Because God Said So

You look in the mirror.  You look at your attitude.  You look at your words and actions.  You look at the way people act toward you.  You look at the scale.  You look at your closet.  You look at your failures.  You look at your checkbook.

You add all of this evidence up and you determine that you are ugly, overweight, worthless, dumb, selfish.  You worry that you’re unloveable.  You feel sure that you’re bad.  You know that you’re wrong.  You feel out of tune.  You feel like nothing.

If you were Someone, someone who matters, you would have a husband (or a better husband) or a nice figure or a child or a good job or more money.  If you were Someone, someone whom people love, you would be more kind, more generous, more patient, complaining less, giving more, caring, funny, easy-going.

And every week, you walk into church feeling this way.  You pray prayers that seem to go nowhere.  You call on a God that seems distant.  You know that His spirit inhabits your being, but you are convinced that you know who you are.  That mirror tells the truth.  That He must be confused.  Maybe He has been too busy to stop and realize that you are not worthy of His love.  You feel He is mad at you.  That He is disappointed all the time in who you are.  You know that He wishes He had chosen someone else, a Someone.  Not you.

But, He looks at you, His creation. His child.  His precious little girl.  His sweet little boy.  He sees everything about you.  He knows every thought in your mind, every desire in your heart, every good and bad notion that has ever entered that treasured little head of yours.  He loves you as if you never said what you regretted saying.  He adores you as if you never had a selfish motive, never made a bad choice, never ate that whole tub of ice cream one night when you were all alone. Oh, He knows you’ve done wrong.  He knows you’ve done things today that you shouldn’t have.  But, He looks at you and sees the righteousness, the holiness, the perfection of His son, Jesus.  And because He sees Jesus when He sees you, He says OK.  She is mine.  He is mine. My child.  My love.  My precious one.   

Yes, He sees the righteousness of Christ when He looks at you, but He also sees YOU.  In your uniqueness.  And He loves every part of you, in the same way that a mother counts the fingers and toes of her newborn child, reveling in every aspect of his precious being.  God loves the pooch around your middle.  Your sagging jawline.  Your acne scarred cheeks.  He loves your unruly hair.  Your freckles.  He loves you when you feel strong and when you feel weak.  When you follow His lead and when you make mistake after mistake.  He loves you despite your flaws, because of your flaws, at the very height of your flaws.

He makes no mistakes.  He didn’t make one when He made you.  He didn’t make one when He chose you.

You are not who you think you are.

How you see yourself is just a pitiful illusion.  God created reality.  He knows a thing or two about it.  And He says the reality is that you are His prized possession, His friend, His holy temple.  He says you are justified, forgiven, included, redeemed, holy and blameless.  He says you are chosen, you possess the mind of Christ, you are light in a dark world, you are victorious, you are free.  God says you are His righteousness.  You belong to Him.  He wants you.

God says you are Someone.

Believe Him today.