What Does It Look Like to Seek Wholeness in Christ?
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When I say the word whole what comes to mind? When I first got married to my husband, he told me that I Googled everything. I love learning and the easy access, so I googled whole to see what images came up: Whole Foods, slices making a whole pizza, puzzle pieces making a whole puzzle, and a whole apple.
2. Put Off the Flesh
Before Christ, our whole self was ruled by the flesh. We were fully in darkness. But the light of Jesus came to earth and in a moment of saying, “Jesus is Lord and God raised Him from the dead for my sins,” we are complete in Christ and forgiven. This is a one-time decision, however believing this is a daily choice only through God’s help that we can put off our old sinful ways.
3. Remembering That We Were Made Alive
When I married my husband, I took on his last name and my identity became his wife. When we accept Jesus as Savior, we join in with the church in becoming the bride of Christ. We take on the name child of God and are secured in Him. So this means that regardless of how I live as a wife, if I ignore my husband or neglect to wear my wedding band, my true identity as his wife never changes.
When we go to the empty places to worldly things, we might have genuine experiences with sin and even physical and emotional responses, however this does not change our identity of who we are in Christ. We are called to return to Him and put off our old selves.
We are complete in Christ, but we are also going through sanctification.
Trials, testing, and perseverance makes us complete – they make us whole in Christ.
Sexual purity and wholeness is not easy. However, God only ever gives a command in the Bible if it is for our benefit and His glory. So yes, our spirits are complete in Jesus, but we are in a sinful world battling against the flesh, our minds, our hearts, and our bodies. In this testing, we are being sanctified. We are being made whole.
Marshall Segal from Desiring God says, “So, to be ‘complete’ in Christ is to be ‘pure and blameless’ before him. How does that happen? Here, it happens as we increasingly 'approve what is excellent’ (Philippians 1:10). That means being purified and prepared to meet God involves more and more accurately discerning right from wrong, good from evil, praiseworthy from profane. Godliness is wrapped up in whether our minds and hearts respond rightly to God and rightly to everything else around us. That’s a huge part of the work God does to change and complete us for heaven, and then the new earth.”
What is beautiful too is that God does not waste this process. The Lord can even use our broken mistakes and choices of sinful pleasure for His glory when we surrender them to Him. Our weaknesses and our past struggles can be used as a testimony to others of the powerful work of Christ in our lives.
We have hope that our joy can be complete in Christ. Although we are broken, we are eternally whole in Jesus. Don’t give up on living in His wholeness now. We are all a work in progress and being sanctified, and one day we will experience what it is like to be fully whole with Him.
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Glorify God with What He Has Placed in Your Hand
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