Live Like You Are Loved

“So, go ahead, and live like you are loved. It’s okay to act like you have been set free, His love has made you more than enough, so go ahead and be who He made you to be!” - Hawk Nelson

You ever feel that COVID-19 is forcing you to do a whole lot of thinking you would rather have continued to avoid? Me too...Haha. A few nights ago, I was looking in the mirror, headphones on and brushing my teeth. I was thinking about life and all its complexities – there are so many. Such a mess I felt I had created, so many random, odd complications I didn’t even ask for and yet didn’t seem to have the guts to properly deal with. Complacency in my heart, a need for validation and affirmation, stress…. I was frustrated because it seemed my mind was constantly churning over all this stuff and it made praying, sleeping, socializing, and getting things done so difficult.

“God, I don’t have time for this nonsense! I can’t keep spending so much energy trying to deal with all these complications. I might go crazy, You gotta do something!” I thought as I spit my toothpaste out and rinsed the sink. I am so weak and so foolish compared to God, that I know that the only thing I personally can do is make things worse until I turn wholeheartedly to God. He is the only one who can truly work out my heart’s condition and change me. But somehow, my problems seem to keep me from being able to seek Him wholeheartedly. Isn’t that the trap though? We go through life and things start to spin out of control. Our hearts get messed up and our minds become caked in filthiness and hardness and we start to react to life rather than owning it. We start acting on autopilot, accumulating pain and sadness and harbouring the pain we already had. We go to pray, and the prayers don’t seem to do anything because they seem to open the can of emotional worms even greater and we fall deeper and deeper into the muck of self-pity and self-medication. We search for validation in what is comfortable – often the same thing that brought us all that pain to start with, and our consciences die as we silence their pricking as they call us back to God. That’s how its been for me anyways.

As my personal flaws, shortcomings, and inability to purify my heart have come up before me over and over again, I have found it more and more difficult to believe that I could ever truly be whole. My self-image has fallen lower and lower and I have found myself in more and more situations where I do not stand up for myself as God has called His daughters to do, with dignity, an understanding of their worth, and requiring respect.

But as I finished brushing my teeth, verses came to my head “The Lord is Your Shepherd…” and then another one “Cast your cares on Him, for He cares for you…” and then another one, “I am the Lord Your God. I shall never leave you, nor forsake you.” And, “…behold, I am with you, even till the end of the age”

And then, somehow it clicked in my head. “The Lord is MY Shepherd”. He’s right there. He’s actually listening, and He actually cares. In fact, He is capable of everything. God cares about me deeply, intimately. He cares so much that He will use any opportunity to reach down into my stubborn heart and melt it and show me that I am not fighting against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. Jesus is my Father. He wants to listen and hear about it just the same way my Dad does. He actually gets where I am coming from in all the mental turmoil because He created all that emotional intelligence anyways. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all liberally.” My God cares and is an active, working God.

I walked out of my washroom, into my room and prayed with power for longer than I have in a long time. Power in the name of Jesus, power in the understanding that He holds the whole world in His hands and there is absolutely nothing I can do to change that. Power in knowing that I am messed up and my only healing comes in Jesus and that He totally gets that. Power in claiming that I shall never want as long as God is leading me. Power in the knowledge that nothing can separate me from the love of God. Power in knowing that my power to self-destruct was removed as long as I was with Jesus. Power in the love of God. Because honestly, God knows we are messed up. He just wants us to get to the point where we are willing to admit it ourselves and find joy in His refuge.

God's power will set you free. You will be freed from sin, freed from yourself, and you will be free to set boundaries where there need to be boundaries. Confidence is from the Lord and He will give it as you yield to Him.