{"id":4283,"date":"2011-03-20T22:15:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T22:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=4283"},"modified":"2011-03-20T22:15:28","modified_gmt":"2011-03-20T22:15:28","slug":"who-we-are-in-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/4283\/who-we-are-in-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"Who we are in Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastor John,<\/span><\/p>\n

I know you’re quite busy writing lately but I wanted to run this by you.<\/span>
\n Over the past few weeks or so I feel like “living in the Spirit” means<\/span>
\n “not letting anything compromise the peace and joy the Spirit gives.” It’s<\/span>
\n hard to word, but I’ve felt a kind of peace when something — the flesh, a<\/span>
\n spirit, whatever — tries to creep in and I decide, “I’d rather have<\/span>
\n feelings of peace right now instead.” It feels like the right thing to do.<\/span>
\n A moment ago the “whatever” that was trying to creep was along the lines<\/span>
\n of, “I feel this way about things sometimes because as a child…” but<\/span>
\n each time it crept I felt like, “That’s not my peace! When I was a child,<\/span>
\n before I had the holy spirit, doesn’t matter.” That felt like the right<\/span>
\n thing to do… the result of that felt peaceful.<\/span><\/p>\n

My question is: When we say things like, “It’s been so hard for me to get<\/span>
\n over this because when I was growing up…” it seems like giving ourselves<\/span>
\n a reason to not just get over it and have peace. I know things from<\/span>
\n childhood can affect us, but it seems like it’s not who we are in Christ<\/span>
\n so we don’t have to think about it. Is that right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks,<\/span>
\n Beverly<\/span>
\n =========<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s right, Beverly. As Jesus told Sister Sandy a few years back, in reference to old, ungodly family traits, “You’re not a product of THAT union any more.” And as he told Sister Sandy again in 2001, when we are “grafted in” to the family of God, we are given a NEW PAST. Those of faith in the scriptures are our ancestors now, and in Christ, all that matters is the kind of spirit our parents in the faith passed on to us.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

jdc<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pastor John, I know you’re quite busy writing lately but I wanted to run this by you. Over the past few weeks or so I feel like “living in the Spirit” means “not letting anything compromise the peace and joy the Spirit gives.” It’s hard to word, but I’ve felt a kind of peace when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}