Rabbi Schneider - The Origin of Our Identity
It is scientifically proven that when we grow up without the love of an earthly father, we really suffer and have to do a lot of internal work to overcome that struggle, which oftentimes can plague us our entire lives. To be loved by a father, the importance of that cannot be overestimated. It's so critical that you and I understand that regardless of what type of experience that we may have had with or without an earthly father, who was imperfect if we did have an earthly father, that there is still hope for us, because we have been called to be the sons and the daughters of God.
Many of us have been looking in the world to fill that void in our life, to fill that emptiness. We're being driven by nervousness and anxiety, and nothing we seem to do, and nothing we seem to buy can make a it go away. But let me say this to you today, that when you know how loved you are by your Father (I'm talking about God your Father), you will feel complete. You see, it's the Father that sent Jesus in the world to adopt you as his son or his daughter. And I'm preaching this message today, because I want to bring some correction to the church, who has often placed all the emphasis on Jesus, and has never gone beyond Jesus to the Father. But Yeshua himself taught in John 14:6, that he was not the destination. Jesus himself declared he's the way to the destination. Yeshua said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no man comes to the Father, but through me".
You see, the most famous Bible verse in the whole world is John 3:16. It's probably the verse that you first memorize, "For God so loved the world", and we often don't identify who God is there. The God that John 3:16 is referring to is Father God. "For God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son into the world", so take a step back and think with me for a second. Who sent Jesus into the world? God the Father, because it's the son, and you can't be a son unless you have a father. "For God's so loved the world that he sent his Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life".
You see, the Father is the one that shows you because he loves you. And the Father, because he loves you, as I taught last week, brought you to himself through Jesus his Son. We need to get our heart re-tuned, re-calibrated, so that we enter into a relationship with the Father, and Son, and Spirit, that is incorrect alignment. You see, the church has often been two-dimensional in their relationship with the Godhead. And by the Godhead I refer to the Father, Son and Spirit. Yeshua said, "You should be baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit", but oftentimes our relationship with the Godhead is two-dimensional. We focus on the Son, we focus on Jesus.
Many of you, as I said last time, spend all your time praying to Jesus, rather than the Father. We focus on Jesus, all our worship songs oftentimes are focused on Jesus, and then we also talk about the Holy Spirit, and talk about our relationship with the Holy Spirit. But sometimes the Father is completely being overlooked, when in actuality everything proceeds from the Father. The Son proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Yeshua said, "I will not leave you as orphans, but I will send you the Spirit", and then Jesus said, "Whom the Father will send in my name". So even our focus on the Holy Spirit is incomplete without the recognition that it's the Father that has poured forth his Spirit upon our lives in Jesus name. Do you get a church?
We've left out the Father. We've left out the main person of the Trinity. Jesus himself taught that the Father was greater than him. And I want to just take a moment and ask you right now: do you need to repent? Now, I'm not speaking about a guilty type of repentance, but you need to say, "Father, Rabbi Schneider is right! He's right! In my church we spent so much time talking about Jesus, and singing to Jesus, even talking about the Holy Spirit, but we don't really focus on you that much. And Father, I ask you to forgive me, and help me to step into a proper alignment with this divine truth. It is all about you, Father". The scripture says in Romans 11:36, "For from him", from the Father, "Through him and to him", the Father, "Are all things". Everything, beloved, is from the Father, and the Father's purpose is that he has created you to be his son or daughter, and you are now in the process of being transformed and changed into the likeness, into the image of his Son, because that is your destination: to be a son or a daughter of Father God.
Now, I want to take a moment today to consider, as we're now opening our heart in a wider dimension to say, "Wow, Father, help me to open up and to step into this revelation. Help me to know your love for me, your purpose for me, and what it means to relate to you as a Father". Because some of us, we really don't know how to relate to God as Father. And the only type of father we can really think of is in the image of our earthly father. And unfortunately none of us have had a tremendous experience with our earthly father, and let me take that back for a moment, because I know some of you really feel fantastic about your earthly father, and and can't say enough good about your earthly father, but the point is: is that no man is perfect. And even the best earthly fathers have sinned.
