Transcription
The devil knows something about you that you don't. That is not a metaphor. That is not a motivational opener. That is a theological reality that the Bible makes absolutely clear. And by the time this video is over, you are going to understand exactly what it means and exactly why the enemy has worked so hard to keep you in the dark about it.
But before we get there, I need to take you to a scene in the book of Acts. Because there is a moment recorded in Acts chapter 19 that most people read and pass right over. And if you have ever read it, I want you to read it again. Because what happened in that passage is still happening today.
Seven men. Seven sons of a Jewish chief priest named Sceva. They had watched the Apostle Paul move in extraordinary power. They had seen demons flee at the name of Jesus when Paul spoke it. And so they decided to try it themselves. They walked up to a man who was possessed by an evil spirit and they said, and I need you to hear these exact words. They said, "In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out."
And the demon answered them, not with silence, not with obedience. The evil spirit spoke back to them. And here is what it said. "Jesus I know and Paul I know about, but who are you?" And then the possessed man leaped on all seven of them, overpowered them, and they fled that house naked and bleeding. Seven men beaten by one. And the question that destroyed them was not about theology. It was not about technique. It was not even about how much they believed. It was a question of identity. "Who are you?"
Now, stay with that question for a moment because that same question is still being asked today. Not out loud, not in a way you can hear with your natural ears, but in the spirit realm every single time a believer steps forward to pray, to fight, to stand against darkness, the enemy runs a check. He looks at you and he asks, "Who is this? Do I know this name? Does this person actually know what they carry?"
And here is the uncomfortable truth that this video is going to confront directly. Most Christians cannot answer that question. Not because they lack faith, not because they are bad people, but because nobody ever told them what the Bible actually calls them. Nobody ever sat down and opened the word and showed them the specific titles, the specific rank, the specific position that scripture assigns to every single person who is in Christ Jesus.
The sons of Sceva failed because they were operating on borrowed authority. They used someone else's name without having any identity of their own in the spirit realm. And the enemy knew it the instant they opened their mouths.
But here is what changes everything. You are not like the sons of Sceva. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, the Bible does not describe you as someone borrowing power from someone else. It does not call you a bystander. It does not call you a spectator in a battle that is happening around you. The scripture gives you a title, a rank, a position so specific, so authoritative, so extraordinary that when a believer actually walks in it fully, consciously, and with understanding, it does not just change how they pray, it changes what the enemy is legally permitted to do to them.
And throughout this video, we are going to go through exactly what that identity is, verse by verse, word by word, starting with the passage in 1 Peter that most Christians have quoted their entire lives without ever understanding the explosive weight of what it is actually saying.
Now, I do need to warn you about something. There is a revelation coming toward the end of this video, something from scripture about your identity that is so extraordinary, so specific that even angels are described as longing to fully comprehend it. And when you hear it, something is going to shift in the way you see yourself. And the moment that shift happens, the moment you stop seeing yourself the way religion trained you to see yourself and start seeing yourself the way God's word declares you to be, that is the moment you become the most dangerous thing the enemy has ever had to face.
So, do not go anywhere. And if this is already stirring something in you, if you feel like this is a message you have been waiting to hear, hit that subscribe button right now and give this video a like. Every single like tells the algorithm to push this message in front of another believer who needs to hear exactly what you are about to hear. Do not keep this to yourself.
There is a verse that has been printed on coffee mugs, embroidered on throw pillows, posted on Instagram walls, and recited in Sunday school classrooms for decades. And because it has been repeated so many times in so many casual contexts, most Christians have completely lost the ability to hear what it is actually saying. 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 9. And I want you to listen to it right now as if you have never heard it before in your life.
"But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."
Now, most people hear that and they feel a warm, comfortable feeling, chosen, special, loved, and those things are true, but they are not even close to the full weight of what Peter just said. Because Peter was not writing a greeting card. He was not composing a motivational quote for a church bulletin board. Peter was a Jewish man writing to people who understood Jewish history, Jewish priesthood, and Jewish covenant. And when those original readers encountered the words "royal priesthood," something happened in their minds that does not happen in ours because we have lost the historical context that made those two words absolutely explosive.
