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Here are some truths about our identity in Christ from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Of course this is a partial list, read the whole Book of Romans for your soul’s health! (links are to the internet Bible Gateway)

Romans 3:24

And [we] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Romans 5:1

Romans 5:17

Romans 6:6

Romans 8:1

Romans 8:14-15

Romans 8:16

Romans 8:17

Romans 8:28

Romans 8:37

Romans 12:2


Christian identity is simply who we are becaue of what God does, both in creating us and re-creating us in Jesus Christ. This especially includes our divine family membership and relationship with Him, along with what he calls us to do.
“If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; behold the old is gone, the new has come!” 2Corinthians 5:17

Everyone seems to have insecurities, some more hidden than others, and some are more in touch with them than others; but if we are honest, there are areas of doubt and fear in each of our lives that we need to face. There is a blessing, however, in noticing any such insecurity, because it is an invitation from the Lord to trust in Him, so that we may be free from false beliefs and lies that we (and  worldly influencers) may tell ourselves, and thus come to find peace, true peace, in who God is.

At the heart of what it means to be a Christian is to receive a new identity. In Jesus, we do not lose our true selves, but we become our true selves, only in him. This is a key part of the Gospel, a “Great Exchange,” that Jesus takes our place on the cross (He has died and risen to life in our place, in order that we do not face eternal death, but rather, receive His eternal life), and so we are given what we most deeply need: Jesus’ identity, his very life, into our own selves.

Christ is our life — not only the guarantee of it in heaven, but the down-payment of it by the Spirit now, as he lives in us. His joy becomes our joy; his love, our love; his peace, our peace; his strength, our strength. Jesus is our all-in-all. We have a new belonging as we trust in Him, and a new identity.

We cannot experience anything greater than the fullness of union with Christ. Nothing reaches higher or is more comprehensive.
In Christ, we are fundamentally new, and belong to the people of heaven, even as we belong to the King of Heaven. The language and values and customs and expectations of this world increasingly feel foreign to us. We have been born again for another world, to a greater kind of existence.

These various assertions, just mentioned, of our identity in Christ can be unpacked much further, and are worth much reflection, for they are all clearly supported in the Bible and are given by God to help you spiritually mature–not only to be encouraged, but most of all to throw off those things that may hinder our call to love God and to love others–the great Commandment.
If you have any questions or comments on this brief reflection (or any questions at all regarding our church and/or Christianity), please contact Fr. Allen or Fr. Greg at His Church Anglican:  email@example.com

We recently celebrated the feast of Christ the King. If Jesus is King then all these difference fade in importance, don’t they? I am blessed to have you join me and many others to pray for unity and reconciliation in the church. My sense is that if the church doesn’t do the work of reconciliation under Jesus now, then we will have a much harder work to do later.

We invite you to pray and reflect, journal and respond to this post. We will be happy to have you share what you hear and think and how you are praying with each other. We recognize and understand that race can be a challenging topic, especially in today’s divided environment. This discussion is meant to be an open forum whereby all can share thoughts feelings and fears in order to grow and edify the Kingdom of God and Christ’s Church. Please feel free to speak openly and freely, with respect to all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Praying to Overcome the Racial Divide

It is clear that Jesus intended for us to be one across racial lines: he came for the Jews and the Greeks. Jesus said we must be born again and Paul wrote that we should:

“put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” (Col 3:10-11)

All of our natural markers of identity fall short of telling us who we are: only our creator, the Word of God, Jesus can truly define us. How can we at His Church Anglican work to overcome the alienation between races in our city?
Pastor Allen Kannapell

Christ the Center of a Divided Country Politically, it seems that we are more divided than at any time since the days of the Vietnam War. While I am not sure what stories to trust as I hear the news–stories about Muslim women threatened with burning, if they don’t take off headscarves and of conservatives dragged out of cars at intersections and beaten—I wouldn’t put any of it past us as humans and am clear that we are becoming more anxious and fearful as a nation.

It seems that we are in danger of falling apart at the seams. How can Christians help? Many Christians voted one way and many more another.  Are we truly divided or is Christ strong enough to hold us together? Another way to ask this is to consider if Jesus really is a King and is his Kingdom accessible and present to us in the United States of America in the year 2016?

We might turn to The Lord of the Rings to help us think through the complexities of the current moment. After the hobbit Pippin asks Treebeard, the powerful shepherd of trees, what side he is on, Treebeard replies:  “Side?  I am not on anyone’s side because no one is on my side.”  Christians should probably be saying this.  “I’m not on any party’s side perfectly because no party is on my side.”  And we might add, “and the side of Jesus.”  (picture of treebeard?)

The binary nature of our recent election felt insufficient because it is insufficient: neither of the major parties adequately expresses a Christian platform. Many thoughtful people wrestled long and hard before casting a vote for the candidate. An unprecedented amount left the presidential portion of the ticket blank. Maybe our hesitancy to get behind a candidate without reservation represented the need we have for Jesus to be at the center of our political life. I’ve noticed something for a while now…it is easier for each of us to see someone else’s inconsistencies than our own.  Jesus encourages us to take the log out of our own eye before attempting to help another with his vision.

