Who Are You?

Pastor Carol Grace ♦ July 17, 2021 ♦ Leave a comment

I had to fill out some medical forms not long ago, and I was asked how I identified—male, female, binary or other. I recognize this is the new, politically correct way to view things. But, I am old.

Being politically correct holds no sway over me. Instead, I choose to remain in a right relationship with God.

I am female, not because I identify with being female, but because God created me as female. I am white because my parents and most of my ancestors were white. However, according to 23 and Me, I have African ancestry many centuries in my past along with Native American.

I am a Christ follower, not because I was born into a Christian nation, but because Jesus Christ gave Himself for me, the perfect sacrifice for my sins, the only way I, a sinner, could be reconciled to a holy God. I am intentional in my discipleship, and as Ray vander Laan says, I have chosen to follow so closely behind Jesus that the dust from His feet will cover my feet.

I am a pastor because God called me to preach the gospel, to minister to His people, to show the love of Christ as only a pastor called by God can show. I am a woman and yet I was called by God to minister as only a woman can minister.

I am pro-life, not because I am a far right conservative but because God’s word has convinced me that we have a human heartbeat and a human soul before we take our first breath outside our mother’s womb.

Jeremiah 1:5
“Before I formed you in your mother’s body I chose you. Before you were born I set you apart to serve me. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”

I
How many children, chosen by God for a certain work, never saw the light of day because they were not recognized to be human beings and they were discarded as medical waste?
How many could have been doctors bringing cures for some of our worst diseases, artists bringing love and light and enrichment to our hearts, but instead were sacrificed on the altar of convenience?
I am pro-life because I know, believe and understand that the three children I lost through miscarriage are in heaven because they had souls, placed within them by the Living God.

Ps 139:13 For you created my inmost being;(A)
you knit me together(B) in my mother’s womb.(C)
14 I praise you(D) because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,(E)
I know that full well.

I am these things and more, not because I identify as these things, but because the life I have walked with Jesus Christ, my Savior and my Lord, has formed me into the person I am.

What about you?

Are you pro choice because you believe a woman’s body is her own and it is only she who can make decisions about her body? If you believe a fetus is not human until it is born, then how do you account for the unborn baby reacting to certain foods, or sounds or activities of the mother? When you first cradle that newly born infant to your breast do you still believe just moments earlier it was nothing more than a mass of cells and only when it took its first breath outside of the protection of its mother’s body it became a life?

Are you Christian because you were confirmed at age 12 or because you have faithfully attended church services most of your life? Or are you Christian because God brought a change to your heart and your life and as the hymn says, “I must needs go home by the way of the cross, there’s no other way but this.”

I write this not to stir up controversy nor to pit one group of people against another. Instead, I believe it is time for true Christ followers to stand up and proclaim their faith, their beliefs, and be silenced no more because we are afraid we will offend someone or lose family or friends.

Stand up, stand firm, and if I have not told you lately, Jesus is coming soon!