So, let me give you that context right now because when you understand where those words came from, you will never read this verse the same way again. Go back to the book of Exodus, chapter 19. The nation of Israel is standing at the base of Mount Sinai. God has just delivered them from Egypt. The plagues, the parting of the sea, the pillar of fire, all of it is fresh. And now God speaks to Moses and tells him to say these specific words to the people.
"Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
A kingdom of priests. That was the original design. Not a nation that had priests, not a people who visited priests once a year on a holy day. A kingdom where every single member was a priest. Direct access, direct authority, direct relationship with the living God.
But Israel did not walk in that. They built the golden calf. They hardened their hearts, and as a result, the priestly function was restricted, narrowed down to one tribe, the Levites, and within that tribe to one family, the house of Aaron. The people lost the priesthood because they were not ready to carry it.
And here is where it gets staggering. When Peter writes "royal priesthood" to the church, to believers in Jesus Christ, he is not inventing a new concept. He is announcing a restoration. He is declaring that what Israel forfeited at Sinai, what was locked away behind a veil, what required a human mediator for centuries, has now been fully restored and given to every single person who is in Christ. You are not just saved, you are reinstated.
Now, notice Peter does not stop at priesthood. He adds the word "royal." And that word is doing enormous work in this sentence because a priest and a royal priest are not the same thing. A priest has access. A royal priest has access and authority. A priest ministers before God. A royal priest ministers before God and represents divine governance on Earth. Peter is stacking two of the highest offices in the ancient world, king and priest, and declaring that both of them belong to you, not to your pastor, not to a spiritual elite, to every believer who has been called out of darkness into the marvelous light of Jesus Christ.
And yet, look around at the average church. Look at the average Christian life. Look at how most believers approach their faith. With hesitation, with uncertainty, with a vague sense that God is somewhere up there, and they are down here hoping for the best. Praying timid prayers, living small spiritual lives, accepting defeat as though defeat were normal. That is not a priesthood. That is not royalty. That is amnesia. The enemy did not need to destroy you. He just needed to make you forget your title. Because a royal priest who does not know they are a royal priest functions exactly like a civilian. They have all the authority and none of the awareness. And in spiritual warfare, awareness is everything.
But here is what you need to understand. The priesthood Peter is describing is not metaphorical. It is not a poetic way of saying God likes you. The text is making a legal covenantal declaration about who you are and what you carry. And the moment you begin to operate from that declaration, the moment you stop approaching God as a beggar hoping to be heard and start approaching him as a priest who belongs in his presence, everything changes. Your prayers change. Your authority changes. The way the spirit realm responds to you changes.
Now, priesthood alone is already more than most believers have ever walked in. But being priest is only half of what the Bible assigns to you. There is another title, older, deeper, and even more dangerous to the kingdom of darkness that scripture places directly on your life. And it is found in the book of Revelation. And when you hear what it says and what it actually means for how you are supposed to live right now, today, it is going to reframe everything you thought you understood about your place in this story.
So, you are a priest, a royal priest, and now you need to understand the second title, the one that goes even deeper than priesthood, the one that the enemy fights hardest to keep you from believing about yourself. Open the book Revelation chapter 1 verse 6. The Apostle John is writing from the island of Patmos, exiled, surrounded by ocean, cut off from every church he had planted, every believer he had discipled. And in the middle of that isolation, he receives the most comprehensive vision of Christ in all of scripture. And the first thing he declares about what Jesus has done for those who believe in him, before the seals, before the trumpets, before the throne room, the very first declaration is this.
"He has made us kings and priests to his God and Father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever."
He has made us kings. Not he will make us kings. Not one day in the millennium when everything lines up perfectly, when you have been through enough suffering, when you have earned it through enough faithful years of service. He has made us kings. Past tense, completed action. Done.
