Deep and Wide

Oct. 4, 2012

A large part of my job as a counselor is to help people learn to love and accept themselves – not just as how they should love themselves but how God loves them.  It is astounding how many people don’t fully grasp and accept the love that God has for them.

I used to be one of those people.  I used to know only my worthlessness.  I used to know only that I am dirty.  I was shameful in its truest sense – full of shame.  I can’t say that I ever hated myself but I sure didn’t like what I saw.  And, if I didn’t like what I saw, then how could anyone else?

“Does God love you?” I asked.

“The Bible says He does.  So, yes,” she said.  It’s the Sunday school answer.

“Why would He love you?  How do you know?  What proof do you have?”  I pushed further.

“Because Jesus died for me,” she responded.

“And, He made you.  He made you and bought you.  You are His twice over,” I said.

“I just wish I felt it,” she said.

“What are you expecting to feel?” I asked.  I get a stunned look in response.

“Well that’s a good question.  I don’t know.”

“Are you expecting a warm and ooshy gooshy love feeling?”  She knows me well enough to know that I am not mocking her.  We sit in silence for a moment as she ponders the question.  “Warm and ooshy gooshy isn’t what I feel.”

She asked the obvious next question.

Once I fully got it, once I really grasped that God loved me for no other reason than that He created me and He bought me with the blood of Jesus Christ, my confidence grew.  No longer was my self-worth based on what I thought of myself.  No longer was it based on knowing that someone else devalued me.  No longer was it based on what I could or couldn’t do or who I did or didn’t know.  God loves me because I am me.  Plain and simple.

With accepting that truth, the possibility of failure loses its sting.  I no longer shrink from challenges.  With knowing God’s devotion and longing for me, I no longer doubt His presence in my life.  With understanding His steadfast love for me, I can be angry with Him and know that it is OK.  Fully realizing God’s unfailing, unconditional, unchanging love gives me a confidence that says, “I’m OK.”  Someone may not like me and that may hurt my feelings but that doesn’t affect me to my core.  I may fail horribly at something and I’ll be disappointed in myself but that doesn’t affect me to my core.  I’m OK because God says I am. 

It’s hard to say exactly how you come to fully realize this.  Part of it is coming to a point of being so tired of carrying the old junk that holds you down that you decide to try something new.  The old way of thinking doesn’t get you where you want to be so you have to try thinking something different.  If holding onto lies fails you, then what do you do?  Hold on to the truth.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
                                                                                                                ~ ~ Eph. 3:16-19