Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to another morning with masters for redeveloped

ourselves in the Lord daily with you. Good morning, you guys. Good morning, indeed. We

are picking up with day three of our living change in the New Year devotional in the Bible

app. There's a link to that in the description of the podcast and the description of YouTube

if you're watching on YouTube. And as always, I'm going to read the scripture and towards

going to pick up with the divo. Let's do it. The scripture is 2nd Corinthians chapter 5

verses 17 and 18 and it says this, this means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new

person. The old life is gone. A new life has begun. And all of this is a gift from God who brought

us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.

The devotional is titled new year new labels. And it says this, every year we're inundated with

the latest get fit quick fads and tips to become a new you in the new year. It can be exhausting

trying to reinvent ourselves every January to keep up with who the world thinks we should be.

Our striving and struggling rarely results in acceptance or fulfillment. Instead, people

assign new labels to us that only make us question our identity more. No one likes to be labeled.

That's because labels are often over generalized, restrictive and inaccurate. They come with a set

of assumptions which can be very negative and they frequently highlight our worst qualities or

biggest mistakes. Labels don't leave room for differences, growth or redemption. We all wear labels,

whether we buy into the labels that others have put on us or we put them on ourselves. All too

often we allow those labels to limit us and tell us we're just not enough. Just. We add this tiny yet

significant word when we're describing ourselves and allow the labels to disqualify us.

You've probably heard countless people say it. Maybe you've even said it yourself. I'm just

a high school student or I'm just an addict. The truth is you are not your age, your employment status,

...