Are You Peculiar?

Are You Peculiar?

Mary Ann Wray

We’ve all seen some peculiar things in our lives ranging from the fictional to the real. I’ll never forget the first time I heard about and saw a duck-billed platypus as a youngster. This creature is part mammal and bird. The platypus is the only kind and living representative of its family and genus in the animal kingdom. It hatches from an egg like a reptile or a bird, but it grows fur and has mammary glands to feed milk to its young. It is warm-blooded unlike a bird or reptile. It lives on land but spends a lot of its time in water.  Platypus have a bill like a duck and webbed feet like an otter. It’s sort of a ‘misfit’ in the animal kingdom-an anomaly of sorts since it’s a mixture of several other animal species. There is no other living creature like it on earth.

The Merriam-Webster definition for the word peculiar is: characteristic of only one person, group, or thing; different from the usual or normal: strange, odd or unusual. Another dictionary defines it as belonging exclusively to something. For example, you can only buy hospital antiseptics at a medical supply store. Those kinds of chemical cleaners are peculiar to and exclusively used in hospitals. You can’t get them anywhere else, so you can’t use them anywhere else.

There’s a spiritual lesson we can learn from a little platypus. As Christians, we have to know and understand that God calls us peculiar because through the New Birth, He fashioned us completely different than we were before. He re-created our spirit that way.  In 1 Peter 2: 9-10 the Apostle explains it this way: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

You see, you may have come from the south, you may have been born into an Italian family, a Mid-Eastern Family, a black family, or be of Asian origin, et cetera et cetera, but after the New Birth something supernatural happened to you. You took on a new form-something and someone we never were before. Paul said that if any man be in Christ he is a new creature. Old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5: 17). The term “new creature” here means of a new kind; unprecedented, novel, uncommon, and unheard of. For this reason, your identity changed from an enemy of God to being adopted into the Family of God as His son or daughter.

Your spiritual experience and ‘newness’ is very strange and weird to the world. They just don’t get it any more than you or I did before the Holy Spirit convicted us. When you were born again and radically converted, you may have experienced a kind of awkwardness with your former friends or even family members. You had the same hair, the same eyes and the same physical appearance that you had before you got saved, but your spiritual DNA changed and you became a new creature in Christ. For this reason, you began to feel differently, act differently, speak differently and your lifestyle began to change over time. People started to notice these changes, especially after you started witnessing to them. You soon realized that you were not of this world. You became very peculiar to your friends and family. They couldn’t find any use for you as this “new creature”.  You became a mystery, even a threat to them.

“To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?” 1 Corinthians 2: 16 NLT

Many local churches have also become an oddity to the world and even other local churches because of their spiritual DNA. You see, over the past 100 years, because of the Azusa Street Revival, Charismatic movement, and other great moves of God, we find many local churches that have become diverse in cultures. People from all different nationalities and denominations have come together and found a common bond in the Holy Spirit. We also see how in local churches where the gifts and manifestations of the Spirit are allowed to be expressed though earthen vessels, even more diversity is seen.

Paul explains diversity in the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 verses 2-7 this way when he said, “You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.  Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of manifestations, but the same Holy Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.  There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

Here the Apostle tells us how we were brought out of our former lifestyle (pagans and unbelievers) into Life in the Spirit through Jesus Christ. Then he points out that the Holy Spirit’s manifestations are as varied and diverse in their working as an individual is but it’s all from the same Father. When we allow God to use us the way we were designed, we partake and drink from the same living well of the Spirit and it is for the benefit of ALL. Each one of us is uniquely wired and designed with different personalities and giftings. The Holy Spirit anoints US, so His gifts come through us; that is where the diversity comes. It comes by and through the Holy Spirit but it is filtered through our unique and individual personalities. We are just the filter through which He flows.

If the filter is clogged or dirty, what comes through it will be affected. We have a strainer screen in our bathtub drain because we found that without one, the drain becomes clogged and the shower water backs up quickly. However, that drain filter can get clogged with hair and dirt and if we don’t clean it out and scrub the screen, the water will still get backed up. It’s the same way with us. If my filter (soul) is clogged up with unforgiveness, bitterness, anger, jealousy, partiality and the like, the Spirit’s flow will get backed up and He can’t use me the way He wants to. The Body of Christ suffers for it since we are interconnected.

If we are going to walk in unity as a church with diverse people (not talking about sexual orientation) but talking about diverse in cultures, color, personalities,  giftings etc. we have got to get cleansed and purged from our former way and the world’s way of thinking concerning WHO we are and WHAT we are.

We are Children of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ and individual members of the Body of Christ, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, black or white, Hispanic or Oriental, rich or poor etc. These are natural/ carnal ways of identifying people and this is how the WORLD identifies its own. We, the CHURCH of the LIVING GOD, have been made ONE through the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can't argue against the CREATOR of man....HE says this:

“For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters. Rather, what matters is being a new creation.” Galatians 6: 15

In other words, your former religious or cultural identity means nothing to God and is useless. What matters is being Born Again and made a new creature in Christ! Through the New Birth we are made ONE Body. God does not segregate us; fallen man does that to himself.

"From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands." Acts 17: 26

We are not rightly discerning the Body of Christ if we identity ourselves or anyone else in the Body of Christ by race, color, nationality, culture etc. As a child of God our identity is just that; nothing more and nothing else. God takes your personality and diversity to be blessing and vessel through which He an flow to bless others but if we allow anything of this world to taint us we stop being peculiar and become just like the rest of the world-abnormally normal. We are the Family of God with One Father, One blood and One Messiah-the Lord Jesus Christ.