[Scripture: Psalm 126:1-6
Your Christian identity determines the quality of your spiritual life. Knowing your true Christian identity and maintaining it in your daily life has two benefits. First, it gives you the courage to do the right thing in the present, and secondly, it gives you the courage to walk into the future with confidence.
Christian identity means knowing “who we are and who God is and what God will do for us at the end of our life.”
The Christian spiritual life means you can have the fullness of joy and confidence when the time of God comes.
Therefore, Christians should have a deep understanding of their identities. This determines their spiritual destiny.
Babylonian Captivity
In 587 B.C, Babylon conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. Many people living in Jerusalem were taken captive to Babylon.
Before Babylonian captivity, God spoke to Israel through the prophet Jeremiah. “The king of Babylon will come and destroy the city and take many captives into Babylon.”
The people who lived in Jerusalem did not listen to Jeremiah because they did not believe what God had said through him. God did not want to destroy the city of Jerusalem, but the people of Israel had strayed too far and turned their backs on Him.
So, God allowed the king of Babylon to destroy Jerusalem and the temple. This was God’s plan for the people of Israel to renew their spirits from their countless sins and disobedience. God forced the Israelites out of their comfort zones and put them in a place of solitude so that they could restore a deeper relationship with God.
Dark Night of the Soul
God said to them in Jeremiah 29:11, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Richard Foster said in his book Celebration of Disciplinethat sometimes God allows Christians to experience a spiritual dark night to mature them. A dark night is a period of spiritual loneliness and dryness in one’s life that God uses to transform your inner soul.
Foster suggested that when we experience a dark night, we should focus on inner spiritual disciplines such as meditating on the Word and praying. These spiritual practices help us to receive the power of God and promote the positive life-changing processes of God in us.
Psalm 126
Today’s passages tell us the story of the Israelites who were taken captive in Babylon as they maintained their identities as the children of God and returned to their hometown with hope and joy after 70 years.
Life was hard for them when they were slaves in a foreign country. For example, they could not build a temple to worship God or return to their homeland because they were without freedom of religion or travel. It was a spiritually dark night for them.
So, many of them went to the riverside in Babylon and wept, remembering how they worshiped in the temple in Jerusalem. At that time, someone started to sing a hymn in a quiet voice, and many of them who heard the song sang along. When they sang that song, their sorrows turned into praising God. Another man stood up, opened a scroll, and read the Word of God. As they listened to the Word, they began to have hope, and they restored their faith.
After that happened, they gathered together on the riverside, listened to the Word of God, and sang a song of hope and joy every Sabbath. Babylonian captivity was a hard time for them, but they maintained their inward spiritual disciplines such as meditation, prayer, and singing hymns which helped them keep their spiritual identities.
James 5:13 asks, “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” Singing songs of praise and praying have the spiritual power to turn sorrow to dancing.
Sow the seed of hope
Psalm 126: 5-6, says, “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping and carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, and carrying sheaves with them.”
These passages tell us spiritual lessons. Christians need to sow seeds of hope, joy, and faith, sing songs, and pray in our hearts. These are spiritual disciplines that maintain our spiritual identities when we are in trouble, and it brings us bright hope with songs of joy.
When I was fifteen, my mother passed away in a car accident. It was the 27th of February in 1987. For several months, our family was in mourning. It was a hard time for our family, especially for my father who lost his wife and had to raise two teenage boys without a mother. The real problem was that my father had to farm by himself now. At the time, we had around 8-9 acres of farmland. It was not as a flat as Michigan, but rather my father’s land had terraced fields. That meant he could not use heavy farming equipment like Craig Smith uses when he harvests beans on church property. My father used a small one-cylinder tractor. He needed someone to work with him, so I decided to drop out during my first year of high school to work with my father.
My father needed to sow seeds in his field because he was a farmer. Even though he lost his wife and was grieving, he had to sow seeds in the spring because he knew harvest season would come. So, he sowed the seeds and waited for the time to harvest. Finally, harvest time arrived. He gathered the grains that he sowed and put them into the warehouse. Soybeans were the last grain he threshed and put into his granary. That evening, when he finished his last threshing, he went to bed, laid there for three days, and passed away.
As someone who grew soybeans, soybeans were not just grain for my father, but rather they were his hope and joy for harvest time. I believe that he wanted to keep his identity as a farmer till the day he died, and that’s why he sowed the seed.
Conclusion
Matthew 13:31-32 says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven that will come to us is like a mustard seed that we sow in a field. The mustard seed represents the faith and hope that are planted in our hearts and lives for the future reality of our final destination.
If you believe that you will be reunited with Christ in His kingdom at the end of your earthly life, then you and I must maintain our identities in Christ. Securing a Christian identity is the most important part of the Christian life for the quality of our spiritual life here and hereafter.
Christian identity means knowing your final destiny, and if you know your final destination, you need to sow seeds for it. This gives you the courage to walk into the future that will come.
2021.12.26. Pastor Cloud Poy
@ Photo on Unsplash
