Charlie Lewis

The two questions that we primarily ask of those whom we engage to research our ancestry are “who am I”, and “where did I come from?” The increased interest and the heightened desire to know the answers to these questions have created annually a more than one hundred million dollar industry globally. We must keep in mind our vantage point for all of our inquiries and our questions about our identity, our origin and our purpose. No matter how much we know about our present, earthly lineage, our focus for everything in our lives must be on eternity and our eternalness. The temporary things of our lives must be subject to the things that are eternal. It is easy to allow our pursuit of the temporary things to become more important than the things that are eternal and the things that last forever. What are some of those temporary things? Money and anything money can buy – houses, land, boats, airplanes, cars, power, business, fame, and any and everything that expires. Things with an expiration date, whether that date is written or not.

Our power and our authority come from who we are and where we came from eternally, and from the things and the relationships that are eternal. This is our highest source and the greatest authority in our lives. There is nothing that is greater. We must remember that lesser authority always yields to greater authority and the greatest authority in our lives is and will always be that which is eternal.

This is a paradigm shift for humanity that changes how we think, what we believe, and how we choose to act.

We have not been taught much about our relationship with our eternity and our eternalness. Practically nothing at all. The language may sound foreign or strange. We are very busy with our present, here-and-now portion of our eternity just trying to figure it out and to get by. We are making all of our decisions based on our present, here and now. The present situations, our present circumstances and our present relationships that are looking into our eyes now. Most of humanity does not consider their eternity or their eternalness in the day to day living of their life in any way. Eternity?! What is that? Eternity is way out there somewhere in our Future, in the sweet by and by. Living our lives based on eternity and our personal eternalness is a fundamental and foundation change in our approach to life. The eternal approach will change the underlying assumptions that we may have lived our lives by to date and will certainly change our approach to the remainder of our life in time.

This is a huge paradigm shift.

Is this important? You bet it is! This viewpoint presents for our consideration and for our choice making process, the difference between the Eternal and the Temporary, between Life and Death, providing an assurance of Knowing and not just Guessing with a clear path towards the objective, with an active relationship instead of demagoguery and overbearing regulation and compliance. This is what lasting success for humanity is made of.

The vantage point that we live our life by in the present, here and now, has great consequence on our experience not only in our present, here and now, but also in our hereafter. Our understanding of the question, “where did I come from?” is pivotal in our knowing how to experience a successful and meaningful life in our Here and Now.

Much, if not most, of humanity live their lives as if their present experience in-time is all that there is for them. There was no before here, and there is no hereafter, only the here and the now. While we may give a little thought and attention to our hereafter, it is only a small amount of consideration. I do not recall ever hearing someone speak or teach about our life and who we were in our “before-here.” Not at the University, not at church, not at the Synagogue, not anywhere. Yet, the scriptures, our Constitution – the fundamental values, principles and established precedent that we acknowledge and agree that we are governed by – is very clear.

We did not begin here, and we will not end here.

We and everything about us are not just about our here and our now. We are eternal, and our eternity and our eternalness have profound impact on everything about us, now and forever.

This is Part three of the “Who Am I?” blog series. Click the links to read Part One and Part Two.

“You saw who you created me to be before I became me!”

Psalms 139:16a The Passion Translation

In Part 2 of this series, I ended by describing the kind of close, intimate relationship our Creator and our Designer wants to have with us, and that we must partake in if we want to experience the successful life He has planned for each one of us.

Our questions must then be, how do we walk and how do we live in this living relationship of power and of authority? How do we allow this understanding to impact our living so that our outcomes are the results of His planning and so we experience what He says about us? How? By changing the way that we think, what we believe and how we act to come into alignment and into agreement with what He says. We begin by cleaning up the clutter of our minds by washing them in His Word. We must erase all that we have allowed into our minds (our databank) that is not in agreement with what our Creator and our Designer has said. We must accept and believe all that He says and has said about us in every situation, each circumstance and in all of our relationships. We must then declare our belief out loud by speaking with our voice what He says, and by not agreeing with what our enemy the Defeated Satan says and has said.

When we have changed what we believe by reprogramming our minds to be in agreement with our God, when we have spoken out loud with our voice our agreement with His Words, we then are to write out these beliefs for every situation, each circumstance and for all of our relationships. Our writing is to be in large, plain, easy to ready letters so that those whom our God has positioned and planned to be a part of our process can easily read what our God has said and can participate in the actions necessary to accomplish successfully the charge. We are part of a “Community” and have “common unity” with others who play an important part in our outcomes and in our success. Everything in our lives must be considered for the perspective of our eternity.

Knowing who we are now and forever and operating successfully in that knowledge requires a paradigm shift in our understanding and in our subsequent actions. A paradigm is defined as a way of looking at something. A paradigm shift is an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way. We must shift our thinking, change our beliefs, and direct our actions to reflect and to agree with our eternity and our eternalness. While our horizontal and earthly heritage is significant and good information to know, we are eternal. There is a transcendent component and eternal value that is greater and more important than this brief period of our eternity while we are presently, in-time. We are not confined to, nor are we limited to our earthly heritage. The source of who we are is eternal. Our talents, our gifts, our abilities, our call and our anointing come from who we are eternally.

