Text: For in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Acts 17:28 (NKJV)
Self-discovery is the beginning of self-mastery and individual autonomy. You can know your potential only after you discover who you truly are. To do otherwise is just ‘grasping for the wind’ (Eccl 1:14, 19) or ‘beating the air (1 Cor 9:26)
Who You Are.
You are already familiar with the concept that you are a spirit with a soul or mind and that you live in a body. We will go a step further in this paper.
Our text says that we live, move, and have our existence in God, and we are his offspring (same DNA) The implication of this, and other similar scriptures is that:
- You are the equivalent of a cell in the body of God, considering that a body is made up of cells, which live, move, and have their being or existence in that body. That concept alone means that you are a god, only a lesser one compared to the Almighty. You are therefore capable of everything he empowers you to do, which far surpasses human ability.
- Spiritually, you and God are one, and you interpenetrate one another the same way air or water interpenetrates say a foam sponge. He in you, and you in Him. What else could this mean other than that where one is, the other is also?
This leads to the concept of the God within instead of a God afar off.’ (John 17:23; Col 1:27, Jer. 23:23-24)
- You carry the very presence of God which means that potentially you can do all things that the power of God can do. This translates into unlimited power for you. The Bible says that ‘the kingdom of God is within you, (Luke 17:21), and we know that kings naturally live within the confines of their kingdom. The Bible says further that ‘…your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God…’ (1 Cor 6:19), meaning that God lives in you—by his Spirit. God living in you means that you are intimately connected to Omnipotence and Omniscience.
When you understand the significance of that relationship, it will change your picture of yourself from being ordinary to extraordinary. You can then rightly claim concerning yourself that:
- a) ‘Nothing is impossible for me since nothing is impossible for God.
- b) “Nothing can intimidate me because ‘greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world.’”
- c) “I can do even greater things than Jesus did because he said, ‘greater works than these shall you do because I go to my Father.’”
- d) “I am a god with God-like attributes because the Bible says I am God’s offspring, which means that I have the DNA of God.
Understanding these truths should transform how you see yourself and empower you for greater success in life.
Obstacles to Correct Self-Evaluation.
- Belief in a faraway God. Believing in a God afar off, whom we have to struggle to contact makes us underestimate our worth and potential. Knowing that God lives in us by his mighty Holy Spirit helps us develop an overcomer mentality that says ‘if God is for us, who can be against us?
- Judging by appearances only. We base most of our judgments on what our five senses tell us, but they are often inaccurate. Consider for example that each little star you see at night is bigger than the earth, or that the earth is rotating at a speed of 1000miles per hour, and you don’t fall off or even notice it, and while we observe the sun going from east to west, it is our earth that goes around the sun every day.
Since our senses could be so wrong, our self-evaluation could be equally wrong. No wonder Jesus warned us saying ‘Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment,’ (John 7:24) Therefore, when your senses show you what is impossible, just consider that it may be wrong, and you may better evaluate it in the light of God’s word as pointed out in this lesson.