Work with Purpose | Spiritual Identity | Sept. 2025

Oh, come on. It’s not that early in the morning, is it? Now, for those of you who are deeply

concerned that this kind police officer is somehow violating the inherent rights of this cheetah, let’s put the picture

back up. Uh, okay, I’ll do it. Here we go. Nope.

There he is. For those of you who are concerned that the cheetah is somehow being mistreated

by the justice system of America, let me explain. If we could back out just a little bit,

get a wider context on this picture, what we would see is that there’s been a traffic accident.

One of the vehicles involved in the traffic accident is a box truck belonging to a taxiderermy organization.

And six of you just understood the picture. Let me say it again. There’s a box truck

belonging to a taxiderermy organization. Its wares have been spilled all over the

road and some kind folks move some of those wares to the shoulder and the officer is now writing a speed or

writing a traffic report with this stuffed cheetah in front of him. But it makes a pretty funny picture, doesn’t

it? See, context tells us the story. That’s because context is the framework that we

use to build perspective. We see things from our viewpoint, our

perspective. And perspective is the framework that we use to tell the story. That may be the

story of the world around us. It may be the story that we tell ourselves about

ourselves.

perspective. How do you see you? That’s what we want to talk about today.

What do you use to see yourself? Let me tell you another story to illustrate what I’m talking about. When I was a

kid, um, we didn’t have a whole lot of money. My family was not a family of means. So, for us, summers in the south

of France, that’s not really a thing. Winners in Aspen off the table. Our big

annual outing because I grew up a Midwest kid in the northern part of Missouri was an annual trip to the

Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, Missouri.

One of my favorite meals all time is fried chicken and cold potato salad on

the tailgate of a pickup truck. Anybody else ever have this meal? Good. It’s The reason I like the meal is not because of

the food. It’s because of what it represented. See, the Missouri State Fair is divided in half. Remember, we’re not a family of

means. So, we didn’t have the money for me to spend my entire day where I wanted to be, which was in the back half of the

fair, otherwise known as the Midway or the Carnival. I just wanted to ride rides, but that costs a little money.

So, we had a rule. The first half of the day, we had to spend in the front half

of the fair. That’s where all the exhibits are. bunny, rabbits, cows,

pigs, goats, chicken. Look, I don’t care anything about a dude’s chicken. I don’t care who has the best looking chicken.

What I did with the front part of the day was collect all of the freebies that we could get. Little fans and hats and

bumper stickers, whatever. And I watched the little Ronco slicer, dicer, peeler guy or the Ginsu knife demonstration.

anything to kill time to just get me to that fried chicken and mashed potatoes and potato salad and cold cherry pie

that my grandma would make all out of the cooler on the tailgate of a pickup truck cuz that was the gateway, the

green light to the midway. Missouri boasted a mile long midway.

It’s a lie. It’s not really a mile long. It was a half a mile down to the end and then you turned did a U-turn and came

back on the other side and they just divided the middle with all the fair food. Oh gosh, fair food. I’d like to

have a whole day of fair food. Funnel cakes, corn dogs, foot long sausages with green peppers and onions. I’m

getting a little nauseous just thinking about it. But anyway, the fair food divides the midway. I didn’t have quite

enough money to ride rides all day long. You only got a limited number of tickets. So, we had to be smart about

how we spent our tickets. And one of the best ways to spend your ticket at the

midway is in this thing called a funhouse. the funhouse. You could go in and stay

as long as you wanted. And I can remember it vividly. You give one ticket to the guy, just

one. It costs three tickets to ride a ferris wheel or something like that, but one ticket for the fun house. One ticket

and in you step, and the first thing you encounter are these steps going into the funhouse that are moving like this. And

they’re made of steel. So you take one step up, it does this. You cross legs, you go down, and now

you’re bleeding immediately. And somehow that’s funny. OSHA would have a heyday with this thing today.

You make it up the four steps into the giant spinning tube of death. It’s a

steel rotary thing. I remember the year that I finally got big enough that I could do this and touch all the way

around and it started moving. When I got fully upside down, my little

arms gave out because I’m not that big a guy. I went down and literally cracked my head open on the steel on the bottom.

