It’s so easy to feel so bogged down in a place where you can’t run to your traditional comforts. To the places that feel like home, things my flesh desires. But I didn’t come on this race to remain in those same comforts. I came on this race to leave behind my old self. I don’t want to be the same person I was before.
Tonight some old feelings I had back at home rose up again. Feelings and struggles with envy. Envious of friendships and questioning if I was even worth it. Why in the world would I even question that? Sometimes you want to so badly be accepted or be ‘that person’ for somebody that it can completely change your thoughts, your mindset, and the way that you behave. My heart feels all out of sorts when these feelings arise. But I can’t trust in my feelings. My feelings come and go, they aren’t everlasting truth. They are temporary. Which is why they rise up all of a sudden. It’s trickery into making my mind think something that isn’t true in the moment. Deceiving me to believe a lie. That I’m not good enough, that I’m not fun enough, that I’m not thi alternate version of myself.
What I really want to do is punch this lie in the face. Because it is simply NOT TRUE.
So what if a person that I may choose doesn’t choose or want me in the same way. So what if I’m not a first choice. I am someone’s first choice: My Father’s. The one who loved me so much that he created me out of the messiness of the earth. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.
I can’t just sit in my own messiness. I have to press forward. I have to hand it over to and let him tinker through the muck in my heart. To rest and live as it says in Philippians 3: 12-14.
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
I want to so badly rest in this truth. AS all of this came spilling onto my notepad, these thoughts and questions filled my mind:
“Father, you are my best friend. You are the great mechanic. You know me better than I know myself. What do I need to do?”
As I sat there on the floor of our ministry house in Chile, he answered me.
“Wear love. I have clothed you in compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, and discipline. You are stripped of envy, vanity, self-doubt, and inadequacy. Those old clothes are thrown into the fire. You have a new wardrobe now. One that is custom made by me.”
Comparison and envy are terrible traps that are so easy to get lost in, but don’t. Green may be a cute color to wear, but it isn’t one that should consume you. He has clothed you in a whole new wardrobe. The old is gone and set to flame.
I am so excited to walk in the truth that all I truly need is what He has already clothed me in.
To whoever is reading this, please know that you are clothed in love. You are beautiful the way that you are, the way that you were created to be. You are custom-made.
