Tuesday, January 19, 2021
…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:16-19
The Authentic Grace and Love of Our Heavenly Father
So many of us try to appear that we are the perfect Christian, refusing to allow our weaknesses or vulnerabilities to show. Others have taken up being vulnerable on social media because they have discovered that the world does not want to see perfect people. In fact, they are scared off by pews of perfect people. They want real, authentic, vulnerable people that they can relate to. Are you being real to the world? When someone looks you in the eye, do they see the real you?
God is real, and He wants nothing more than for us to be real with Him. He loves us as a Father loves his children, imperfections and all. We as His followers know exactly who He is
and what He stands for; He shows us how to be real. When we are authentic, He is most at home in
our lives.
To be authentic and authentic
Christians, we have to first learn who we really are. By not knowing who we are or by hiding our
true selves we become what people want us to be. By becoming what others want
us to be, we hide who we truly are even more. We hide failures and weaknesses,
but even some of the people God used the most in Bible times had great
weaknesses and failures. Your identity
doesn't depend on something you do or have done. Your true identity is who you
are in Christ.
Learn to Love Yourself as God Loves You
We can be so desperate to try to please people and earn their love that
we try to change who we are to meet their expectations. This can even happen before we realize it is
happening. We tend to believe Satan’s
lies about ourselves. We may think we
are not special, that we are a failure, no one likes us, we are physically
unattractive, or that our sin makes us unworthy of even asking God for help or
receiving His love. If we could see
ourselves the way God sees us, we would live more confidently, we would believe
our potential, we would see our beauty and strengths, we would see our
possibilities of accomplishment, and we would live with more confidence, hope
and less fear. God know the very worst
secrets and sins you hide. Yet he loves
us with an everlasting love and infinite mercy and grace. The God of the universe, King of Kings and
Lord of Lords knows everything about you and still accepts you; sent His son to
die for you. It is impossible to fake it with Him.
Learn to Accept God’s Grace and to Have Grace on Yourself
The Bible tells us in Psalms 103:12,
"As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our
transgressions from us. We
all have failures in our past, wrong decisions and choices we regret. We have to stop focusing on our past and
weaknesses so we can accept who we are in Christ. We are forgiven. We are sons and daughters of the King! He does not dwell on our failures and
mistakes so we need to stop reminding ourselves. Jesus died for all of us so that we could be
forgiven and our sins removed from our record forever. He has made us new creatures because He does
not want our past to be a part of who we are.
We are new creations in Him. We
are hand-crafted by the creator of the universe, and He cares about us and
rejoices over us with great joy. He
loves us for who we are, not what we have done.
That is how He wants us to see ourselves. Discover who you already are in Christ, not
who you are based on other people’s expectations. Grasp His love and grace for you and live
authentically and boldly in His strength.
