Years ago, I read a story told by a missionary ministering in an Eskimo village in Canada’s high Arctic in what was then called the Northwest Territories.

While on a hunting trip, one of the Eskimo men came across a young female wolf pup and brought it back to the village.

The other dogs in town immediately recognized it was different and terrorized the poor animal.

But the villagers fed the wolf and it grew into adulthood. A full-grown arctic wolf can reach a height of five feet and weigh upwards of a 175 pounds. The now full-grown female wolf was a powerful animal, head and shoulders above any dog in the village. It could kill most dogs in a heart beat, but the wolf never grasped who it really was.

Despite its massive size, the dogs in the village were still terrorizing the wolf. The missionary remembers one day watching the wolf being chased, tail between its legs, down a street by a yappy little house dog.

A few days later, one of the men from the village took the wolf out to the tundra and shot it.

It was a sad end to such a majestic animal. But the villagers were fearful one day it would wake up and understand who it really was. At that moment, everything would change and no one would be safe.

We will never know what thoughts, if any, flashed through the young wolf’s mind. Were its instincts yelling out “you are a wolf” or was there just silence as it allowed its reality to be defined by a little lap dog?

Many Christians are no different from this wolf. On one hand, there is the reality of who we are in Christ, but on the other we live in a surreal world coloured by unbelief and wrong perceptions.

As we read through the New Testament, God makes many declarations about believers. We are:

• Children of God (1 John 3:1)
• A Royal Priesthood (1 Peter 2:9)
• A chosen race (1 Peter 2:9)
• A Holy nation (1 Peter 2:9)
• The Light of the world (Eph 5:8)
• Forgiven (1 John 1:9)
• The dwelling place of God (1 John 4:12)
• New creation (2 Cor 5;17)
• Heirs of God (Titus 3:7)

But for most, these are just words on paper. This collection of words must be embedded in our spirits and our mind. We have to start believing what the Bible says about us.

If believers ever grasp who they are in Christ; if we ever understand our true authority in God, the world will become a dangerous place for evil and its minions.//