Remember Who You Are

In a pivotal scene from The Lion King, the late king Mufasa appears in a vision before his son, Simba.  Simba is living in exile and in denial of his place as King of his pride.

            Mufasa starts by saying, “Simba, you have forgotten me.”

            “No, how could I?” Simba responds, hurt by the accusation.

            And Mufasa throws it down.

            “You have forgotten who you are, and so forgotten me.  Look inside yourself, Simba.  You are more than what you have become.”

            After more dialogue between them, Mufasa says this:

            “Remember who you are.”

As a Christ follower, I must always remember who I am.  It’s easy to remember who I was.  That’s easy for all of us.  Our regrets, wasted time, selfishness, mistakes, failure, recklessness, whatever.  That stuff, that life, doesn’t leave our memory when we make a decision to serve God and serve others.  We remember all of it.

We may never forget who we were, but we must NEVER forget who we are!

2 Corinthians 5:17 says this:

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

(NASB)

Anyone!  If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature!  Not only that, but the old things have died. 

We’re not who we were.

We are – according to the Bible I’m reading – children of the Creator King, heirs of the glory of Christ, sinners saved by an amazing grace, servants of a world in need, holders of limitless power, citizens of heaven, lovers of people, workers of miracles, agents of love, worshippers of God, eternal beings, important ambassadors, and the list goes on and on and on.

That’s who we are.  That’s what we’re dealing with when we take on the identity of Christ.  We are new.

Peter and John (In Acts 3) were hanging out one day, heading to a church service, and they came upon a beggar who had been crippled since birth.  The lame man asked for money, and Peter says this:

"Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk."

(NIV)

Whoa!  Peter clearly wasn’t having identity issues on this particular day.  He knew exactly who he was, or rather, who Christ is… the Christ that dwells within us.

The beggar asked for earthly provision, but Peter didn’t have any.  No money.  No silver or gold.

No problem.

“What I do have I’ll give you,” he says.  The rest of the scene is amazing.  I’m sure for those there that day, it was incredible.  The beggar rises to his feet and enters the temple singing and dancing and leaping and praising God.

People were amazed and they rushed to Peter and John.  Peter says:

“what is so surprising about this? And why stare at us as though we had made this man walk by our own power or godliness?”

He goes on to tell the crowd exactly what had happened.

“Through faith in the name of Jesus, this man was healed—and you know how crippled he was before. Faith in Jesus’ name has healed him before your very eyes.”

Peter continues preaching about Jesus, the Messiah.  He wraps up his short sermon telling the crowd to repent of their sins and turn to God and he will forgive.

I dare say most of us would be absolutely dumbfounded if we saw that miracle occur before our eyes.  A man crippled from birth just got up and started dancing!

But Peter was not surprised. 

Peter knew exactly who Jesus was, and thus, he knew himself.  He made no mistake about his identity, an identity aligned with the savior of the world.

You may never be able to forget who you were.

Don’t ever forget who you are.