So, who are we? We are an eternal spirit, created and designed by an eternal God whose purpose is success. We live in a body and we are managed by our mind that we have the privilege and the charge of programming and reprogramming our minds to be a databank of information that agrees with our Creator and our Designer, our Father and our God. Our forever success comes from developing and building our lives presently, in-time based on who we are eternally.

This is the second blog in the “Who Am I?” series. Click here to read Part One.

Searching for and knowing who we are includes understanding operationally the pecking order for correct priorities in the successful living of our lives presently, in-time and eternally, our forever. Our first and our primary consideration for true and for lasting (continuous) success that is based on a living relationship, must always begin with and continue to follow the perspective that is determined from the vantage point of our eternity and from our eternalness. Eternity and eternalness are not common words that we use. They are different. They are Kingdom words that come from our understanding of the Kingdom System and the language of the Kingdom. Every Kingdom has its own language. Our Kingdom is eternal, and its language is the language of eternity.

This understanding is clearly presented many times in our Constitution, the scriptures, the Great Book of Learning.

“For we are God’s own handiwork, His workmanship,  recreated in Christ Jesus, born anew, that we may do those good works which God predestined, planned beforehand, for us, taking paths which He prepared ahead of time that we should walk in them, living the good life, which He prearranged and made ready for us to live.”

Ephesians 2: 10 Amplified Classic Edition AMPC

Who are we? Who are you? Who Am I? You and I are who our Creator and our Designer has made us to be. We are the product and the results of His “own” design and of His purposes for each of us before we were born and before we entered time. Other translations say that we are His poem, written for all of humanity to see and to read. We are His work of art, His Masterpiece creation! We are not just someone who happened to be born into a certain Family and our purpose and our destiny are confined to those inherited genes. No! Never! Our design and our lineage are eternal, and we come directly from the spirit and from the mind of the One who created and designed us. The One who called and who anointed us for His specific purposes for us; for ourselves, for our Family and for all of humanity. We are filled with the purposes and the plans of our Creator and our Designer, our Friend and our God.

We have a Divine pedigree and a Divine design for ours and for His purpose.

To correctly understand who we are, we must know who He is; our Creator, our Designer and our God.

This is our heritage. This is who we are and this tells us what we are entitled to.

We enter time with the innate desire to know Him and to be in relationship with Him. We naturally desire to pursue and to fulfill our eternal purpose while we are presently in the in-time component of our eternity. We naturally and we relationally know what He has creatively designed us to be and for us to provide for all of humanity.

To live our life without this awareness and without the active engagement in our transcendent (valued) design and for us to live our lives without pursuing our Creator’s designed purpose for us is not only frustrating, it is also very tragic. Life without a living, flowing, active relationship with the living God, our Creator and our Designer is a rudderless experience. We are adrift. We are designed to be in a close, intimate and personal relationship with our Father and our God.  We are programmed for an abiding relationship, spirit to Spirit of fellowship and communication with our Creator and our Designer. Life without this is more correctly described as mere existence.

We are so much more. We are who He says that we are. We have what He says that we have. We can do what He says that we can do. He knows us! We are His creation and His design.

Have you ever felt like there was something missing in your life? Something that you needed and wanted to know in order to complete and to fulfill your life experience on this planet? Perhaps it is just to know if there is a plan for your life, and if so, what that plan is? Does your life have purpose and meaning? Do you and your life have a transcendent value, a value that is not of or from yourself? Do you and your life count for something on this planet?

The answers to these and many other pertinent and related questions are a resounding YES!

To answer your questions, over the next few weeks in this series of blogs, we will investigate and explore five questions that are both foundational and fundamental for you to know and to understand your identity, your origin, and your purpose. You ask and have asked these questions many times. These questions flow naturally in this sequence –

1. Who am I?
2. Where did I come from?
3. Why am I here?
4. Are there guidelines for how I am to live my life?
5. What happens to me when my spirit leaves my body?

Nothing will impact your life more than knowing and understanding these questions and their correct answers. The clarity and the direction provided for the daily living of your life will be pivotal and powerful in everything that you do, EVERYTHING.

Today I want to begin this series by introducing the first question.

Who Am I?

Today there is great interest in knowing who we are and where we came from. Much effort is spent looking into these questions through researching our ancestry and our DNA. Why do we consider this information important and what are we looking for to gain understanding and to establish from our ancestry? Simply, our first two questions – who am I, and where did I come from? What do we expect to gain from this knowledge? What do the answers to these questions say about me? What am I entitled to? What is my heritage? Heritage is defined as “property that is or may be inherited, an inheritance.” Heritage is further defined as “a special or individual possession; an allotted portion.”

