Embracing Your Identity in Christ:: Renouncing Lies and Foolish Strategies

By Robert Davis Smart

Although there is nothing sweeter than the Gospel, there is much more sweetness to be enjoyed. Few Christians seem to experience the transformation they hoped for, and often burn out too early. This is because we cannot escape the interpretation war each day over our identity. What if we are ruled by a lie more than the truth about who we are? What if condemnation has been their primary motivation, and has functioned for us more than grace, for too many years?

What if, on the front end, we already have what we try so hard to obtain? Dr. Bob Smart walks us through the practical steps to embrace our true identity in Christ by helping us embrace our glory, gender, story, acceptance, sonship, and more by renouncing lies, condemning thoughts, and foolish strategies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512778885

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Copyright © 2017 Robert Davis Smart.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV). Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-7889-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-7890-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-7888-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017903846

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/14/2017

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction The First of Four Seasons of Gospel Transformation

Chapter 1 The Genesis of Your Identity

Chapter 2 Gender Redeemed

Chapter 3 The Interpretation War

Chapter 4 Acceptance

Chapter 5 No Longer Fatherless

Chapter 6 Set Apart as Special to God

Chapter 7 Adorable in God’s Sight

Conclusion Giving Testimony

Bibliography

Appendix 1 Cherishing Lies about Our Identities as Ministry Leaders

Appendix 2 Self-Hatred

Appendix 3 Justification

Acknowledgments

My deep thanks to Christ Church staff and members, Cru, InterVarsity, and Navigator campus staff, and those involved in the last twenty years of spiritual formation classes locally for sharing your precious sense of identity in Christ from the heart. I am also grateful to Campus Outreach staff and leaders in Alabama, Louisiana, Illinois, and Texas for using this material for years at various summer projects. I am indebted to Rev. Rusty Milton of Grace Presbyterian and Grace Theological College in New Zealand for using this material in local ministry settings, and offering good feedback.

I am particularly glad to have discussed in depth aspects of the demonic with the late Rev. Brad Bush of the Lafayette, IN Christian Missionary Alliance. Finally, this and many projects could not be possible without the constant encouragement from Gary and Farole Haluska.

Foreword

Once, a night-storm caught several followers of Jesus unawares on a boat. To make matters worse, they saw in their struggle, a specter seeking their doom upon the waters. It is a ghost! they cried, vulnerable to the spook and the waves.

But just then, familiar voice, pierced through what troubled them. It is I don’t be afraid, said the voice. To their surprise, what they thought was a ghost to haunt them, turned out to be Jesus earnest to save them.

Sometimes things frighten us and rightly so. A ghost is a ghost. But sometimes what frightens us isn’t what we think it is. Sometimes what looks bad to us is actually good, coming to save us.

When I first met Bob Smart, I wanted little to do with him. I was a college student. He was a Campus Minister. I wore accomplishments and carried potential. He wore a big smile and carried a large black Bible. I tried to cover my broken soul with religion. He sought to uncover his broken soul and point both of us to Jesus.

Though I wanted authenticity I had not encountered his kind before. I was cynical and frightened by it. Bob was like a ghost to me. But through Bob’s life, I came to see that it was actually Jesus arriving for the both of us, all along. Bob knew that. He wanted me to know it too.

In those early days, I heard Bob and his wife Karen laugh and play. I saw them cry and pray. I saw them argue with one another and forgive each other. Their living room was open to me. Within its simple colonial style decoration, I learned to make Spaghetti, hold a baby, play games as a family and seek Jesus from the heart in ordinary places among ordinary people.

In the days since, I’ve met the son-in-laws and daughters-in-law he prayed for in an empty church near Wayne Street, when his kids were just toddlers or not yet born. And I’ve heard the content of this book spoken to me along my various and tumultuous threats to my identity in Jesus from Indiana to Ohio to Missouri.

No man is a perfect one. Like you and me, Bob is no exception. He too is a glorious ruin who with us, looks to Jesus. But I don’t know where I’d be without Bob Smart seeking to find the kind of language you are about to read, and using it to speak tenderly of Jesus throughout my life. I don’t know where I’d be without Bob seeking imperfectly but earnestly to live such things himself and welcoming me tangibly into his and Karen’s lives. They helped me hear and see what the lover of our souls sounds like and talks like.

Mine has been a life dismantled by divorces. As a child of my parents and as an Adult myself. Identity gets lost amid these and the many other kinds of traumas inflicted upon us and too, if we live long enough, the many that we inflict upon others. Imposter identities offer themselves to us amid such wanderings. We often choose their thievery. We lose our way. We lose sight of God and of ourselves as God created and knows us to be. It is the grace of God that he sends us companions for these paths; spiritual friends who help us grow attentive to Jesus and receive His recovering of us.

Jesus has given Bob grace and gifting to help us hear the voice of the One who comes upon the waters. The one who sounds at first like a ghost in the night storms, but who is in truth, the Lord Himself, declaring peace, amid his strong rescue. From there in the night storms, He brings us safely home. And we who love Him tell the story of our identity. We are those for whom the steadfast love of the Lord, never quits.

Zack Eswine

Pastor of Riverside Church, Webster Groves, Missouri

Director of Homiletics, Covenant Theological Seminary

January 23, 2017

Introduction

The First of Four Seasons of Gospel Transformation

Identity in Christ

Our identities, besides being one of the most precious things to protect from theft, crisis, or loss, are extremely important to God. The Father has given each of His children a personal identity in Christ that will shape them on their journey to heaven. If, in the process of identity formation, we ignore what God says concerning our identities, then we may expect confusion in the other three seasons of spiritual formation, from adolescence to old age (see chart below for Calling to Christ, Intentionality for Christ, and Legacy from Christ).

FourSeasonsChartprint.jpg

Just after birth or adoption, a child is