Anxiety or Identity?
Posted by Chris on December 31, 2006 under Sermons
Read 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26.
- Transition and new growth can bring about change.
- Change can make us grow anxious
- Read Luke 2:41-52.
- Mary is anxiously searching for Jesus.
- The term used for anxiety has to do with real pain
- Mary takes it personally – “Why are you doing this to us?”
- Contrast Mary’s statement – “We have been anxiously searching!” She feels pain. “Why have you done this to us?” But for Jesus there is no cause for alarm. He responds with a wisdom that is the same sort of wisdom that amazes the rabbis.
- Jesus’ reply: Why have you been searching for me (at all)?
- Why have you been searching for me? Where else would he be? What else would he be doing?
- Don’t you know that I had to be …
- NIV says “In my father’s house”
- KJV says “About my father’s business”
- It is really both of these and much more – – It is about identity and reason for being
- “The things of my father”
- Jesus is defined by the things of his father – his very reason for being and identity is shaped by doing the things of his father. [Note the intensive impact of this phrase.]
- Jesus is dedicated because he knows who he is. He knows whose he is.
We get anxious and we suffer a lot of pain because we try to hold on to projects and identities of our own.
We have a choice: we can grow anxious or we can grow into our identity.
Read Colossians 3:12-17.
What gives us our identity? Are we defined by the things of Christ just as he is defined by the things of his Father?