So now I’m bleeding from shins and head alike and laughing like there’s no

tomorrow, wiping blood off. And in we go into this dark, pitch black room with

strobe lights just to get you really off center. You walk out of that into a

glass maze of all things. a glass maze for crying. This is not fair. But you

want to get through it fast if you’re a kid. So it’s you make it out of the glass maze. Now

you’re bruised. You’re bleeding. You’re disoriented. You’re disheveled at a super high stress level.

But you can’t leave the funhouse that way because if they see bleeding, bruised, disheveled little kids walking

out, nobody’s giving them the ticket to walk back in. They’ve got to do something to break the tension. So, they

introduce you to the last element of the funhouse, the hall of mirrors.

Funhouse mirrors. Funhouse mirrors are the best. It doesn’t matter what mood you’re in. When

you see one, you start laughing. Let me show you what I mean. This is Gina Roach

when she was 24.

You can The shoes are a dead giveaway, right? Okay. It’s not Gina Roach when she’s 24.

I’m kidding. It’s just some picture I found from the 1950s, but it illustrates the point.

Funhouse mirrors distort the truth. I remember looking into a funhouse mirror one year. My head was the size of a pee

and my neck was 4t long. They’re hilarious. You can’t help but laugh

because things are so distorted. You know, they’re not true. They’re just entertaining.

How many funhouse mirrors do we look in daily? See, here’s the thing. We view outside

circumstances like a cheetah getting a traffic ticket and we think that’s funny.

It’s not the truth because our perspective is limited. Perspective can

be limiting or it can be freeing. Sometimes if you just change perspective, look from a different angle

or get a little bit broader, you get more of the truth. and you see things more fully.

But how do you see yourself? The problem we have is you cannot view yourself

entirely without some reflective surface, something to capture your image

and then feed that back to you as information.

So, we use things around us. You’ve got one right now in your pocket. Guarantee you. Carrie just talked about

it. Here’s your funhouse mirror.

And if you’re thinking social media, that’s not what I’m talking about. Although that is a funhouse mirror. Your

funhouse mirror actually looks like this. Why does everybody take a selfie like

this? Who here has never taken a selfie? Let’s just start with that. Yeah. Not a hand. Everybody’s taken a selfie. So,

you take a selfie like this, right? Do you see this distance right here? Did you know that at this distance the

camera on your phone is incapable of taking an accurate picture?

At that distance, at the the length of a bent arm, about 18 20 in, the base of

your nose will appear up to 30 in wider than it actually is. The length of your

head will appear up to 10% taller than it actually is.

Your nose is 30% wider and your head is 10% taller because of the way the camera

is designed. You have to be five feet away from the thing you’re shooting a picture of to get an accurate portrayal

of what you’re looking at. And yet 70% of the people that walk into a elective

facial reconstructive surgeon show a selfie to give an example of what they

want adjusted about their face. not making it up. Let me show you a quote from Dr. Boris Pascover of Rutgers

Medical University. He said, “I want people to realize that when they take a selfie, they are in essence looking into

a portable funhouse mirror.” And we look at selfies all the time,

but there’s an even bigger one that you’ve got and you’re sitting in the middle of it right now.

the people around you. The society you live in is in essence a funhouse mirror.

Here’s what we do. We act, speak in a specific way with the

people around us and then we measure their reaction. I say this and they react this way and so I perceive this

and then we adjust our personality to fit whatever that reaction is. I say or

do a certain thing and you act a certain way and I determine I am acceptable in this audience in this crowd or I am less

than acceptable and it’s not the truth. It may even be a little bit accurate but

it’s not truth because truth is whole. You think where did all this begin? How

did we get here? Just go back to the beginning of our story

in Genesis 3. God’s walking through the the garden. Y’all know this story. You’ve heard it. God’s walking through

the garden and he says, “Hey, Adam, where are you?” And Adam answers,

“Hiding?” Why? And the first existential statement ever

made by man, about man, recorded in scripture happens next. Adam says,

“Well, I was scared because, you ready? I am naked.

