The Lord has been teaching me a lot about love. Before I can pour my love on others I need to first love myself. It sounds simple but for someone like me it can be challenging. Most my life I measured my worth by performance. But God helped me realize His depth of love He has for me has absolutely nothing to do with anything I do or accomplish. This simple truth has started changing the way I see myself.
I prayed for years that God would help me see myself as He sees me. Not how I see myself. Not how others see me. But how the living God sees me. The one thing that will always help is to fix my attention and focus on what Jesus did on the cross for me. It’s at that very moment I’ll forget about the cares, worries, and anxieties of this life and remember my worth is in being His.
1 John is one of my favorite books of the Bible because it is about God’s love. We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). There are some people I’ve known who love so well you can see a reflection of Jesus in their life. My swim coach in highschool was one of these people. We would pray before and after swim. He gave me a Bible once swim season was over. It’s the same Bible I read today. While he passed away of cancer last year, his influence for Christ in my life will always stay with me.
I was at the park yesterday afternoon and the song Jesus Lord of Heaven by Phil Wickham kept playing on my ipod. I let the words, Your love has no bounds sink into my heart. May it do the same for you.
