How I Learned to Be Loved

Like a lot of people I based my worth or how I was good based on my performance. But last year I had a breakthrough and found that performance doesn’t get me anywhere but frustrated at myself.  Sure, its easy to say that God doesn’t love us based on performance, but when we walk or stumble into our next failure the urge to hide in shame ultimately creeps up again regardless of the knowledge that his grace can’t be earned.  My natural instinct used to be to feel like an outcast that wasn’t supposed to pray to God because I messed up over the same thing again and again. I started to condemn myself and it dragged my heart down into a deep place of numbness because there were some strongholds that I just couldn’t conquer. I felt embarrassed to go back to God with the same request. So I just didn’t anymore because I felt like a hypocrite and that I might as well not ask for forgiveness because I would never get things right. And I knew if I was to really want to be changed that would mean God would expect something of me that I couldn’t accomplish- which would equal greater disappointment. Ultimately, I was living in fear of failure and fear of never being the woman he created me to be. But this thinking just kept me in a vicious cycle of feeling afraid, ashamed, embarrassed, burdened, and insufficient.

After years of hiding out I decided that I would try approaching God with the truth in my mind that he loved me no matter what.  I stood before God and poured out my failures each time they happened. I didn’t pray with fear but instead I prayed with confidence that God loved me regardless of my performance. I have to say at first it was really weird to boldly trust that the Lord accepted me and loved me even in my shortcomings. But something started to change, the condemnation I felt started to turned into a calm presence that I can do all things through Christ.  What started as a training of my mind to approach God in confidence that he loved me, over time a truth my heart trusted. I started to fall in love with God in a much more authentic way because he was able to love me in a more authentic way,the way he desired to love me all along- completely.  His love is the most sincere, the most genuine and he desires to be in the muck with us as crazy as that sounds. And those fears that God would expect more of me than I felt I could deliver was blown away because I felt embraced for me, even in my lifeless sin. His spirit was renewed in me because I let him love me in my weakness and found I was made stronger.