And God went, “Ah, who told you that?”

The inference being, “You didn’t get that from me, Adam.” See, before the fall, God was the mirror for Adam’s

existence. He very well may have been naked, but that wasn’t a defining resource that God gave to Adam to define

who and how Adam was. But in that moment when that choice was made to disobey

what God had specifically said do not do, a second image appeared.

And now we get to grow up in that world with that distorted funhouse mirror constantly feeding back to us what is

not really God’s perspective of who we are.

And that’s what I want to talk about today. Spiritual identity.

Who am I? Who are you?

I know of no better place to do it than to look at the opening of Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church. Now look,

reading Ephesians can be a little bit difficult because Greek has a capacity

to do something linguistically that English can’t do. When we try to take one language and transfer it into

another, I mean, look, just going from Spanish to English is tough enough. A lot of you know that, right? And those

are both romantically based languages. They come from the same source. But when you take something as archaan as Greek,

which is a dead language, and try to move it forward into English, wow, things fall apart. And English looks

like one big giant run-on sentence, and it’s tough for us to read. But in Greek,

it’s like symphony. It’s like orchestration. It’s like beeth

Y’all know this, right? Beethoven’s fifth symphony and it builds and it builds and it builds

and you start over. That is the book of Ephesians. One idea again and again and

again and it builds to this point that it crushes Paul down in thankful prayer

and then he starts over with the same theme again. And that theme is you.

you you in light of who and how God is. Let me just tell you an opening few verses.

Ready? Paul starts in verse three and he says, “Blessed be the God and father of

our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the

heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of

the world to be holy and blameless before him in love, having predestined

us to himself as in adoption as sons and daughters in Christ according to the

good pleasure of his will which he c by which he made us accepted in the

beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of

sins according to the richness of his grace which he caused to abound toward

us. Abound toward us,

y’all. That’s nuts. Wait, it keeps going. having made known to us the

mystery of his will, that in the dispensation of the fullness of time, he might gather together all things in one,

things in heaven and things on earth in Christ. Look, we’re just this many verses into it. And the richness of what

has already been said about you is overwhelming.

Let’s put that slide up right there. No, I got to go back one. Look at this.

In the first 14 verses, we are blessed with every spiritual

blessing. We are wholly chosen, blameless, and

standing before God, not in judgment, in love. We are adopted

as children, as sons and daughters. Oh, if we had time to go into what that means, it would take the rest of the

time we have today to unpack that. You’re accepted and acceptable,

redeemed, forgiven, rich in grace, abounding in wisdom and prudence. You have understanding, and you have

purpose. You’re united with heaven. You’re heirs in heaven. We have an

inheritance at home, y’all, because of our adoption. were filled with trust,

sealed with the Holy Spirit, and guaranteed

to be brought home. And that’s just the beginning. But I want to show you just how rich

that list actually is.

I want to take one of those verses and sort of dissect it. Let me show you

what’s in them. We’ll just take the first one. and we’re going to take it apart and show you just how deep this verse goes.

So, here’s that verse. It’s verse three. It says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has

blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” This is the first of two

equations that we’re going to look at today. The first one is me in Christ.

The second one is going to be Christ in me. It’s all over the place. like I am

the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you, you’ll bear much fruit. Me in Christ, Christ in me. This is

everywhere in scripture. But I want to show you what kind of identity is available for anyone who is in Christ

because there are 17 verses about Christ in me. There are exactly 10 times as

many passages about me in Christ. And every one of them is a defining verse.

Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us

with every spiritual blessing. That word’s in there three times, but it changes a little bit each time. The

first one, uligato, it’s got at the heart of it this idea of

adoration, something that’s adorable. If you want a picture, why it’s blessed. Blessed is always to go down, by the

way. If you want a picture of what it means, just think about a guy who’s

looking at the girl that he wants to become his bride. What position does he

go in?

