I'm tired of judging myself by other peoples judgments.
God defines me.
God defines who I am and what I am worth, and He says that I am valuable and that He loves me. Regardless of what I did before I became a Christian and regardless of what I've done since the day I did become one. Ephesians 2:8-9 says For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is NOT FROM YOURSELVES, it is the gift of God - not by WORKS, so NO ONE can boast.
I am not a Christian on commission I do not receive "X" amount of God's love and grace and salvation based on my "Y" amount of doing: 'good christian things' and 'not doing bad christian things.' GOD LOVES ME. GOD LOVES YOU. Whether you are a Christian or not GOD. LOVES. YOU. He knows you screw up but HE STILL LOVES YOU THE SAME. God is love, and in Hebrews 13:8 it says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. He loves your the same ALWAYS.
I feel like Christians are so busy pointing fingers at the things I or other people have done and created this category of "WRONG/DIRTY SIN" - oh, you drink? Not a Christian. Dirty sinner, shame on you. Oh, what? You aren't sexually pure? What, you swear? You wear a bikini? You've made dirty jokes? You lust? You masturbate? You look at porn? You've stolen something? You've tried elicit drugs? You've had premarital sex? You read Cosmo? You don't go to church every Sunday? You listen to what kind of music?
It's a list that no one can keep up with. No one can escape the list of wrong doings. Some of those things you might have just read and gotten really embarrassed about it because you have done or are doing them now and feel totally judged and like a failure. Guess what? Christians struggle. Everyone struggles! I'm sick of Christians pretending they don't struggle. We aren't anything more special to God than someone who hasn't invited Christ into their lives as their Savior - we haven't received any special power to destroy sinful desires in our lives. Yes, God helps us with those things, but until we are in heaven we will all have struggles and battles with our sinful desires.
Matthew 7:3-5 says - Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plan in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time where is a plank in your own?
I've spent so much of my life trying to measure up to what Christians say Christians should look like. I've let their definition and views and remarks and judgement shape who I try to be in Christ.
Well I'm done with it. I'm tired of feeling guilty by the judgement of other Christians. They don't define me!
God made me in His likeness, he didn't make me TO BE HIM. He didn't create us to strive to BE CHRIST. Being Christ and being Christ-like are totally different things. I will never be Christ and to think that I can? Every time I fail (which is literally a constant, all day, every day thing) just leaves me frustrated, discouraged, and back in that square one train of thought that says I have to be doing everything right or God won't love me.
My relationship and the salvation Christ has given me isn't based on a check-list of things I have to be. I'm not a check-list. I am not one long list of things I have to be doing right or wrong.
God disciplines me, he corrects and rebukes me. I'm not saying that there aren't consequences for things I do because there definitely are.
But what's really on my heart tonight is PLEASE stop trying to let Christians define you. I urge you to seek out what GOD says to you, about who you are.
You are his BELOVED, regardless of what you have done, are doing and will doing. This is for both non-Christians as well as believers!
One of the things I hear over and over from girls is that Christians have this mantra they preach to girls about 'staying pure.' Guess what? A lot of those girls have had sex! Or done things related to sex! Whatever it is, we don't really fall in that category of 'white as snow' anymore that Christians have created. Here's a news flash - I have done some of those things too! In fact, I look at myself a lot and the things I've done and have labeled myself things like "whore," "slut," "dirty," and "unlovable." But the thing is? God has ripped those labels away from me. No, God doesn't like those things, not because God is a fun-hater and hates sex but because he knows that sex and such is best within certain boundaries and it makes him sad when we cross those boundaries he set in place. Does having sex before you're married make God hate you? Does it make him love you less, do you lose your salvation, are you a bad christian?! NO. God has ripped those labels out of my hands and off my heart because that may be the way I see myself but that is NOT how God sees me.
That's the world telling you you'll never measure up to what a Christian should be.
You don't have to measure up to anything.
