This is an I-Heart podcast.

Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.

I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast.

I wanted to thank you for joining us today.

Hope this inspires you.

Hope it builds your faith.

Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message.

Until my identity in Christ starts affecting how I interpret my life, I really still don't get it yet.

And if I see myself just as somebody that God loves because, well, Jesus died on the cross

and there's a group insurance plan, and I got in on it

because I accepted Jesus, and now God kind of has to include me with all of my preexisting

conditions. Then I have missed the point of what it means to say that I am a masterpiece made

by God. I am, and the Greek it literally says a poema, like a poem, like God's poem.

And the idea that Christ is in me means more than just, he died for me 2,000 years ago.

That is huge.

I'm not downplaying that at all.

I'm just saying that the fact of Christ being in you has to do more with your everyday life than you might think.

Because as long as we look at God as being out there somewhere, you know, I'm throwing up a prayer to the big man upstairs or, man, I'm looking for God to kind of come down and fix this

situation and don't shift it to the internal, then we're basically living our life with no agency,

right? We're living our life, if I understand my basic psychological terms correctly,

we're living our lives at the mercy of our impulses, stimulus, response, and no Christ in the

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