(or) Why it Really Isn't About Me
(Comments some of you have made as we began our journey of learning to lived loved in 2009.) How would you describe your quest to live in God’s love? As I look back over my spiritual pilgrimage, I think I can say that I am more aware of God’s love than ever, and that even when I’m not tangibly experiencing it, there is an underlying confidence in His tender care, which permeates most of my days. One thing, however, still has the power to sabotage my sense of being loved, and that is when I’m confronted with my self – my weaknesses and failures, frail efforts or lack of commitment, my pride or my cold heart – among other things. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t at some point find myself thinking about the litany of ways I haven’t measured up. When these things cloud my vision, it’s difficult to return to the simplicity of resting in the embrace of a loving Lord. CONTEMPLATE THE GOD OF LOVE SHARE YOUR JOURNEY HERE! As I have harvested my journals over the years, I find an insecurity in His love as a running theme. My head acknowledges the truth of His love, but my heart holds Him at arm's length.
I have been wandering for 6 years as a believer, and I still don't really get it - in my heart of hearts. I get glimpses of it, and how incredibly beautiful it is, but then it disappears.
Intellectually I know I am loved by God and at rare and special times I have a sense of His pleasure and it is so wonderful, but it doesn't last very long.
This seems to be a common pitfall, and some of the ways we often deal with it don’t help. For years I would admit my flaws (confess my sins) and then double my efforts to do better. The lie I was operating under was that it was somehow up to me to be worthy of God’s love and if I’d just work harder at it, I could be. Of course I knew this wasn’t really true, but my actions screamed otherwise. The other option, one supported by a plethora of Christian teaching, was to not think about my weaknesses and sins and try instead to focus on my value to God, to remind myself of the great price He paid to save me, clinging to that as proof that I must have great worth in His eyes. While all of this is true, it never gave me the lasting security in His love that I longed for.
What I’ve come to understand is that both of these approaches failed for the same reason: I was putting myself in the center of a story that is not primarily about me, but about the God who made me for Himself. What I needed to do instead was to take my eyes off of me and seek to become saturated with who God is. I’m learning more and more that because God is love, my call is to gaze continually upon every facet of His character, His attributes and His ways. The more I do this, the more those things that discourage me about myself lose their power to pull me from Him.
It is an amazing thing that my deficiencies, instead of keeping me from His tender embrace, can actually be catalysts to draw me into it. Practically, this realization has impacted not only how I spend time alone with the Lord, but in my walk throughout the day. Now, when I’m confronted with my own inadequacy, I try to turn the looking glass around and seek to discover something of the loveliness of my Lord. For example, when I regret something I’ve said or done, instead of beating myself up, I use it to draw attention to the magnitude of God’s mercy. When I look back on a day and feel like I didn’t get much right, I take some time to contemplate the One who always did. When I find myself striving to be better than I am, I meditate on the wonder of grace. And when I feel like my journey has been two steps forward and one step back for far too long, I ask God to reveal in a deeper way, the force of His faithfulness. With each glimpse of His glory, I am more in awe that this is the God who has promised to love me throughout eternity.
Many of you have joined me in meditating on some of Jesus’ final prayer before His death (John 1:20-26). In one astounding statement, Jesus says that He has given His followers the same glory that His Father gave Him, because of His great love. I have pondered this for weeks now, and though I am sure I don’t grasp even the half of it, this much I am beginning to see: The greatest assurance I have that I am loved by Almighty God is that He chooses to share His glory with me, to let me see with the eyes of my heart the beauty of His very being. When I remember this, every reason I might find to question His love simply points me back to the One who stands there ready to give me Himself –His wealth for my weakness, His faith for my unbelief, His wisdom for my confusion, His kindness for my callous heart, His goodness for my selfishness, His purity for my shame or His holiness for my worldliness. God’s love is as infinite as He is, and that is why I’m convinced that our greatest hope of living loved is to learn to fix our gaze upon Him.
For those who are working through the plan, click here for some ideas for putting this into practice.
In Him,
Tricia
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