Now I need you to feel the weight of that word, king. In the ancient world, a king was not just a title of honor. A king was a governing authority. A king carried jurisdiction. A king had the legal right to speak into a territory and have that territory respond. When a king issued a decree, the decree carried the force of the throne behind it. It was not a suggestion. It was not a request. It was a declaration backed by all the power and authority of the kingdom that king represented. And John says that is what you are.
Now watch how the New Testament builds this even further. Because Revelation chapter 5 verse 10 returns to this same declaration and adds a dimension that most people skip completely. It says, "You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth."
They will reign on the earth, not just in heaven, not just in some distant spiritual realm that has nothing to do with your Monday morning. On the earth, in the same world where you wake up, where you face your battles, where your family is struggling, where your body gets sick, where darkness tries to establish its influence in every corner of human life. That is the territory over which believers are called to reign.
So, let me ask you something directly. Does that describe the average Christian life you have observed? Does it describe yours? Because if you are honest, and I want you to be honest right now, most believers are not reigning. Most believers are surviving. Most believers are getting up every day and doing their best to hold their faith together under the weight of anxiety, fear, confusion, and spiritual opposition that never seems to let up.
And the question we have to ask is why. Why does a king live like a prisoner? Why does someone who has been legally crowned by the word of God spend their life feeling powerless? And here is the answer the scripture gives, not a theological answer, a strategic one. Because the enemy is not confused about what you are. He is not making a mistake when he attacks you. He is making a calculated decision to keep you so focused on surviving that you never get around to reigning. He knows that a believer who discovers they are a king is an entirely different problem than a believer who is just trying to make it through the week.
Think about what a king does. A king does not beg for access to what already belongs to his kingdom. A king does not plead with darkness to please stop encroaching on his territory. A king speaks with the authority of the throne, and darkness has to respond to that authority. That is not arrogance. That is not presumption. That is the governing function that God built into the identity of every person who is in Christ Jesus.
And the scripture is not vague about this. In the Gospel of Luke chapter 10, Jesus sends out 72 disciples, ordinary people, not the inner circle of 12, not the spiritually elite, and he gives them authority over all the power of the enemy. All of it. And when they return, they come back stunned. They say, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." And Jesus responds with something that should be tattooed on the inside of every believer's mind. He says, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy. Nothing will harm you." Nothing. That is a king's declaration from the King of kings to the kings he has made.
Now, some people hear this and they immediately get uncomfortable. And I understand that discomfort because religion has spent centuries training Christians to be humble in a way that actually looks a lot like powerlessness. It has confused meekness with weakness. It has taken the word "surrender" and applied it to spiritual authority in ways that the Bible never intended. And the result is a generation of believers who have been crowned by the word of God and are living like they lost the election.
But here is what I want you to understand about true biblical kingship. The authority that scripture assigns to you is not about ego. It is not about spiritual pride. It is not about walking around claiming things that do not belong to you. It is about understanding what the cross of Jesus Christ actually accomplished and then having the courage to live from that reality instead of below it.
When Jesus died and rose again, he did not just save your soul from hell. He restored the dominion that Adam surrendered in the garden. He took back the authority that was handed to the enemy when the first man believed the first lie. And then he distributed that restored authority to every single person who comes into union with him by faith. That is what Paul means in Romans chapter 5 when he talks about the gift that came through Christ being far greater than the damage that came through Adam. The restoration was not partial. The victory was not incomplete. The crown that was stripped from humanity in Eden has been placed back on the heads of those who are in Christ. You are not waiting to become a king. You have already been made one.
But here is where it gets even more extraordinary. If you have been made a king, you need a throne. You need a seat of authority from which to reign. And here is the question most Christians have never thought to ask, "Where is that throne?" Where exactly are you supposed to be seated when you exercise this royal authority?
The answer is in one of the most staggering verses in all of Paul's letters and it does not point to some future location in eternity. It points to a place that the Bible says you are already occupying right now, today, at this very moment, whether you know it or not. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 6. And I want you to read this slowly because Paul packed so much into one sentence that most people glide right over it without realizing that what they just read should have stopped them completely.
