Corporate Worship is an Identity Reminder!

Tomorrow's (October 21) New Morning Mercies Devotional is straight from the Your Walk With God Is A Community Project study I am leading on Wednesday nights.  Over the last two weeks we have been talking about how to walk into church.  I posted about this last week "How are you planning to walk into church."

Below is the full devotional for October 21

Corporate worship is designed to remind you of your identity in Christ 

so that you won’t waste your time looking for identity elsewhere. 

It’s so easy to be an identity amnesiac. It’s so easy to forget who you are in Christ and what you have been given as his child. It’s so easy to shop horizontally for what you have already been given vertically. It’s so easy to give in to fear, to give way to shame, or to allow yourself to be weakened by guilt because you forget the present benefits of Jesus’s finished work. It’s so easy, in the hardships of life, to forget that nothing is powerful enough to separate you from God’s love. When you are struggling, it’s so easy to forget that if God gave you his Son, he will also give you everything else you need. It’s so easy to fail to live in light of the fact that Jesus didn’t die just for your past forgiveness (praise God that he did) or your future resurrection (what hope!), but also for everything you are facing in the here and now.

It’s so easy to forget that every trial sent your way is sent by a Savior of grace as a tool of grace to advance the work of grace in your heart and life. It’s so easy to forget that because your life has been invaded by the grace of the One who is the “I Am,” it is impossible for you to ever be in any situation, relationship, or location by yourself. It’s so easy to forget that God really does live inside you in the powerful convicting, protecting, and enabling presence of the Holy Spirit. It’s so easy to forget that God loves and accepts you no less on your worst day than he does on your best day. It’s so easy to fail to remember that because of the grace of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you are never left to the limited resources of your own wisdom, righteousness, and strength. It’s so easy to fall into fearing what grace has already defeated on your behalf.

It’s so easy to feel weak in the face of temptation and give way to what grace has given you the power to resist. It’s so easy to wonder if God is near and if he hears. It’s so easy to question the goodness of God in times of trouble. It’s so easy to ask yourself if God has forgotten you when you compare the trouble of your life to the seeming ease in the life of the person next to you. It’s so easy to think that life can be found somewhere outside of the Messiah. When life seems out of control, it’s so easy to forget that Jesus Christ rules over all things for his glory and for your good. It’s so easy to forget who you are and look for identity elsewhere,

So God has ordained that we should gather again and again to remember again and again who we are and what we have been given. His church is a tool of grace, a vehicle for remembering, so that we may celebrate and grow.

Tripp, Paul David. New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional (p. 295). Crossway.