I’ve heard it said that what the enemy can’t destroy they will distort. In January 2021, I learned that in the five years of my walking with Christ I’ve been living with a distorted view of myself.
Big oof.
Early on, I adopted Paul’s chief-of-sinners/valuing-others-above-myself identity as a way to avoid becoming arrogant and recognizing my brokenness and need for Christ. This is all good and true, but I think overtime my perceived brokenness was exacerbated. Whatever I did well in the eyes of the Lord I quickly passed over. Instead, I focused on what I could’ve done better or what with what I was still struggling. This subsequently eroded my self-perceived value as an image bearer of God to just seeing myself as my thorns. But hey, at least I didn’t become arrogant!
With my brokenness as the focal point, it was easy to get into the clean-myself-up-before-coming-to-the-Lord mindset. I leaned into my discipline and grit as a way to improve myself and get my act together. For years, I heard the Good News, grace, and how I was never going to be able to save myself, but these messages apparently fell on deaf ears. I kept persuading myself that I had to raise myself out of the brokenness. In those sermons, I may have understood in my head that Christ died because He loved me, but it never seemed to permeate into my heart that I was presently loved. I think I convinced myself that God didn’t really love me but the person He wanted me to become.
The past few months I was getting to a better image of myself, but this month Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning and Henri Nouwen sealed the deal and gave me language to understand what the enemy had done to my self-perception. I’ll leave you to look at my list of quotes and lyrics below for all of that goodness. There’s no way I can express those truths better than them. But question that really stood out to me was asking what does it mean to you that the Lord not only loves you but actually likes you? That changed everything for me.
I don’t really know how to explain it now, but everything I’ve been hearing for years just clicks now. The Gospel resonates in my heart now in ways that it never has before. I am first and foremost a beloved son to the Lord Almighty. When I sit with the Father in my brokenness, He deals gently with me and just delights in the fact that I’m with Him, not focusing on all the ways I’m flawed. Because of this, I’m learning that if the Lord still likes me in my shortcomings, I should probably like myself too. I am holding my brokenness in a much better light these days, extending more grace towards my mistakes, and growing confidence in the strengths He gave me. I am still far from perfect and always will be, and I’m learning to be okay with that. I’ll still work to make space and settings for God to shape my heart into His likeness, but I can rest better knowing that the weight of that transformation falls on Him, not me. And, just as importantly, in His timing and not my own.
For the love,
Austin
You already know: my list of quotes and lyrics for the month:
Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection… As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” … My dark side says, “I am no good… I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned.”
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.
- Henri Nouwen
But I hear You say
"Child, stop listening to yourself so much
I have made you more than worthy of My love
You are fearfully and wonderfully made
And that's enough"
If you could see yourself the way that I do
You'd see I made you in My image and My work's not through
Oh, we'll dance on his disappointment
In a world made new
-17 by Chris Renzema
What if I saw me, the way that You see me?
What if I believed it was true?
What if I traded, this shame and self-hatred?
For a chance at believing You
-Wonderfully Made by Ellie Holcomb
For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.
Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.
- Henri Nouwen
Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone...
Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.
- Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning
To feel safe is to stop living in my head and sink down into my heart and feel liked and accepted … not having to hide anymore and distract myself with books, television, movies, ice cream, shallow conversation … staying in the present moment and not escaping into the past or projecting into the future, alert and attentive to the now …feeling relaxed and not nervous or jittery … no need to impress or dazzle others or draw attention to myself. … Unself-conscious, a new way of being with myself, a new way of being in the world … calm, unafraid, no anxiety about what’s going to happen next …loved and valued… just being together as an end in itself.
- Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning