Favour Migration

[Part 3, Chapter 19] 

Elizabeth’s disgrace was taken away.

That is a powerful description of what has taken place in us because of Jesus.

However, the pain of what took place can leave us living with the feeling of disgrace. That negative feeling can nestle in to stay. We may then define ourselves by what happened to us or what we did, rather than how Father sees us through Jesus.

Elizabeth views herself differently because she now sees herself in alignment with the way God has regarded her all along. It’s as if a migration has taken place within her, travelling from a place of shame-induced despair to a place of favour-released delight.

Favour is the Holy Spirit’s perspective we have in our life. It gives us a starting point that enables us to move forward from the position of favour toward the outcome, even if we don’t know what that will look like. With Jesus, we don’t have to journey into the future from a position of hopelessness or despair.

We’re called to be migrants, the migration taking place in our heart or spirit, which then renews our mind.

Life in Jesus is a migratory one. Struggling with sin, for example, becomes a springboard for a new mindset. We travel from the land where the effects of sin blind and deafen us, desensitising us to the favour of God, into the land where grace abounds all the more (Romans 5:15, 17).

The migration doesn’t take place by boat, but by burial. According to Romans 6, your old nature has been buried into Jesus’ death. When Jesus died, you died, because you are united with him. The Father has joined you into Jesus. That’s your migration right there. When Jesus came alive again to a new life, so did you.

You are no longer in the land where sin, death, the devil, disgrace, guilt, hiding, lack, and fear rule. You have been migrated, through Jesus, into the land where forgiveness, life, freedom, sonship, identity, security, abundance, and perfect love are the standard.

Migration is never easy. It is often challenging to leave the ways of the old country behind. What we are forsaking, however, is an unbiblical, unhelpful, even devilish view of ourselves that defines us as sinners and leaves us as people who feel they have to beg or grovel for something that is already ours.

What we are receiving is a truthful, new covenant-grounded, favour-founded, liberating view of ourselves as people who are defined by Jesus because we have died and been raised with him.

Migration brings challenges and changes.  Changes in our thinking, in our habits, in the way we perceive other people, all flowing out of the way we now see ourselves. The new environment we now live in is the environment of favour and grace, where we do not accuse or belittle ourselves and live out of shame and guilt.

Are you up for a migration?

Father’s favour has put you into Jesus.

Father’s favour sustains you in Jesus.

Father’s favour frees you to fully see yourself as the favoured one you are.