Quote of the night- “it’s better to be naked in truth then clothed in fantasy”. Brennan Manning
Do you believe God loves you as you are? The question went in my ears as I closed my eyes to take an honest evaluation of what I believe. My initial reaction was of course I believe God loves all of me. In fact, I think most people on the surface would come to this conclusion first time around. When I really dug deep I found parts of myself still feeling like I need to “do” something in order to clean myself up before the Lord. In my head, I know nothing is hidden from God so, it seemed rather foolish to go through this meaningless housekeeping ordeal in the first place.
Come as you are is God’s heart. I am scandalized by the generosity of God. His crazy behavior allows me to risk being my authentic self. But, I still have a hard time grasping His limitless mercy. I’m lovable because He loves me period. God is always greater then my largest concept of Him. Each day I arrive at a larger and more powerful understanding of God, but still…He’s greater. I must stretch my thinking and then the next day stretch it even more. God can’t stop loving. There are no conditions with God. God does not base His love on the feeling of the day. He models consistent generosity with His love. The Love of Jesus is reliable.
How can I ever love like God? There is so much injustice in this world. How can I love with this indiscriminate love? First I need to know Him. We behave like the God we imagine. Think about that. How we behave toward our self and toward others is largely rooted in the image we have of God. If we have self-hatred for example, we may view God up in the sky with a BIG wooden spoon ready to get us good for our rebellion or failure. Our image of our self is directly related to our image of God.
Hence, the theme of my “2007 late night ponderings” keep pointing back to IDENTITY. There is a strong need for reconciliation in the family unit but tonight it occurred to me that you must have reconciliation or peace with yourself before you can have true reconciliation with others. It must start with us.
I know for me, I need to heal my image of God along with any distortions I have of His character. It is really easy to gather up the wrong information about God. I have been taking myself through a spiritual exercise this past week. I have been reading one of my all time favorite books called Knowledge of the Holy, by AW TOZER. Every morning I have been reading a chapter and chewing on it. Although very dense, my image of God is being restored. I can’t tell you how little my fears, problems and circumstances are now that I am healing my image of God. I have felt peace, stability and joy tenfold.
Brennan Manning spoke tonight and he quoted someone who had a saying that I love. It went like this. Be who you is, cuz if you aint who you is, you will become what you aint.
Healing our image of God heals our image of ourselves. My prayer is that deep, deep in the core of our identity we would begin to grasp the grace, boundless mercy, tender love, intimacy, and awareness of God generosity toward us. When we fail or people fall short we can rest, truly REST because God’s love is reliable.
The word I am getting for our generation is this- God is love. If you base your identity on the validation from any other source you will become restless. You can come before God as you ARE warts and all. Shame, self-hatred, anger, depression- God couldn’t love you more right now in this place.
There was a day in high school when my dad found me at my mom’s house passed out and surrounded by bottles of prescription meds and photos of people I cared about. I was a confused young woman and this was my deadly attempt for attention. Shortly after this sad episode, I was confronted with a message of hope that would forever change and literally save my life. Yet the words that uttered from my mouth were, “God would NEVER love me”. Clearly, I had no understanding or at least a disturbing understanding of the God I know now. I have spent the last ten years rebuilding my identity. I have also been tested more in this area because I have a passion to help multitudes of people with rediscovering their true identity. I only speak and write about this because I understand the struggle and I am motivated by the potential of a generation of people who are living out their destiny with utmost freedom. Only when we are naked in truth will be able dispel the fantasy and deal with the core of who we are and why we are here.