Something God shared with me and has been on my heart ever since was I've been feeling like everything I do is wrong and this makes me feel like a failure. I feel like a failure as a woman, as a Christian, as a daughter, as a student, as everything because I feel judged by other people. So a while back, I started journaling all the things I'd done wrong and all the things that made me feel like a failure and a 'bad christian.'
As soon as I got done writing all those things I flipped the page and the next thing out of my pen and on to the page was -
Is that all, beloved?
God can handle me. He can handle all my imperfections and screw ups. He can handle all my rule-breaking, line-crossing, profanities, fantasies, drinking, failing, two-facedness, everything.
"You may be the only Jesus people ever see."
I'd like to modify that. I'm the only Jesus people will ever see? This implies that I HAVE TO BE JUST LIKE JESUS. Impossible. I might show them a little piece of who Jesus is, but Jesus is perfectly capable of being the Jesus people see. I'm not the only one surrounded by everything that was, quite literally, all made by the same God. I may be an instrument that helps someone get closer to accept Jesus into their heart and pursuing a life with him, but I am not Jesus. He can handle not only my sins, but everyone elses. So consider that myth personally busted in my life.
To the Christians out there who are reading this, here's what I want you to think about. Pray, plead with God to show you who you are and the relationship He has for you with Him. Pray that he opens your eyes and your heart to what you are to HIM, not to other people, to other Christians. If our salvation was based on whether other Christians thought we were 'good enough' to have it, did enough evangelism to earn it, cleaned up our lives to be perfect enough to be deemed 'Christ-like,' we'd all be destined for hell. Pray that God shows you the judgement you are taking from other people and turning into chains for yourselves. That isn't what God has for you - he doesn't have a life full of guilt to weigh you down or a level of perfect performance to achieve.
To anyone reading this who isn't a Christian: maybe this all sounds crazy. I can almost guarantee you have felt judged by someone who calls themselves a Christian before and I'm sorry for that. It's possible I've judged you before. The reality is that everyone judges. It's human nature to compare and contrast and form impressions of people. But I want to tell you that I am wrong to do that - what I think of you - whether I think you are good or bad or a slut or a jerk or whatever? That doesn't matter. Yes, words hurt, yes, I can hurt you with what I think. But God doesn't have that for you. God isn't a 'Christian,' He is GOD. He is a loving Father who wants to shower you with grace and love and mercy. He is a healer of hurts, he is close to the broken-hearted. I don't know what your life is like or has been like. Maybe your parents went through a divorce, maybe you've been cheated on, maybe you're failing out of school, maybe you don't have enough money to live on, maybe you drink, maybe you party, maybe you feel like everyone hates you, maybe you feel like you aren't enough, that you are a failure, and that no one would ever love you if they knew who you really were.
I want you to know that God knows everything about you. He knows your thoughts, knows your hearts, knows your deepest hurts and desires. He knows the things you feel guilty about he knows the words people say that cut your heart in half. He knows what that significant other or that friend or that sibling or that parent did to you. He understands that you feel alone, that you feel lost, overwhelmed, confused, scared, depressed whatever you may be. HE KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU because HE CREATED YOU. He desperately wants a relationship with you to save you from a lifetime and then an eternity of those feelings. He loves you. It isn't a love you can find in books or from any person on earth. He satisfies the holes in your heart that you try to fill with sex, with lovers, with achievement, with money, with status. He died for you so you don't have to believe those lies. You don't have to be enough for anyone - God wants you exactly the way you are. He wants you with all of your imperfect past and with all of your imperfect future.
Maybe try what I did - try writing or thinking through all those things you think make you a bad person or a bad Christian or a failure or unlovable or imperfect or whatever the word is for you. And after you get done with all that? No matter how bad you think you've been and are and will be?
Beloved, God still loves you.
The love story of Hosea? That's how God loves me. That's how God loves you. This is the first video in a series that represents the story of Hosea and of God's love for me.
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