Adorable. Because I promise you right now, that’s the most adorable thing in

existence. The adorable God, the God that we adore.

The adorable God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us. Okay, that’s a little different word. Ulia,

and you might hear in that word an English word that we use, ulogia. Eulogy.

The adorable God has spoken a eulogy. A eulogy is a final unchangeable

vocalized truth. The adorable God and father has spoken a

final unchangeable truth about you,

us, me. And then the final one, he’s blessed us

with every spiritual blessing. This last word means an abundant commenation

to com to be commended abundantly.

So, let’s put it together in good old redneck English, okay? The adorable God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ has

spoken a final, indelible, unchangeable truth about us, declaring that we are to

be abundantly commended in heaven. Why? Because we are in Christ. That’s it.

No other reason than the fact that you said, “Here’s my friend Jesus. He’ll explain the whole thing.” That’s it. I

trust him. I don’t trust me. I trust him. And because of that, God is

extolling your greatness in heaven continually.

That’s one verse. There are 170 passages about me in Christ. Anyone

who is in Christ is a new creation. Old things passed away.

All things are new. It’s astounding what is in this list.

Our identity truthfully is received in Christ. But

that’s only half the equation. me in Christ,

Christ in me. So I want to give you two verses as we look at Christ in me. And

these two verses, if you will put them together and adopt them, will change the

entire trajectory of your life. Galatians 2:20 and Romans 12 1 and 2.

Galatians 2:20 says this, “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I

live. Stop right there just a second. If you end that verse right there, that may

be the dumbest thing ever written in the Bible. I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live.

Crucifixion. This is the gas chamber. This is electric chair. This is the gallows. I was hung by the neck until

dead, and yet I live. It doesn’t make any sense unless you explain it with the second half. Ah, but it’s not me. It’s

Christ in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave

himself for me. Romans 12.

Therefore, I’m begging you. I beseech you, offer

yourselves as a living sacrifice. This is your reasonable act of worship.

And you need to hang on to that word, your reasonable act of worship, because

Cal’s going to come out and talk about that in just a minute. And I think he’s going to change your perspective on what

worship actually is. I’ve been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, but it’s not me.

It’s Christ in me. And because Christ is alive inside of me, I’m begging you, offer your existence as a living

sacrifice. What does that mean? I don’t know. Let’s ask it this way. Would

you say you are primarily focused on living your life for God

or having God live his life through you?

I think I know the answer. Most commonly we typically focus on how can I live my life for God. But if you’ve been

crucified with Christ, what life do you have left to live? The life of Christ in you is the one you

have left to live. And it comes through you uniquely. There are no two souls in

this room the same. Not even close. The way you think, the way you feel, the way

you choose, it’s just as distinct, more distinct than your fingerprint or your

DNA. And when Christ is manifest through your

soul, it’s expressed in a way that only you can express that life.

and you allowing that life to be expressed through your soul in the community where you live and work.

That is your purpose. You just found it. That’s the why you’re

here. To let Christ live his life through you to the people around you.

If we really adopt that, I am who God declares I am. I am righteous. I’m

redeemed. I’m sanctified. I’m set apart. I’m made for good work. I’m led in triumph. I’m the servant, saint, son of

God. How does that affect your life? Well, let’s do this exercise real quickly. My wife is named Stacy. She is

better looking than me, smarter than me. She works harder than me. She’s more trustworthy than me. She is in every way

that I know better than me. And for those of you who know Stacy, you could just start screaming amen right now and

we’d all be on the same page. If I woke up tomorrow and I truly believed, for

whatever reason, stress of the day, something snapped in my brain and I truly believed I am Stacy.

How would I dress?

That awkward silence is really palpable right now because y’all are trying to visualize this thing and it’s just uncomfortable as all get out.

What would my cell phone number be? What car would I drive?