"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus."
Seated us, past tense, already done, not scheduled, not promised as a future reward for faithful living, not reserved for the spiritually mature after decades of discipline and sacrifice. Seated right now at this moment in the heavenly realms.
Now, before we go any further, I need you to understand what the heavenly realms actually means in Paul's theological framework because this is not a vague poetic phrase. Paul uses this specific term, "the heavenly realms," five times in the book of Ephesians alone. And every single time he uses it, he is describing the same location. He is describing the spiritual dimension that exists above and over the physical world. The realm where spiritual authority is exercised, the realm where principalities and powers operate, the realm where the decisions that shape the visible world are made. And Paul says, "That is where you are seated."
Think about what it means to be seated. In the ancient world, being seated was not a casual posture. When a king sat on his throne, he was not resting. He was governing. The seated position was the position of established authority. It communicated that the work of warfare was finished, that the victory had been secured, and that the one who was seated now ruled from a place of completed triumph. That is exactly the imagery Paul is drawing from because just a few chapters earlier in Ephesians chapter 1, he describes Christ being raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, far above every name that is named. And then in chapter 2, he says God seated us with him. Same location, same position, same spiritual altitude.
Now, let that land for just a moment. If Christ is seated far above every principality, every power, every demonic authority that operates in the spiritual realm, and if you're seated with him in that same position, then mathematically, positionally, spiritually, you are above every single force that has ever come against you. Not equal to it, not slightly higher, far above it. That is not a feeling. That is a coordinate. That is your actual spiritual address according to the word of God.
And here is where this becomes intensely practical because Paul does not give you this revelation so you can feel good about yourself. He gives it to you so you understand the mechanics of spiritual warfare. In Ephesians chapter 6, just a few pages after this declaration, Paul tells believers to put on the full armor of God so that they can stand against the schemes of the devil. And he describes the battle not as something happening at ground level, not as a fight between equals on a flat battlefield, but as a wrestling match against principalities and powers and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. The same heavenly realms where you are already seated.
Do you see what Paul is doing? He is telling you that the battle is happening in your territory. The enemy is operating in a realm where you have been given a seat of authority. You are not an outsider trying to break into enemy territory. The enemy is the intruder. You are the one with rightful position. You are the one seated. And the armor Paul describes is not the armor of someone who is afraid they might lose. It is the armor of someone who is protecting a victory that has already been won.
This is why prayer changes when you understand Ephesians 2:6. Most Christians pray from the ground looking up, desperately hoping that God will come down and intervene in their situation. And there is nothing wrong with desperate prayer. God hears every cry from every broken place. But Paul is showing you a different dimension of prayer. A prayer that is prayed not from the ground looking up, but from the throne looking down. A prayer that is prayed from your seated position in the heavenly realms, where you are declaring the will of the king into the territory beneath you. That is not presumption. That is the position the scripture assigns you.
And I want to be direct with you about something, because this is where a lot of people stumble. When they hear this truth for the first time, the immediate response is often resistance. It feels too big. It feels arrogant. It feels like the kind of thing that only super apostles and great men of God get to operate in, not ordinary believers with ordinary struggles and ordinary faith. And that resistance, that feeling that this cannot possibly be talking about me, is one of the most successful lies the enemy has ever planted in the body of Christ.
Because Paul does not write this letter to spiritual giants. He writes it to the church at Ephesus, to regular people, to former pagans who had been saved out of idol worship and witchcraft and every form of spiritual darkness, to men and women who had real problems, real struggles, real failures. And to those people, to people just like you, he says, "God has seated you in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus." The qualification is not your spiritual performance. The qualification is Christ. It is your union with him. It is the fact that when God looks at you, he sees you clothed in the righteousness of his son, positioned in the same place of authority that his son occupies. That is what "in Christ" means everywhere Paul uses it. It is not a religious phrase. It is a positional declaration. You are in him, which means where he is, you are. What he has, you carry. What he sits above, you sit above.
