Hearing The Love



By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after being encircled for seven days.
Hebrews 11:30

A little while ago I saw a quiz about IQ and several people’s responses to their results. It made me laugh as some of the people are very close to me and finally, maybe, seeing something I’ve been trying to tell them for years. As usual I was taken by how quick we all are to measure ourselves in comparison to others.

Shortly after seeing the quiz and the reactions, I was deep in prayer when God revealed to me that one of my biggest strongholds is allowing the opinions of one small, particular group of people to shape who I am and how I see myself. Through a very pointed Scripture He reminded me that I am His, His daughter, His creation, His beloved. Lyrics from three of my favorite songs ran through my head, all about belonging to God and how deep and great is His love for us. ( 1 John 3:1) What a blessing!

I have a little journal that I use every morning to write down ten blessings for the day. They range from the sublime, God’s grace, mercy, or something of that nature to things like tea. The lists reflect the fact that everything I have and/or am is a gift from God. He is so incredibly good to me. I am aware of that and somewhat aware that not everyone shares that same awareness. (I apologize for overworking that word.) I understand that every person’s faith is different and that there are people who truly do not think about God at all. It’s just odd to me. I cannot imagine a day where God was not in my thoughts. I talk to Him all the time. I am conscious of His presence.

That’s when I really understood what God was telling me, not for the first time, certainly but in a very intense way. It does not matter what any other human being thinks, how they see me or even what IQ they may have or I may have. I am a child of God, deeply loved, quite unique and most important, fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139)

Many years ago a friend of mine used to say, “They can’t get me into heaven but they might keep me out.” Try as I did, I could not get her to see the error of that thinking. The truth is no other person can keep us out of heaven but the influence we let other people or things have on our life, can keep us from doing all that we were created to do, or from being what we were created to be. That feels like sin, to trust another word more than the Word of God. So I sat with it for a bit. Then I listened to those songs that help me remember how deep our Father’s love truly is. I can’t say definitively that this is a life changing morning but I can say that it certainly looks that way.


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