What calendar would rule my day? What diet would I eat? If I really

believe I’m Stacy, I’ll dress like Stacy, drive Stacy’s car, my phone number will be her. Everything will

change because I believe I am her. But I’m not. I’m me. And now we’re back

to God’s question. Okay. Who told you? Who told you who you are? How did you figure it out? What’s the funhouse

mirror that fed that distorted image back to you that you now have to work through so that you can have that

redemption in Christ, that newness of life?

Because if you really believe I’m redeemed, righteous, sanctified, set apart, servant, saint, son, daughter of

the true and living God, guess how you’re going to act? You’re going to act as if it’s true if you really believe

it. Ah, yeah, Bill, but you don’t know me. I No, I you’re right. I don’t

I don’t know you. But when you make that statement,

what you’re saying is, I know me better than God does. My declaration of who I

am is more sure than God’s declaration of who I am. Do you really want to live

with that position in life? What if you could adopt what God says is

true as true? Just one or two of those components. How

would it change you in that moment? Because if you accept the fact that Christ is now the life within you and

your purpose in this world is to let his life and his love be expressed through

you to all the world around you. Look, he is righteous. He is redeemed. He is

sanctified. He was set apart. He was made for good work. He is the son of God. And when that’s expressed through

you, everything changes. Absolutely everything

changes. Yeah, but that’s not me. If I did that, I’d feel like such a hypocrite. Let’s

put that one to bed. Hypocrite is a real thing, not just some

condemning phrase made about people that we think act this way and then that. A

hypocrite was a station in Greek life. All of Greek theater was populated by

actors, men. There were no females in Greek theater, but there were two very

distinct troops. The first of those troops were men who played the roles of

men, actors. Then there was another troop of actors

who played all of the other roles in the story. Women, kids, snakes, trees, bugs,

nymphs, you name it, they played those roles. They were actors who acted as if

they were something other than what they actually are.

A hypocrite is someone who acts as if they are something other than what they

actually are. But think of what we’ve just covered. If you actually are righteous, redeemed, sanctified, said

all that whole list. If Ephesians 1 is actually true,

then when you act in accordance with that truth, you’re not being hypocritical at all. It’s when you stand up and say, “Yeah, but you don’t know

me. I’m not.” That’s the hypocritical position.

So, I’m asking you today, what changes in your life if you come to two simple

awarenesses? Christ in me, me in Christ. Because me

in Christ is identity received

and Christ in me is identity expressed.

And when that identity is drawn in and it passes through you to those around

you, you’re standing square in the middle of your purpose in this world to let God’s

life and God’s love be known to everyone you encounter in the way that only you

can express it.

At the close of each of these talks, we’re going to have a series of questions for you to think on.

We’re going to give you time to sit and consider what we’ve just discussed.

If Jesus were to have full control of my existence, your existence right now,

what would he say or do differently than if I try to live my life for him?

What if we just turn that my life for him and his life through me around?

Look, you set the bulk of your day aside to just come and pursue something that

could make a difference in this world. That decision, that act is so holy, it’s

so other, it’s so good that if you don’t right now feel the pleasure of your

father in your soul, something’s gone wrong. And even that statement, do you think that’s something that Bill would

say to you in and of himself? If you just let God speak through you, what would it be? Would it not be something

like that? If you gave him complete control of you

right now and said, “Here is the living sacrifice. You live your life through

me. I don’t live my life for you anymore.

Your way, your will. How would things change?” And number two, what habit,

what funhouse mirror result most frequently blocks the truth of who you

are in Christ from being the normal experience in your life.

If you’ve got your phone handy, we stuck that QR code on there. I went ahead and put a list of verses together that you

can print out and tape to your mirror or stick them on your phone.

I want to challenge you to do this tomorrow. When you wake up and you look

in the mirror, remember that funhouse mirror picture.

Read a couple of those truths. Heck, memorize one of them and tell it

to yourself all day long. No more obscured image. No more

distorted truth. The truth of God spoken by God to you about you simply because

you are in Christ. Watch how it affects everything you do throughout the course of the day.

We’re going to give you a few minutes with your notebooks, your pens,

and this quiet to just discuss with God. What will you do next to

breathe in identity and breathe out life and purpose in

Christ?