Now, there is something else happening in this verse that most commentaries mention briefly and then move past, but I do not want to move past it because it is directly connected to why so many believers never walk in this reality even after they hear it. Paul says God seated us in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. And then in the very next verse, he tells us why.
"In order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."
God seated you where he seated you as a demonstration, a display, a living, breathing, walking testimony to the entire universe, including the principalities and powers that are watching of what grace can do with a human being who surrenders to the lordship of Jesus Christ. You are not just a beneficiary of the gospel. You are an exhibition of it. Every time you walk in your identity, every time you pray from your seated position, every time you refuse to live beneath what the word declares over you, you are making a statement to the heavenly realms that grace is more powerful than darkness, that the cross accomplished exactly what God said it accomplished, and that the enemy's strategy of keeping believers confused about who they are has failed.
But here is the question that everything in this video has been building toward. If this is true, if the position is real, if the authority is real, if the seat is real, then why are so many Christians still living in defeat? Why does the enemy still seem to be winning in so many believers' lives? The answer is not what most people expect. It is not a lack of faith. It is not a lack of prayer. It is something far more deliberate, far more strategic, and far more ancient than anything you have probably been told in church. And that is exactly where we are going next.
Go back to the very beginning. Not the beginning of the church, not the beginning of the New Testament, go all the way back to the garden. Because the strategy the enemy is using against you right now, today, in your life, in your mind, in your sense of who you are, is not a new strategy. It is the oldest strategy in existence, and it has never changed, not once, because it has never needed to. It keeps working. Generation after generation, century after century, believer after believer, the same move, the same target, the same result. And the target has always been identity.
In Genesis chapter 1, God creates man and woman. And before he does anything else, before he gives them responsibilities, before he establishes any commandments, before he explains the rules of the garden, he speaks identity over them. He says, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." Image, likeness, rule, dominion. That is the first thing God establishes about human beings, not what they must do, who they are.
And then the enemy arrives. And I want you to notice something that most people completely miss when they read the story of the fall. The serpent does not come into the garden with a weapon. He does not come with force. He does not try to physically remove Adam and Eve from the garden or destroy them outright. He comes with a question, and that question is the most strategically targeted question in the history of creation. He says to the woman, "Did God really say?" Four words. And with those four words, he does not attack her body. He does not attack her circumstances. He attacks her understanding of what God said about her and to her. He creates doubt, not about God's existence, but about God's word. Not about whether God is real, but about whether what God declared can actually be trusted.
And the moment Eve entertained that question, the moment she allowed the seed of doubt about God's word to take root, the dominion began to slip because dominion was always connected to identity, and identity was always anchored in what God said. The moment you stop believing what God says about you, you stop functioning as what God made you to be. You do not lose the title officially, you just stop walking in it. And practically speaking, the effect is exactly the same.
Adam and Eve did not lose the image of God the moment they ate the fruit, but they lost the conscious awareness of who they were in relation to God. They hid. They covered themselves. They felt exposed, and that feeling of exposure, that instinct to hide from the presence of God, was the beginning of a spiritual amnesia that has been passed down through every generation since.
Now, fast forward to the New Testament. Jesus comes. He goes to the cross. He rises from the dead. And in doing so, he accomplishes something that the book of Romans describes in chapter 5 as a complete reversal of everything Adam lost. Paul says, "For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous." What Adam broke, Christ restored. What the garden surrendered, the cross reclaimed. The dominion, the identity, the position, all of it recovered and redistributed to every person who comes into union with Jesus Christ by faith.
And here is what should stagger you. The enemy watched all of that happen. He was there at the cross. He thought he was winning when the nails went in, and then the resurrection happened, and he realized with absolute horror that he had not destroyed the son of God. He had provided the mechanism for the full restoration of everything he had stolen in the garden. The cross did not just save souls from hell. The cross reversed the identity theft of Eden.
