When God tells Moses to tell the Israelites that His name is, "I AM THAT I AM," He explicitly states that His identity is exclusively in what He is and leaves out any shred of what He is not. We have based most of our lives on the lies of what we are not. This goes all the way back to the Garden and the Fall. Yahweh is shifting us into an understanding of His light, that we exist in and through, where, as John says in 1 John 1, there is no trace of darkness (or obscurity/distortion) found in Him. We are not what we are not, we are who we are.

We’ve always believed the testing of our faith is God showing us how much we lack so that by seeing our lack, we can attain what we lack. However, what James is talking about is not God unveiling our lack, through tests (or experiments), but how much we already have that we falsely believe we lack. This will bring perspective to what we’ve always defined as “storms” or “valleys.”

We have a theology, in the West, rooted in law and works. The gospel, however, is about who we are because of the cross. If we fail to take the journey of dying to our traditional mindsets and inheriting our original mindset and identity, we will miss what Yahweh desires to do in us and our legacy. On earth as it is in heaven is primarily relational.

Matthew Brown teaches at Dream as we continue deeper into the revelation of the love of God.

At the root of every theological thought is the decision to be about separation or union. In Luke 15, Jesus tells of three different, yet exactly the same, stories of identity that had been determined and solidified before it was considered lost. Your identity what determined before you were born.

If all things are created by the Word, for the Word, and in the Word, what do our lives need to look like? He not only unlocked reidentification of us and the cosmos, but He also holds that reidentification together.

Anything we believe about God that didn't come from a root of God is love needs to be reconstructed.

What did God lose at the Fall? He lost the one who He has joined with the trinity in its image and likeness; the object of His affections. Jesus came to seek and save that.

Luke 15 is not about the faithfulness of what was misplaced finding itself; Luke 15 is about the faithfulness of the owner (Father) seeking until he finds what has been lost.

Jesus did not come so that we would behave correctly. Jesus came to give us back our rightful identity. To make the gospel about actions is to miss what the incarnation's purpose was. The incarnation was about seeking and saving that which was lost.