The more you discover your identity in Christ, the less desire you\u2019ll have to act out the old mindsets you used to act upon, including the \u2018acceptance by performance\u2019 mindset you may have thought God expected of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our oneness in Christ is pictured here with Christ as the living cornerstone and us as living stones. Together we make up the spiritual house of God \u2013 not a man-made building where blood sacrifices are needed, but a people with one heart who live as a reflection of Christ, the ultimate sacrifice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are all God\u2019s chosen people. God doesn\u2019t favor one person over another. My faith in God helps me to see the value in all people, to go beyond the \u2018us and them\u2019 mentality. Sadly, we tend to see, or at least this has been my experience, we see many Christians caught in the mindset of \u2018us and them\u2019 or \u2018right and wrong\u2019 and the focus becomes more about believing the \u2018right way\u2019 and therefore trying to make everyone else believe the \u2018right way\u2019 in order to be accepted by God. We tend to be the ones who put limits on God\u2019s love. Our lives should be a living, breathing example of the love of God. Our Christian history has some pretty dark stories, some very unloving stories, some very unChristlike stories\u2026 \u2018believe like us or we\u2019ll kill you\u2019 stories. Those stories are heart wrenching. Those caught up in religion rather than relationship tend to think they need to convert others to their religion. Jesus didn\u2019t come to start a religion. Instead, He showed us how to have a loving relationship with the Father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What are people reading from your life? What vibes are you giving off? Do people see, hear, and experience love from your life, or judgment? I love verse 12 in The Mirror: The beautiful way in which you conduct yourselves in the company of people who are not familiar with your beliefs, will attract their attention to the resonance of their hearts as they witness for themselves God\u2019s intentions as evidenced in your good works. This will be as clear as daylight to them and will completely disarm the rumors that they have heard about you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter encouraged people to honor those in authority. Live in freedom but don\u2019t use your freedom as a covering for evil. I hear a lot of Christians talk trash about our prime minister. I may not agree with everything our prime minister does but that doesn\u2019t mean I should trash talk him. Remember that at the time Peter wrote this, Nero was emperor. Nero was known to be tyrannical and corrupt and to have tortured and executed Christians as well as others. Peter didn\u2019t encourage people to use their God-given freedom to overthrow the government. He encouraged people to love like Jesus. Remember, Jesus didn\u2019t encourage people to revolt against the government either. He loved even those who tortured and killed Him. Every now and then it\u2019s important to measure ourselves. Are we being motivated by fear, anger, or love?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The more you discover your identity in Christ, the less desire you\u2019ll have to act out the old mindsets you used to act upon, including the \u2018acceptance by performance\u2019 mindset you may have thought God expected of you. Our oneness in Christ is pictured here with Christ as the living cornerstone and us as living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":97,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/09\/Robin.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therainbowcentre.ca\/overtherainbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}