So, the enemy cannot undo the cross. He cannot un-resurrect Jesus. He cannot reach into the heavenly realms and pull you out of the seated position that Ephesians 2:6 declares is yours. He does not have that power. The legal transaction of Calvary is permanently sealed. But here is what he can do. He can make you forget about it. And that right there is the entire strategy. That is the whole playbook. It has one page, one move, one target. Make the believer forget who they are.
Because a believer who has forgotten their identity functions like a believer who was never given one. The authority is real but unused. The position is real but unoccupied. The title is real but unclaimed. And from a practical standpoint, in the day-to-day reality of spiritual warfare, an authority that is never exercised is an authority that might as well not exist.
Think about what that means for your life specifically. Every time you have felt spiritually powerless, every time anxiety has gripped you and refused to let go, every time fear has made decisions for you that faith should have made, every time you have looked at a situation and thought, "God is not going to come through for me this time," that was not just a hard moment. That was the oldest strategy in existence working exactly as designed. The enemy was not attacking your circumstances first. He was attacking your identity. Because he knows that if he can get you to forget who you are, your circumstances will take care of themselves.
And the method he uses to create that forgetfulness is not always dramatic. It is not always some spectacular spiritual assault that you can clearly identify and resist. Most of the time it is quiet, gradual, incremental. It is the slow accumulation of disappointments that makes you wonder if God really hears you. It is the chronic struggle that makes you feel like everyone else's faith works, but yours does not. It is the voice, subtle, persistent, patient, that whispers, "You are not really who you think you are. God does not really move for people like you. That identity stuff is for someone else, someone more consecrated, someone more qualified, someone who has not made the mistakes you have made." That voice is not your conscience. That voice is not wisdom. That voice is the same serpent who stood in the garden and said, "Did God really say?" applied directly to your life, your history, and your specific vulnerabilities. And it is designed with surgical precision to do one thing, keep you small, keep you confused, keep you functioning below your name.
Now, I want to show you what happens when a believer breaks through that confusion and actually operates in their identity. Because the scripture gives us examples, and they are not subtle. In 1 Kings chapter 18, the prophet Elijah stands alone on Mount Carmel against 450 prophets of Baal, and he does not pray a timid, uncertain, "Please, God, if it is your will" kind of prayer. He prays from identity. He calls down fire from heaven with the confidence of someone who knows exactly who they are in relation to the God they serve, and fire falls. Not a spark, not a flicker, fire that consumes the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the soil, and the water that had been poured over the altar. Complete, total, undeniable demonstration of divine authority flowing through a man who knew his name in the spirit realm.
In Acts chapter 16, Paul and Silas are in prison, beaten, chained, in the deepest part of the dungeon. And at midnight, not at sunrise when hope feels reasonable, not after a good night of sleep, when faith comes easier, but at midnight in the darkest hour, they sing. They worship. And the text says that suddenly there was a great earthquake. The prison foundations were shaken. Every door flew open and every chain fell off every prisoner. That is not coincidence. That is what happens when people who know their identity refuse to let their circumstances define them. That is what happens when kings who have been thrown in a prison remember that no physical chain has authority over a spiritual seat in the heavenly realms.
And in Luke chapter 10, the 72 come back to Jesus stunned and say, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." These were not the 12 apostles. These were not the inner circle. These were ordinary disciples. People with ordinary histories, ordinary struggles, ordinary faith, who had simply been told what authority they carried and then went out and acted like they believed it. That is the pattern. Every single time a believer in scripture operated in full awareness of their identity, the spirit realm responded. Not sometimes, every time. Because identity was never the variable. Identity was the constant. The only variable was whether the believer knew it and believed it enough to act on it.
And that is the thing the enemy cannot afford for you to discover. Not just intellectually, not just as an interesting theological concept that you nod at on Sunday and forget by Monday. He cannot afford for you to actually believe it in the deepest part of who you are. To wake up in the morning and know without question, without hesitation, that you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a king seated in the heavenly realms carrying the full restored authority of everything Christ accomplished on the cross. Because the moment you believe that, really believe it, you stop being a target and you start being a threat.
