Paupers?

Jesus said, "My Father in heaven has revealed this to you.....Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means 'rock'), and upon this rock I will build my church." Matthew 16:17-18.....Acknowledge who Jesus is, and you will hear Him acknowledge who you are." Chris Tiegreen Jesus' above words came directly after He'd asked His disciples who both the people and they believed Him to be. They could answer who the people said He was, but Jesus pressed them; who did they say He was? Peter, as usual, took the lead, He stated, correctly, that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Jesus told them this was true, then He said something that was surely unexpected. He called Peter "Rock" and said that upon him, and surely the others as well, He would build His church. We must be able to acknowledge and live in the truth of who Christ is. It must be central to our being and is a question we must be able to answer. Yet in this passage there is something else. Yes, we need to know who Jesus is, but we also need to know who He says we are. What He says concerning that will seem as unlikely to us as did being called a "rock" was to Peter. He had just shown himself to be anything but. I see His asking us who we are as having two answers. The first is our acknowledging who we are in every area of life where we're seeking to live apart from Him, knowingly or not. He will not heap condemnation upon us, but we cannot either know Him or how much we need Him, until we know how far from Him we may be, and how unworthy of Him we are. This brings us to the second part, for once we know what we are not, He can begin to show us who and what we are when we bring all of ourselves to Him. All of our mess, our failings, our sin, to Him. We bring this in confession and we bring this in repentance. He then takes all this and "files" it under "forgiven and made clean." Now we're ready for Him to begin to tell us who we are...in Him. Who He created us to be. What our giftings and callings are. What He has named us and called us in contrast to all the "names" the world and the enemy has put upon us. Many have freely acknowledged who He is, and done so in brokenness, but somehow, they have never been able to fully grasp that they are made wholly new in Him. We lay the past down and enter into His new life. The infinite inheritance we have in Him is ours. The name He has given us fits who He has made us to be. It is a terrible tragedy to live out our lives and never really understand the depth of this. I could write much more on this, but I'll close with something from A.W. Tozer. He said that he feared that despite the infinite riches that were his in Christ, he might come before Him on that day as "almost a pauper," having failed to ever fully enter into all he'd been given and had in Christ the King. May we, as the old hymn says, realize we have a "new name written down in glory, and it's mine, oh yes, it's mine." May none of us be found as paupers on that last, great day. Blessings, Pastor O