And whether you realize it or not, you have received both the blessing of your earthly father, but you've also received as a son or daughter the consequences of them being a sinner, because everybody's a sinner. And the result of that is is that when we look to God as our Father we don't oftentimes see him clearly, because the only filter of a father image that we have is through the lens of our earthly father. And even though there are some right now, that have had a tremendous relationship with your earthly father, most of us have experienced much pain and suffering because of our relationship with the earthly father. And that is this is not to put any condemnation on an earthly father, but they were broken people, they came from broken backgrounds, and this goes all the way back to Adam and the fall of man, that humanity's broken.
So, there's a lot of sin in the world. God said to Adam, "You're going to earn your living by the sweat of your brow, it's going to be hard for you". And so, life is hard. And we grow up in this world of oppression, and we need to be delivered from the wrong type of thinking pattern that we have about who God the Father is. We need to be delivered from thinking about God the Father through the lens of our earthly father.
And so Father, right now I just pray that you would wash our minds and give us the capacity, Lord for the blood of Jesus, and through the working of your word and the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit to be able to focus on you Father, and see you more clearly, to see you as you are. Father, I ask you right now to deliver your people from the oppression and the bondage of that which they experienced under the domain of their earthly father, that they could come out from that, that they could move beyond that, to see you Father in all your glory, in your tremendous love, father, that you would pour forth your Spirit upon our lives, to be able to realize who you really are as our Father.
And so again, I don't want anybody to misunderstand me, because some of you had really you have blessed fathers, that really loved you, but all of us were raised under imperfect fathers, and we need to be delivered from it whatever-wrong filter, whatever-wrong lenses in our minds about who God the Father is. Due to our being raised unto an earthly father, that was imperfect, so that we can see the Father's love for us more perfectly. And I'm just asking once again, abba God, it's one thing for me to declare these words, but I'm asking you, God, to deliver us into the reality by your Spirit, by your word, through your Son of that which I speak in Jesus name. I declare victory, and deliverance, and revelation for you.
Now, when we think about the role of a father, and we look at for example the difference between the role of the father and the mother, we look at fathers for example for our identity. Like if a little child is running, you know, a five-year-old boy or girl is running and all of a sudden they fall on the cement, and they and they scrape their knee, and their knees bloody, and their mother and father are standing off a hundred feet away, who does a little child generally run to if they're crying and hurting because they just fell and hurt themselves? The child will generally run to the mother. Why? Because the mother primarily is the nurture, the mother is the comforter. But the father is the one through whom a child receives their identity from. And so, for example when you look at the genealogies, in the Hebrew Bible, you always see that so and so begets so and so, and so and so was the son of so and so, and they always relate that genealogy from the father to the son or to the daughter.
The identity of the child is determined biblically by the father. And so you get your identity from your father. This is why deliverance is so needed for us, because many of us grew up without fathers, you grew up maybe without a father in your home, you grew up with an absent father. Some of you were raised in homes where your mother had relationships with several different men in your lifetime, so you don't really have even any concept of even one father, and we need deliverance, thank God, for the power of the Holy Spirit whom the Father sends in his name to deliver us from all that. There's hope for you and for me. There's hope for all of us.
And so, oftentimes when we become adults specifically we begin to face problems that we're having in our lives, identity problems. We begin to recognize that all of a sudden we can't get our identity from who we were in high school or elementary school anymore. You know, in high school or elementary school we oftentimes get our identity from our peers, or from being an athlete, or for being beautiful, if you're a girl or from whatever it is. You get your identity oftentimes from your peer background. But oftentimes when we hit 18 years old, and we move beyond high school, suddenly our identity falters because we don't have a positive identity in relationship to an earthly father. And the stronger foundation that will determine our identity is not the identity that we had from our peers, which is temporary, but the stronger foundation is how we see ourselves based on who we saw our earthly father as, and how our earthly father treated us.