And there is one final piece of this identity that we have not talked about yet. Something so extraordinary, so personal, so layered with meaning that I have been building toward it since the very first minute of this video. It is the dimension of your identity that is not just positional, not just authoritative, not just covenantal, but relational. And it is the piece that makes everything else make sense. The piece that even the angels, according to 1 Peter chapter 1, long to look into. This is the part that is going to change everything.
Here it is. The piece everything has been building toward. The dimension of your identity that is not just positional, not just authoritative, not just covenantal, but personal, relational. The identity that does not just describe what you carry, but who you actually are in the eyes of the living God. And I want to start with a passage that most people walk right past. 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 12.
Peter is describing the salvation that has been given to believers. The grace, the redemption, the extraordinary plan that God set in motion before the foundation of the world. And then he says something that should stop every reader cold. He says that these are things that even angels long to look into. Angels, the most powerful created beings in the universe. Beings of fire and light who stand before the throne of God, who have witnessed every miracle in human history, who were present at creation when the morning stars sang together. Beings who do not experience confusion, who do not struggle with doubt, who exist in the full presence of divine glory, and they long to look into what you have received. Not what you have done. Not the miracles you have performed or the prayers you have answered. What you have received, the identity that was given to you through Jesus Christ. The angels are leaning in, straining to comprehend something about your relationship with God that even their extraordinary existence does not give them access to.
And the reason is this, angels are servants, magnificent, powerful, glorious servants, but servants. The book of Hebrews chapter 1 verse 14 asks the question plainly, "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?" They serve you. Which means what you have been given in Christ is something categorically different from what even the highest angel in heaven possesses.
So, what is it? What is this identity that angels cannot fully comprehend? That the enemy cannot stand to let you discover? That the entire trajectory of scripture has been moving towards since the garden? John chapter 1 verse 12.
"Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."
Children. Not servants, not subjects, not admirers from a distance. Children. And I need you to understand that the word John uses here, the Greek word *technon*, is not a metaphor. It is not a spiritual allegory. It is not a poetic way of saying that God is kind toward you. It is a declaration of actual ontological reality. When you came to faith in Jesus Christ, something happened to your nature. Something changed at the deepest level of what you are. You were not just forgiven. You were not just pardoned and released. You were born again into the actual family of God.
Paul picks this up in Romans chapter 8 verse 17. And this is where the full weight of everything we have talked about converges into one sentence. He says, "Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ."
Co-heirs with Christ. Take a moment and let that phrase do what it is designed to do. Co-heirs, not subordinate heirs, not junior heirs who receive a smaller portion. Co-heirs, equal standing in the inheritance, which means everything that belongs to Christ by right of his divine sonship has been made available to you by right of your adoption into the same family. The riches of heaven, the authority of the throne, the access to the Father, the name above every name, co-heirs, shared inheritance.
And then Paul adds four words that are among the most extraordinary four words in all of scripture. He says, "Co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." Share in his glory. Not witness his glory from a distance. Not admire his glory from the outside. Share in it. Participate in it. Be included within it. The same glory that John saw when he fell at the feet of the risen Christ like a dead man in Revelation chapter 1. The same glory that Paul encountered on the road to Damascus that was brighter than the midday sun. The same glory that caused the soldiers who came to arrest Jesus in the garden to fall backward to the ground when he simply said, "I am he." That glory, the Bible says, is something you are destined to share in.
Now, do you understand why the angels lean in? They can see the glory. They dwell in it constantly, but they do not inherit it. They do not share in it. They serve the heirs of it, and the heirs are you, broken, struggling, ordinary, redeemed human beings who said yes to Jesus Christ and were instantly translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved son.
Second Corinthians chapter 5:17 brings all of this into one final declaration that I want you to hear not as a familiar verse, but as a live word spoken directly into your identity right now.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone. The new is here."