This is interesting. I am not sure when we research our past, our roots, where we came from that we really understand what it is that we are looking for. This knowledge and this information, these facts are certainly important and may and could have huge impact on who we see ourselves to be. Why? Because depending on what we discover it could very much affect what our expectations are for ourselves. If we learn that we descend from earthly royalty and that we have an amazing inheritance, then Katie bar the door. Here we go. We are going after it. We convince ourselves that we are bound by duty and by our honor, the honor of our Family to pursue all that is ours.

This is a good place to remind ourselves of the Kingdom perspective, which is, and which must always be our vantage point for accurately evaluating everything, especially our questions about heritage. Our heritage from the Kingdom perspective must be how we determine where our heritage comes from and where we judge and where we measure our inherited abilities correctly?

What if in our earthly DNA we uncover a heritage that is not so savory? Are we dead in the water? Are we impaired forever? Never! Not in any way! We have opportunity, talent and ability from another source, a greater power. Lesser authority always yields to greater authority. There is no higher authority or greater power than our source.

Knowing who we are based on our earthly ancestry and on our earthly lineage is good information, although what we discover about our earthly heritage most times is rarely pivotal in the living or in the outcomes of our lives. Who we are relationally from the Kingdom perspective, our forever and our eternal vantage point has great impact on the living and on the outcomes of our lives. If we limit our belief of who we are to be based on the present, in-time experience of our eternity, we miss the most important part of who we are.

We are not taught much about the difference between our present, in-time experience and the forever portion of who we are. Often, we do not know enough to know how to correctly and effectively manage the relationship successfully.

This understanding is very important.

We cannot precede with or manage our lives correctly without this knowledge and without the subsequent wisdom for the application of this reality to the living of our lives that we gain from knowing and understanding these facts. Why? It is not possible to know who we are until we first know our Creator and our Designer.  We must then understand who we are to Him, and who He is to us.

All of the questions that we have about ourselves, including who we are and where we came from, flow naturally from the correct answers and our correct understanding of who He is, who we are to Him, and who He is to us. This is where we begin on our journey to know who we are.

In-time, we are made of components that are temporary and some that are eternal, forever. Our body is the present, in-time home of our eternal and forever spirit. Our body only lasts and exists for a very brief portion of our eternity. Our spirit is forever and when our spirit leaves our body, the present, in-time home of our spirit, our body ceases to live (dies) and returns to dust. Our spirit returns to where it came from before it entered time; to eternity without time to be forever in the presence of our Creator and our God. While we are in time, our mind stores the data we place in it for our use managing the relationship between the spirit, the mind and the body.

This understanding is very important.

The foundation for the successful living of our lives presently, in-time begins with and must be directed by our understanding of this reality.

Next week we will continue exploring the question, “Who am I?”

A.W. Tozer famously stated that, “the most important thing about you is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about God.” In the entire world, there is no subject where there are more ideas and opinions than about God. The opinions vary greatly, and most of them are held with very strong convictions. In situations like this I like to say that “perception is reality.” Whatever we believe is our truth, until we are exposed to other truth that broadens our vision. Truth that builds walls and does not allow serious scrutiny and investigation is not really truth at all, it is more of a dogma that is religious and not relational.  Our Creator and our Designer never changes. His values, His principles and His character are constant. However, His relationship with each of us is constantly changing. Not because He is changing, but because He is changing us. If our relationship is not changing and we are not becoming more intimate and increasingly closer to Him, where our understanding is growing deeper and wider, then we must revisit how it is that we see our Friend and how we believe that He sees us.

Personally, my greatest challenge with my relational Friend was that I was trying to make Him and my relationship with Him religious. He is not religious and He does not want, nor is it His plan for us, to have a religious experience with Him. He is totally and completely relational and that is what He wants and what He desires from us. He was relational in the garden, at the very beginning with humanity in-time, and He is relational now.

To change from a religious view of life (regulation and compliance) to a relational perspective (fellowship and communion) for the living of our life requires a paradigm shift in how we think, what we believe and how we choose to act.

The plan provided by our Creator and our Designer for humanity to live in active fellowship and communication with Him is the Kingdom System. The Kingdom System is completely relational and operates by our correctly engaging the interactive system of Dynamics which contain within them the inertia that leads to the outcomes that He has planned for us, and that we innately desire to achieve. Our choice determines our outcomes: Kingdom or religion, regulation and compliance or Dynamics, time/temporary or eternity/forever. The Kingdom System is the correct choice to the alternative systems of the world. Every facet, the smallest detail, of our life must be viewed and directed from the Kingdom perspective.

The scriptures are the recorded values, the principles and the precedents that we agree to use to govern ourselves in His Kingdom. As Believers and the Followers of Jesus of Nazareth, these are our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our Magna Carta and our Operating Agreement all rolled into one. If we make the scriptures religious, they become optional to humanity and their power to guide, to direct and to govern our lives towards a living, breathing, constantly flowing relationship of fellowship and communion with our Designer and our Friend, and the subsequent blessings that flow naturally from relationship for communication and for fellowship are lost.