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Grainger's avatar

Strong message. Fortunately, my dad went through this so that I didn’t have to. He’s a pastor. He went through a period where he wanted to pastoring. It was there he came to this conclusion: “who I am and what I do are not the same. What I do is pastor. Who I am is a child of God with an eternal inheritance.”

This was the paradigm shift. My identity can only be wrapped up in who God is, not what I do and also not what God does. Just who He is. Is > does

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Jason Jonker's avatar

Amen. I know a woman through my work in prison, who began smoking meth with her mother at age 13. At one point her mother tried to sell her for drugs.

When she describes it, she often says that she wishes her mom would have been a mom and punished her for getting high, forced her to attend school, forbid her from associating with thugs.

One narrative would be that she had no choice but to become an addict, given the filthy cesspool in which her character was incubated.

The other is that God was with her, giving her an inner ick about what was happening and assuring her that her intuition was right.

Perhaps the final chapter is the one in which God's redemptive power is put on full display in her life.

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