life, the very thing I felt I had to go out and win in order to get has been offered freely as a gift. And all I have to do is swallow my pride and reach out and take it. It's really that simple. We get close to our Father so we remember who he is, which helps us remember who we are, so that we can remember to act like ourselves. We get close to our Father so we remember who he is, so we remember who we are, so we can remember to act like ourselves. Am I a child or an orphan?

So that's the framework: an orphan or a child, the choice we all face. Now, the next nine messages, we're going to go through characters of the Bible who build their identities in these patterns. We're going to look at Joseph and Jacob and Zacchaeus and Esther and Gideon and Naaman and the Samaritan woman at the well. We're going to look at Naomi and Solomon, how each of them tried to build an identity to get those core things, their core needs met through these strategies, and how it didn't work and how God loved them enough to show them another way—that he has an identity they could never get on their own, one that is far better, that will free them.

And so here's my prayer as we look at each of these individuals: I think you're going to find these are people a lot like you. And I pray that as you walk with each of these individuals, you will find one or two of these that you just resonate with and you connect with and you go, "You know, the way their soul is shaped is very much the way mine is. I've learned an orphan-hearted identity strategy that is very much like Naomi." And the way that God loves her will be profoundly helpful as you metabolize the resources of the gospel and learn to live as a child of God. Does that make sense? That's where we're going the next nine weeks. I leave you with this question and then we close: who are you? Who are you?

Pastor Larry McCarthy: This is Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. I’m Pastor Larry McCarthy and beloved, before we start our discussion today, we just want to take a moment to thank you for the generous listeners who make this program possible. Now, if you’d like to partner with us, we have a resource we’d love to send you. It’s our way really of just saying thank you for your gift. Go to livinghopeoffer.com or call us at 1-800-215-5001. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today as we explore the life we really were meant to live. Now, Pastor Philip, you’re showing us that we default often to what you call this orphan-hearted living. But even after adoption, our muscle memory makes us reach for that old orphan strategy again. Now, if someone has spent decades fending for themselves, cast a different picture for us now. What does it look like to actually start living like a child of God?

Pastor Philip Miller: So, you know, the Apostle Paul talks about this. He talks about our flesh. In other words, we have this muscle memory of what it means to live apart from God. It’s in our bodies itself. It’s our instinct to just default to this orphan-hearted living. We’ve spent so much of our lives coping by ourselves in the universe as if we’re on our own and we have to build everything on ourselves. So we just have this default setting. It’s so deep in our coping strategies and how we just live that when the gospel comes into our lives and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit’s there and salvation is ours and there’s a whole new potential way to live available to us, we’re still stuck in this default setting that it’s just become habit.

And so we have to unlearn how we grew up and how we went through life as orphans. We have to relearn what it means to live now as children of God who have been adopted to the Father, who are loved in Jesus Christ, who are filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is constantly bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. He’s crying out, "Abba, Father" to remind us who we are. And yet so often we just have this habit of living like orphans that have to fend for themselves. And so I think what’s really helpful to me, at least, is once I recognize my own orphan-hearted tendency—which in my case is to live for significance. I want to know that I matter and I tend to pursue that through people. So I want their affirmation and their applause and their approval. I want their validation. So that’s my orphan-hearted default setting is I tend to look to the people around me to validate and give me the significance I think I need and then I build my life in pursuit of that. That’s my flesh wants to do that.

But then the Spirit is bearing witness that I am a child of God and that means that God’s "well done, good and faithful servant," that the approval that is mine in Jesus Christ is already there if I will listen. And so part of what I need to now do is say, okay, the gospel—I need to preach the gospel to myself. I need to remind myself of the truth of the gospel—that in Jesus Christ I don’t have to prove myself, I don’t have to create myself, I don’t have to be a certain person. I’ve actually already been adopted as a child of God. I’ve been crowned with glory. I am a son of the King of the universe. I’m a priest and a prince in the kingdom of God and that means there’s a significance I have in the smile of my Father on my life that can never be taken away. All the frowns of the people of earth will never erase the smile of God on my life. And if I have his approval and if I have his endorsement, his love on my life, I have a significance that nobody can touch.

And so I think that’s an example of how we can start to metabolize the resources of the gospel so that we start to actually believe what the gospel says is true and that is that we are indeed children of God and we gotta learn to walk as beloved children, imitating God our Father, following in the image of Christ and the character he’s forming as the Spirit leads us so that we increasingly live as the children of God that God has declared us to be. That’s our deepest, truest, greatest identity and that can never be taken away. And so there’s so many resources in the gospel—resources for significance like we just talked about, resources for security because we’re safe in his love. He’ll never leave us or forsake us. He’ll walk with us through everything, even in the valley of the shadow of death we can fear no evil because he is with us.

