You are loved, right this minute.
You may think that you must become better, thinner, stronger or smarter to be loved by God but the most important truth you need to to know is that you are loved by Jesus right this minute just as you are, how you are and where you are.
Sounds simple, right? Maybe I am the only who complicates it.
I realized a long time ago that I have no idea how to let God love me. Part of it was my overachiever personality, part of it was the broken home I came from. It wasn’t broken in the way of my parents getting a divorce, it was broken in the way that they were broken, humans. It was a religious home and an angry one.
After rebelling spectacularly for a few years, I walked into a church when I was 18 years old to prove that my lying boyfriend was caught and instead I discovered the refuge. I heard a message of this unconditional, unearnable love of God. I was drawn in by the hope found in the cross – that it wasn’t about what I can do for God but about what God had already done for me. I found love.
But that wasn’t the end of my journey, it was the beginning.
I started with what I knew (as we all do) and was much more comfortable with loving God, serving God and “helping” God love others. I brought God my very best shiny efforts, my fake-it-til-you- make-it-smile and a work your fingers to the bone ethic hoping that it would bring me what my soul so desperately desired: the feeling of being good enough to love. I didn’t know it then – I just thought I was being a good Christian.
I call this journey “a becoming” because that is what it has felt like to me. From day one, Jesus has been walking with me and teaching me how to let Him love me and He still is today. I am in the process. I am becoming. He has shown me how to grow vulnerable, honest and embrace my own brokenness the way He does, with gentleness and compassion.
You see, deep down I think I was always working to be perfect for Him or to get to perfect for Him. What I have been learning everyday on this journey is that He is perfect enough for both of us.
Jesus is not asking me to be perfect, just real. He is not asking you to be perfect either.
The point of becoming beloved is not to get to some eventual plateau of a perfect life but to get to the point that you know you are utterly loved in your imperfectness.
I am in the becoming of being loved by God every day.
This becoming is not about working for it, it is about walking in it.
Learning the joy of it.
The freedom of it.
The delight of it.
I am starting this blog to invite you on the journey. I want to invite you to let God love you every day. Because it looks different for each of us in the different seasons of life, I have invited some guest contributors who are in different seasons of life to give you a glimpse of their journey.
My prayer for you is that you will be encouraged and see yourself in these pages. I pray that no matter where you are on your journey with Jesus that you will hear God the Father whisper this precious truth to your heart every day: “you are my beloved”.
And I pray that you will begin to beleive it.
Welcome to the becoming.