This becoming clear-eyed enough to be helpful then is a process. And if we don’t go through the process of being healed ourselves, how then can we expect to help something so great as our nation?

Perhaps this is what God was getting at as he encouraged Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:14

First let’s work on ourselves. In what way is God asking you to humble yourself? How are you being called to repentance?

Fr Ken Tanner of Redeemer Anglican in Rochester offered a series of benedictions (in italics) that prompted my questions below:

May you recall that political movements and boundaries and personalities and programs are here one day and gone the next. All of these are passing away.

Am I tying myself to something temporal rather than to the King of Kings who transcends time?

May you resist the temptation to place ultimate trust in any person, policy, party, movement, or nation — even a beautiful idea that is embodied by a nation — because there is no nation with an eternal foundation.

How much weight do I put on the government or on a party or on the possibility of our parties working together? Am I looking to the three branches of US Government like I should be looking at the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Am I substituting America for the Kingdom?

May you have empathy for the political decisions of others that you find troubling — particularly those of family and close friends.  May you have ears to hear what lies at the heart of their political concerns, and eyes to see the noble but imperfect search for goodness that is motivating their choice, especially if you strongly disagree with the candidate, party, or politics they support.

Am I looking for the worst in my fellow citizens, or am I open to what is good in them as well?  If I sense good in them as well as bad, am I focusing solely on the bad and judging them for it?  How does this go with (or contradict) Paul’s encouragement to us: “brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

I will conclude with two prayers from the Book of Common Prayer

A Prayer in times of Conflict

A Prayer attributed to St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.


The rapids of life have come upon us.

Or rather we have come upon them.  We were floating peacefully down the stream but then we heard a noise.  It started as a low hiss, and then the commotion got louder.  We see spray on the horizon; we feel the rumble and a roar of rapids. What was a wide river has now become narrow.

What was a calm river has become wild.  There is no way out but through.

What does the scripture say about this?  Is there any wisdom in the Bible for such a time as this?  James the brother of Jesus and the bishop of the church in Jerusalem says:

“Count it all joy my brothers and sisters when you meet trials of various kinds”
Wait a second!   I thought we were supposed to call upon God to get us out of here!  But James encourages us to welcome the trials, to exult in them, and to count them as joyful blessings. A kayaker seeks out the trials.
A kayaker looks at the rocks and the waves as joys!

These threatening features on the river demand all our effort.  We don’t focus on a rock and wring our hands in fear; we look past the rock to the place we want to go and with all our balance and skill and strength get on with the business of getting around it.

How do you approach the trials of life?  As joys like rapids to be run?

There is a great difference between the woman who kayaks with confidence and the one who paddles with fear.  Fear drains the energy; fear makes our movements tentative; fear saps our strength.  When we proceed in fear, the waves push us where they want to.  Paralyzed, we find ourselves pinned against the rocks.  We are flipped upside down and trapped without a breath.

But if we are confident in the Lord, if we believe that he has made the river and us to go down it, if we trust that this rapid is God-ordained, then we will do well to rejoice.  Confidence in God is faith.  “All of this is in his hands; there is nothing here that will hurt me”

St Paul, a man who was called to run many rapids, wrote this:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice...The Lord is at hand; do not
be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanks-
giving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I am learning to be thankful for the rapids.

I am learning to be peaceful in the midst of trials.

Jesus has run this rocky way before me.
God and Heavenly Father:  thank you for allowing me to go through trials and difficulty; you are teaching me to rely upon you and you are conforming me to the image of your Son Jesus who suffered for me.  Grant me grace to glorify you by faith in my trial and give me power to praise you in the midst of the rapids; through your Son Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen

– Pastor Allen What happens when you are rejected?  Not for something you have done, and thus might change, but just for being, just for existing? Gianna knew that pain.  The rasping scrape of metal against stone, the sound of the wind through the trees, and the bang of a screen door slamming:  any of these might take her back to that time of being utterly alone, unwanted, and abandoned.  But nothing scared her like fire.  When a fire was lit in a hearth or campsite, she would cower in fear and wail.
She began to ask her adoptive mother questions:
Why do I walk funny?
Why do I fall down a lot?
Gradually she asked the questions that unlocked the secret of her past.  The story that unfolded had the power to stop her from joy forever.
Gianna was, like many babies in their mother’s wombs, unwanted. –Did the father know?  Yes.
–Was he there for the mother? No.
Her mother was a teenager with an unwanted pregnancy; Gianna was aborted.  But when the burning saline solution did not kill her and she was delivered alive, a nurse took her to the hospital where, miraculously, she survived.
Her adoptive mother worked with her, prayed over her, and loved her.  When she heard the doctors say, “She will never sit up, never walk, and never talk…” she politely refused to believe them.  “God knows the future of this child—she is a survivor; doctors tried to kill her before and now they are prescribing a limited future—but only our Heavenly Father knows what this child can become.”
God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”  And he went on to say that Jeremiah was made for a reason.  God made Jeremiah to tell the truth to Israel.
We read that in Jesus
all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him (Colossians 1:16).
This means that all of us were created by God through Jesus for a purpose.
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10) God created Gianna in order that she would do good works. Despite the Dalits, or untouchables, of India, the people who live on trash heaps in Mexico, and the 700,000 babies aborted in America every year, there are no throw-away people.  That we exist at all is not a morally neutral fact.  Being alive is a good thing and it is pointed toward the good because we were made to do good.  He is the source of our existence.
All of us have a God-appointed reason for living.  Gianna was plucked like a brand from the fire to remind us of this.  The proper response to existence is to go to the one through whom all things were made.  I find out who I am after I know whose I am.
God’s word to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” might be answered with a reply from David in the Psalms, “behold I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Our existence should arouse respectful fear of the one in whose image we are made.  It should inspire wonder and worship of the creator who is able to make such profound beauty.
Gianna Jessen is a singer and a song-writer.  She publicly advocates to stop the silent holocaust of abortion.  She bears witness to the fact that God is our creator and that what he creates is good.
You are not a throw-away person.  You are made in God’s image and have a unique role to play in the great story that is unfolding all around you.
Heavenly Father, you made me through your Son Jesus that I might do good works.  You have plans for me that I don’t know about and that others can’t see.  Help me walk into the purpose and reason you created me.  When I am downcast and feel as if it would be better for me not to have been born, help me look to you for affirmation.    When I am lost and lack direction, help me discover your purpose for me.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  You are a wonderful God.
My family and I began at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and descended rapidly along switchbacks until we hit a ridge protruding out to “Skeleton Point.”  Though it was fairly cool outside, it was hot dusty work to reach that ominous place.  The name conjured up the image of dried bones of a hapless person or deer fallen, eaten by carrion, and left as a testament of the harshness of the land.  The white rocks themselves looked like the spine of the earth as the elements disinterred it.It was hard to believe that wind and rain could wreak such ruin–a canyon ten miles across, one mile deep, and 265 miles long.  Wind, rain, and flood in the hand of an Almighty God over eons and eons cut through the hidden places of the earth as if through butter. One feels very exposed as one hikes through the desert.  The lack of water, the absence of shelter, the merciless sun, and the long vistas in every direction make one feel small and vulnerable.  An eagle’s eye might see you coming from 25 miles away.

What does God see when he looks at me?  Can he see everything about me?  Does he look at all my actions?  Can he see what I do in secret?  Does he know my motivation for everything?

We say a prayer for purity every week that goes like this, “Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts…”  There is in reality nowhere to hide from God’s sight.  King David acknowledges God’s ability to discover his heart in Psalm 32.  In a moment of great transparency, he admits to God:

This shepherd in the desert turned King of Israel knew about heat and exposure.  He also knew that God wants us to be honest about our failings and deal with him about them.

I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity…

and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

It’s not our place to hide our sins from God.  It is not possible, of course; it is also not how forgiveness works.   We are forgiven only as He forgives us.  Honesty and humility about our sins is necessary.

Halfway down the trail, just past “Skeleton Point,” we found a hueco, or hollow, in the rock big enough for my whole family to hide inside in case of bad weather.  The kids climbed up into it and saw that at its top there was another even more hidden cave. Wind, rain, hail, flood, and searing sun could not touch us in there.  Maybe David found similar places for himself and his flock at times of bad weather.  We know he hid in caves as he was hunted by Saul and his armies.  He often calls God his “rock” or “crag”–a place of security and safety.

If we can’t hide from God, maybe God can hide us from the consequences of our sin.  David started the psalm like this:

How are sins covered?  If I can’t hide them and if God sees them, what will cover them?
God covers us with himself.  David goes on to say,

I learned to pray from my mother when I was five years old as a tornado roared down our street towards us.  We huddled in the basement darkness with my three year old brother and said the “Our Father.”  And our Father protected us.  The tornado turned and went off in another direction. It wasn’t the basement–it was being hidden in God that saved us.  How can we be hidden in God?  We pray like David who said

let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.
You are a hiding place for me

Great rivers of water carved out the canyons of the west.  Floods as of Noah’s time split the rocks and scoured the dirt away. –no other explanation exists except, as the insurance adjusters say, “an act of God” did it.  How will I be saved from the flood of his righteous judgment?

I hide in Jesus. Almighty Lord and Father, there is nothing hidden from you.  I stand uncovered before you.  My faults are as apparent to you as a solitary stone in the desert.  You see my sins; wash me and cleanse me from them.  Let me hide in Jesus.  Let his righteousness so cover me that on the day of judgment I will be safe.  This I pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Jesus loves you!