To know that he is our joy and our salvation, there’s satisfaction in his presence, that he is the one who brings fulfillment and joy in our lives. We don’t have to scrap around like orphans trying to find all the happiness we’re ever going to get from life. It’ll never work. But he is our joy and he is our life. And if we learn to pivot our hearts and those deep soul appetites for identity and aim them at God and the gospel and all the resources we have in him, I think as we drink from that, it starts to change the way we live and we learn to live not as orphans but as children of God.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Amen, brother. I didn’t want to distract you, but right in the middle of that I just wanted to say preach it and amen. But our listeners have to be saying, "Come on, Pastor Philip, all of us have experienced a moment when somebody we were counting on—whether it was a relationship or it was a job or even our own health—suddenly it fails to come through." So how does living as a child of God, as you’ve just explained to us, change the way we absorb that kind of loss?

Pastor Philip Miller: Well, if you’re looking for significance, security, and satisfaction in people, power, or possessions, whenever you lose those people, that power, or those possessions, you have an identity crisis because you don’t know who you are anymore. So the more we look to things in creation rather than our creator for identity, the more vulnerable our identity will be. So when we lose anything in life, it becomes an identity crisis.

But if our identity is rooted in the gospel and who God is for us and then who we are as children of God, then all those things can come and go and when they do, they still hurt but they don’t give us an identity crisis because our identity is rooted somewhere higher than our circumstances and all of those things. So there’s a resilience that comes with living as a child of God that’s actually quite beautiful.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: I’m so glad you said that and made that distinction. Yes, it hurts, and yes, it’s painful and it’s uncomfortable, but it doesn’t impact who God is and who we are with God. That’s such an important distinction. Pastor Philip, you described how once we abandon that orphan-hearted mentality, it really changes our relationship with all of those things.

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah, it really it changes everything. So by default in orphan-hearted living, we go to people, power, and possessions with a deep neediness. Those things need to serve us. They need to provide for our needs. So we go out needy with this big sucking sound and we go to all the people around us and we’re like, "Love me, validate me, be all that I need." We go to our power and it has to serve us and our interests and our possessions are about us and what they can provide for us.

But all of a sudden, if we’re a child of God and those deep needs for significance, security, and satisfaction are being nurtured from our relationship with God, from all the resources that are in him, it actually sends us back into those relationships that we have, but it changes it. Instead of being empty, we go out full. And so instead of needing people to validate us, now we can interact with the people around us and pour ourselves out in love and service for them. It’s a totally different relationship. Same thing with power. Instead of power being about us and meeting our needs, now we can use power for the good of others and use it to serve and bless others. Same thing with possessions. Instead of possessions being constantly validating and providing for our needs and propping up our happiness, now I can actually own things without it owning me and I can go out as a good steward in the world and actually bless people with my stuff. I don’t have to hold on to it so tightly. So all of a sudden, this fundamental change from an orphan to a child of God starts echoing out in all the aspects of my life. It changes everything if I’ll let it.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: I’m excited about this series and I hope you are too and that you’ll be joining us. Now, because the journey from orphan-hearted living to resting as a beloved child of God, it’s the journey every one of us is on. We all carry those orphan-hearted tendencies in us and we all long to be truly changed from the inside out. And it’s a journey shaped by the truths we build our lives upon. That’s why our brand new book, Marx and Moody, is so timely. Pastor Erwin Lutzer and Dr. Greg Quiggle set two lives side by side: Karl Marx and D.L. Moody. As a child, Marx’s own parents were deeply concerned about the demon within him. Karl Marx and Dwight Moody were children with a future no one could foresee. One man sought to be free from all authority, even God himself. The other centered his life on God and left a legacy of the gospel that still bears fruit generations later.

Discover two men, two worldviews, two very different legacies still very much alive today. This brand new book will help you clearly see what our lives should be built upon in turbulent times like ours—the joy and freedom of the good news of Jesus Christ. Now, to request your copy of Marx and Moody, simply go to livinghopeoffer.com or call us at 1-800-215-5001. That’s livinghopeoffer.com, 1-800-215-5001. You can always write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. As we begin to live as children of God, our stories start to change and next time, we’ll explore one man’s difficult life and his deepest dreams. Thanks for joining us for Living Hope, where you’ll always find gospel truth for the journey of a lifetime. Living Hope is a production of Moody Church Media and is sponsored by the Moody Church.