We Are Like Him

In the beginning, God spoke. And out of His mouth came, not words, for there was no one to hear them, but came life itself. All of creation is the very words of God. And since we know that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34), all of creation must be the expression of God’s heart—His desires, His dreams, His emotions, His love, His very being.

We’re not talking about little things here. Jesus said that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. That is, when the heart is overflowing—when the heart can’t hold it in anymore—that’s when it just has to be spoken! And it’s not that the thoughts didn’t exist before, but they were simply not expressed. Likewise, we are the expression of what already existed—of God Himself.

So now God speaks, “Let there be . . . ,” and the entire universe is created. But something is different about the account of mankind. When God makes man, He doesn’t just say, “Let there be . . . ,” but He says “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness . . .” (Genesis 1:26). Never before had there been a creature so magnificent as to be the very description of God’s own image.

The best way I can relate this to my own earthly understanding is to think of myself as God’s biological child. A spittin’ image of my Father. Now, I grew up the son of a pastor, and I knew who I was, because nobody would let me forget it. I was the preacher’s kid. My identity wasn’t found in my unique character or qualities. It wasn’t found in my name or in my looks or in my talents. My identity was solely based on who my father was.

While I milked it for all it was worth, I still despised being known by someone else’s reputation. I wanted people to know me for me. If anything, I wanted the preacher to be known as “Matt’s dad,” since after all, the world did revolve around me.

And everyone had their expectations of me. They expected me to not have any issues, because I was the preacher’s kid. They expected me to do well in school and be the best at everything, because I was the preacher’s kid. They expected me to be happy all the time, and to have the best family life, all because I was the preacher’s kid.

With all those expectations, and an identity belonging to my dad, I went on a mission. When I hit my teenage years, I rebelled against everything, and I made it my goal to prove to everyone that I was my own person. That meant going from a straight-A student to not turning in homework assignments. It meant turning an already-difficult family situation into a much worse one. It meant proving to the world that I was not who they expected me to be.

People would even ask me as a kid if I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a pastor. I’d tell them “absolutely not.” I didn’t want that association, because it seemed like an attack on my identity. I would become my father, and that meant I couldn’t be myself.

And yet after all that fighting, I finally realized that who I wanted to be was exactly what people expected of me (and shortly thereafter was called into ministry). Like the prodigal son who took his inheritance and squandered it to make a life for himself, I realized that giving up the identity I’d received from my father was giving up everything I really ever wanted.

We, as God’s children, have been fighting for far too long. We’ve spent thousands of years trying to do this our own way. Trying to prove our independence. Trying to find our identities apart from God. And it’s no wonder that the world has such a negative view of the Church. We’ve become so caught up in our own agendas that we’ve stopped reflecting the true glory of God. We can no longer be identified by our Father.

It’s time to come back.

It’s time to realize that the identity we’ve been searching for—what we really want to be—is to be found once again in the image of our Father. To be known by His work and by His character. For people to look at us and see “the spittin’ image” of God.

Continue to We Are Rulers ->