What if We Knew What God Knows About Us

By Cris Rogers

This is a book about who God is and who we are in light of that. What we think about ourselves governs what we do. If we think we are powerless then we will behave that way. If we believe we are weak we will be weak; if we believe we have no gifts we will not use our gifting. When we believe the wrong things about ourselves it stops us from stepping into the person we were created to be. The Bible tells us that in Jesus we are "a new creation" and yet sometimes we still wear the clothes of the old creation. But what if we knew what God knows about us? When we know what God knows about us we will do the things He knows we can do. Our potential is limitless...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Release date: Aug 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780857219046

Cris Rogers

Cris Rogers is minister at All Hallows Church, Bow, London, and teaches at most of the major Christian festivals each year. He has a BTech in Art from Leeds, a BA in theology from Trinity College Bristol, and an MA in theology from King's College London. He is a minister in the Church of England and author of several books including The Bible Book by Book, Immeasurably More, Only the Brave, and What if We Knew What God Knows About Us. Cris has a deep passion for discipleship in the way of Jesus, and runs wearemakingdisciples.com.

Book preview

[1] WHAT WE KNOW GOVERNS WHAT WE DO

Our eyes are not only viewers, but also projectors that are running a second story over the picture we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script and the working title is, I’ll never be enough.²

Jim Carrey

This chapter will explore the idea of what we think of ourselves and how this stops us from being who God sees us as. Essentially, we have a wonky idea of Me, which is stopping us from doing what God sees is possible. Often we work from a position of disappointment rather than a position of faith.

THE EAGLE WHO THOUGHT HE WAS A CHICKEN

There is a funny little story I would love to tell you. It’s a story about an eagle who didn’t know who he was.

There was a boy who had had enough of helping his dad on the chicken farm. The boy was sick of the sight of chickens, so decided he would take his bike and cycle to the top of the cliffs that overlooked the farm. The boy cycled to the top of the cliffs and sat watching the valley below. As the boy looked out, he noticed a tree hanging over the ledge with a nest on the end of a branch. The boy climbed up the tree, looked in the nest, and was amazed to see that it was full of eggs. As he leaned forward, the branch bent, and one of the eggs rolled out of the nest and tumbled down the cliff.

What happened next you might say was a miracle. But in many good stories there is some creative licence. The egg rolled from the nest, bounced off the cliff edge, and miraculously landed in a mound of hay at the chicken farm. The boy climbed down the tree, feeling sad that he caused this to happen.

The egg sat in the hay and was eventually picked up by a farm hand and placed in the chicken coop. One lonely chicken took in the egg and sat on it, even though it was larger than the rest.

The mother hen that sat on the egg was one who hadn’t been able to have any of her own chicks. She was the proudest chicken you ever saw, sitting on top of this magnificent egg.

Time passed, and the egg started to hatch, to the amazement of the other chickens. From the egg emerged a scrawny but healthy eaglet. As is the nature of chickens, the mother hen didn’t complain or baulk at the young eagle in her home, but raised the majestic bird as one of her own.

So the eagle grew up with the other chicks in the coop, thinking it was one of them. The eagle learnt to do all the things the other chickens did.

It clucked.

It pecked.

It scratched in the dirt for worms.

The bird flapped its wings furiously, trying to fly a few feet in the air before it crashed down to the dust and feathers on the ground.

The eagle believed resolutely and absolutely that it was a chicken. The eagle spent its whole life thinking it was a chicken like the other chickens. He had no mirror to tell him any different.

But one day, late in the eagle’s life, he looked up to the sky and happened to see high above his head, soaring majestically and effortlessly on its powerful golden wings, an eagle.

Gazing up, the eagle wondered, What’s that? It’s magnificent, with so much power and grace in its wings. It’s simply beautiful.

Knowing what he was thinking, a chicken friend of the eagle responded, That’s an eagle; king of the birds. It’s a bird of the air… not like us. We’re only chickens; we’re birds of the earth.

Hearing from his fellow chicken that this beautiful bird was not like them, the eagle continued to peck in the dirt for worms. And so it was that the eagle lived and died a chicken. Because that’s all he believed himself to be.

If we believe we are chickens, we will never fly, we will never soar and we will never go on the adventures that eagles go on. If we believe we are chickens, we will stick to what we think we know, follow the crowd, and be nothing else.

The chicken wasn’t a chicken. He was an eagle.

You aren’t a chicken; you are an eagle. But others in the chicken farm tell you things about yourself: You’re not like that beautiful eagle. You’re one of us. Don’t try to do anything beyond your pay grade. Don’t think too highly about yourself. You are just a chicken.

Do you recognize this to be true in your life?

THE GOSPEL

If we were to now place the gospel alongside this story, it would end differently. Imagine the eagle doesn’t finish his life not knowing who he is, but rather, at some point, another eagle lands and invites him to go up the cliff where he encourages him to lean over the edge and jump. The gospel would want to help the eagle re-imagine who he is, encourage him to find his real self, and then invite him to