And so it's important, once again, to understand that if you're really broken and struggling right now in your identity, that can be fixed for every single one of us by coming into the revelation of who our true Father is. When you see how great your real Father is, when you see how big, and powerful, and loving, and righteous, and victorious your real Father is, when you know that's who your Father is, and that you're his son or daughter, then you're going to have an incredible identity, because your identity, once again, comes through your Father.
And if you're still getting your identity from your earthly father, or from some man that grew up in your home, and you don't think much of them, or they mistreated you, you're going to be struggling with your a broken self-image, and low self-esteem, and all that. But Rabbi Schneider is here to tell you: that can be fixed! If we focus our life on our relationship with God, if we say, "I'm in agreement with this, God, I believe that this word is truth. And I believe, I have hope that however broken I am, whatever low self-esteem, whatever sense of defeat I'm walking in, that I can be delivered from this, and I can walk as a son and daughter of yours, a son and daughter that's born again of the victorious king, that's been destined to reign with him."
The Bible says that we've been raised up with Christ, and are seated with him next to the Father's side in the heavenly places. And so, I speak over your life, beloved one, right now, that you have a Father that's more powerful, more beautiful, more glorious than any earthly father that you could have ever had. And that you are being delivered, even as I'm declaring this truth over you, you're being washed from low self-esteem, and from defeat that came upon you due to an improper relationship with an earthly father, you're being delivered from that bondage, and you are being placed in your true identity, in your true destiny, and you're coming into your true inheritance, as you focus on Father God. And continue to seek first his kingdom, and his righteousness in your life. There is hope for you. There's hope for all of us. The Bible says, that in Messiah Jesus we are complete. So your identity is being fixed, you are experiencing recovery, and I declare supernatural recovery over your life right.
Now, not only is your identity being fixed, but your destiny as I've been speaking about is being transformed. Your destiny is not a husband, it's not a wife, it's not a better career. All those things could be real blessings, we all know that, but that isn't what your real destination is. Your real destination is being transformed into the image of Jesus. And when we focus on that in our life it gives everyday meaning, it gives everyday purpose. Regardless if in the world our best days are behind us, in other words if we're in our 70s or 80s we're probably not going to be starting a new career, but that doesn't mean our best days are behind us, because every day God is using to transform us into the image of his son or daughter. And so, this is our destiny, and when we realize that suddenly life has meaning, life has purpose. You're either winning or you're learning and being transformed, it all has relevancy, and when you have identity, and destiny, and purpose in your life, then you have a sense of foundation and peace that will give you strength to move forward in victory.
Father is working that in your soul. Father is also teaching you. Jesus said, all that are taught from the Father come to him. And the Father is teaching you about all things, as you give yourself to him. Because we need wisdom, we need revelation, and as many as are taught of God in John 6:45, Jesus, once again, said, "Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me". And so every day we're growing in knowledge.
The Father is also protecting. You we've been "Born again to a living hope", Peter said, "Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God". You're protected in this world. There's dangers in this world, as we all know full well, and we're facing difficult times, and we'll continue to face difficult times as we move deeper into the future, and as a result deeper into the darkness, it's overcoming the world. But as we move through life, and move through the darkness, and move deeper into the future, know that you are protected. The power of God is upon your life, the blood of Yeshua is surrounding you, and Father God is watching over you as the apple of his eye. Fathers protect, and you, my beloved child of his, are indeed protected.
And lastly today I want to teach you, that the Father is disciplining us. When you face hard times in life, ask yourself, "Father, are you trying to teach me something"? Because the scripture tells us in the book of Hebrews chapter 12, that every son or daughter that the Father receives he disciplines. And so, sometimes we don't understand why we keep running into the same problems, why we keep beating our head against the same walls? Why we keep making the same mistakes? It will continually be looking to the Father, and asking him, "Father, what are you trying to teach me? And how are you trying to discipline me here"? And if we'll be open to that correction, and say, "Yes", and be focused on him, and make those corrections that he's showing us, as he's disciplining us through the teaching of the Holy Spirit, we will come in, beloved, to greater and greater victory, and greater and greater peace. I'm here today to tell you: the Father loves you. He sent Jesus into the world for you, and he is right now conforming you to the image of his Son. And in his Son you are complete in Father's love.