Who are we?
We can check our birth certificates. There we’ll find our names and parentage. We can hold them up and show the world, “I’m Chris!” Or David or Conrad or Ariel or Marcus. We might even be a Feliks or an Anton. And if we are an Annika? How beautiful is that?
We might hold up that paper and also be a Rashid or a Rasha or even an Ishmael.
So, we’re back to our opening question: Who are we? Are we the name we’ve been given, or are we someone else? Are we who we’ve inherited, or are we who we’ve made ourselves into?
What sort of walls constructs the kingdoms of our lives?
John 18:36 tells us:
“Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’ ”
Do we have golden walls, built from the love of money, or are our walls Kingdom walls, built from the life of Jesus?
John 1:21 tells us:
“And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the Prophet?’ And he answered, ‘No.’ ”
Do we have walls of pride, built from our standing among men, or are our walls Cross walls, built from the sacrifice of Jesus?
Deuteronomy 18:18 tells us:
“I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.”
Do we have walls of rhetoric, built as we deny the truth of the Bible, or are our walls Truth walls, built from the Christ’s spoken words?
Genesis 16:15 tells us:
“And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.”
Abram who became Abraham took a flawed step rather than trust in the plan of the Almighty God. He tried to build a dynastic wall, one of father and son, only he got it wrong. Ishmael was not to inherit the blessings of God. Isaac, Abram’s son with his wife Sarah, was God’s intended heir.
The wall fractured further in Isaac’s two sons, Jacob and Esau.
The disenfranchised Esau and his uncle, the outcast Ishmael, began building a combined kingdom outside of God’s plan. In his book Christianity and Islam: Fractured Family at War, Jerry Hannah says, “Jacob became Israel and Esau merged into Ishmael, the father of the Arabs.” Hannah goes on to say, “Esau’s marriage to Ishmael’s daughter has mingled the seed of Esau with the descendants of Ishmael.”
Isaac and Ishmael were half-brothers. Jacob and Esau had identical birth certificates. They were twins. Yet the kingdoms they built were as different as night and day.
What kingdoms have we built? Are our walls of money, pride, and words? Or does the world look at us and see the life, sacrifice, and spoken words of the Christ?
Now back to our original question. Who are we? Kingdom Jesus or Kingdom Ishmael?
To build for eternity, we need to let Jesus be our architect.
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