New creation. Not reformed, not improved, not the old version with some upgrades. A new creation. Something that did not exist before. Something that has no precedent in the natural world. A human being who carries the spirit of the living God, who is seated in the heavenly realms, who has been crowned as king and priest, who is a co-heir with the son of God, who bears the family name of heaven, who the angels themselves minister to and marvel at. That is what you are. That is what the Bible says you are. Not what you feel like on a hard Tuesday morning. Not what your past tells you. Not what your failures have defined you as. Not what religion reduced you to. What the word of God, the eternal, unchanging, unbreakable word of the living God declares over every single person who is in Christ Jesus.
And here is the conclusion that everything leads to. The enemy is not afraid of religious people. He is not afraid of church attendance or denominational affiliation or theological knowledge that stays in the head and never reaches the bones. He has watched the church for 2,000 years and he has learned exactly how to neutralize believers who know the right words but have never allowed those words to become their actual identity.
What terrifies the enemy is a believer who wakes up in the morning and knows, not hopes, not wishes, not tries to convince themselves, but knows who they are. A believer who prays from their seated position in the heavenly realms instead of begging from the floor. A believer who carries the title of king and priest not as a theological badge but as a lived, breathing, daily operational reality. A believer who looks at every attack, every fear, every dark assignment sent against their life and responds not with panic but with the calm, settled authority of someone who has read the end of the book and knows exactly how this story finishes. That believer is the most dangerous thing the kingdom of darkness has ever encountered. Not because of talent, not because of gifting, not because of years of ministry or impressive spiritual resume, but because of identity, because of the name they carry, because of whose family they belong to, because of the seat they occupy, because of the inheritance that has been legally, covenantally, irrevocably assigned to them through the blood of Jesus Christ.
You are chosen. You are royal. You are holy. You are a priest. You are a king. You are a co-heir with Christ. You are a new creation. You are a child of the living God. And the sons of Sceva failed because the demon asked, "Who are you?" and they had no answer. But if that same question is ever asked of you, and it will be in one form or another every time you step into spiritual battle, you now have an answer. One that is not borrowed from someone else's authority. One that belongs to you. One that is written in the eternal word of God and sealed by the blood of the risen Christ.
So, walk in it. Pray from it. Live from it. Stop apologizing for it. Stop shrinking away from it. Stop letting the enemy convince you that it is too big for someone like you. It was given to someone exactly like you. That is the whole point of grace. That is the whole point of the cross. That is the whole point of the resurrection. The identity scripture gives you is not a reward for getting everything right. It is a gift for everyone who surrenders to the lordship of Jesus Christ. And it is yours right now, today, exactly as you are.
Now, before this video ends, I want to ask you to do two things. First, if this message opened something in you, if it shifted something, if it made you see yourself in a way you have never seen yourself before, share it right now. Leave a comment below and tell me which part of this hit you hardest. Hit that like button so that the algorithm carries this message to another believer who is sitting somewhere right now feeling powerless, feeling forgotten, feeling like their faith is not working, and needs to hear exactly what you just heard. And if you are not subscribed yet, do it now because this is the kind of content that keeps going deeper.
But the second thing, and this is the most important thing I will say in this entire video, is for the person watching right now who has never surrendered their life to Jesus Christ. Maybe you came across this video searching for something. Maybe someone shared it with you. Maybe you have been circling this decision for a long time without ever taking the step. Everything we talked about today, the identity, the authority, the position, the inheritance, the family name of heaven, none of it is available outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ. It is not earned. It is not achieved. It is received by faith, by surrender, by saying yes to the one who went to the cross so that you could have a name in the spirit realm that makes darkness tremble.
If that is you, if you are ready to step into the identity that scripture has been holding open for you, then I want to invite you right now to make the most important decision of your life. Repeat this after me in your heart. Say it out loud if you can. Tell Jesus you believe he is the son of God, that he died for your sins, that he rose from the dead, and that you are choosing today to surrender your life to him completely. And if you just made that decision, if you just said yes to Jesus for the very first time, I want to know about it. Write it in the comments right now. Write, "I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior." So the entire community here can celebrate with you because heaven is celebrating right now, and so are we.