You Are Worthy

As I was flipping through the TV stations this evening I landed on a re-run of “Toddlers and Tiaras”. I will admit I get drawn into the circus show of all the glitz and glam that these tiny young babies are exposed to on a regular basis. By the age of 5 some of these girls have worn more make-up and hairspray than I have at age 22. But somewhere in the midst of all the drama and awkwardness of looking at a 5 year old that looks to be 17 I noticed something. These girls are being told on a regular basis that they are beautiful. Granted they are being told they are beautiful for all the WRONG reasons (this is a whole other book that I am not wanting to open right now), but each of these little pageant queens are experiencing something many girls and woman would have loved to experience as a little girl. Unfortunately many of us woman did not grow up in a household where our fathers told us we were beautiful on a consistent basis. As a result we pined for those compliments from others. When those compliments did not come our way, we began to think that maybe, just maybe we didn’t deserve to be called beautiful. Maybe there was something about us that made us ugly and unworthy of the word beautiful. These thoughts of unworthiness don’t easily leave our side. They stay with us all the time constantly whispering in our ear that we don’t deserve to be called beautiful or worthy, because we aren’t. The truly sad part is when someone does come along and honestly tells us that we are beautiful, we won’t hear it. We have so convinced ourselves that we aren’t worthy of being called beautiful that the words “You are beautiful” come at us like a blazing lie.

The reality of all of this is devastating, because if you are like me someday you will get married to a man that truly believes you are beautiful and when he looks at you and tells you this, you instantly tell yourself it is a lie. You can’t believe what your husband is saying because your whole life you have not been worthy of the title “beautiful”. The world has proved over and over to you that you have flaws and no one will ever truly believe you are beautiful. We can try to take our husband’s word for it. We can say we believe him, but until we truly believe in our hearts that we are beautiful these word fall on deaf ears.

So how do we overcome these feelings of unworthiness? I wish I could give you one simple 12-step program to believe in yourself but I can’t. What I can give to you is what your Abba Father says about you. The One who created you and said that it is good believes that you are beautiful and flawless. I pray that God will work in you so that you may believe His words about you. You deserve to be called beautiful. You are worthy of God’s love and your husband’s love.

 

You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
there is no flaw in you.  Song of Solomon 4:7

You are Still God

To begin with I realized this morning how truly blessed I am to work where I work. I get to spend Wednesday and Thursday mornings worshiping with my co-workers and students. For one hour on these mornings I get to witness Gods presence in the lives of over 2,000 people. I can't say it enough I am blessed!

 

As our campus poured their hearts out while singing “The Desert Song” by Hillsong (video at the bottom) I realized just a little bit more about how lucky I am. The song proclaims that no matter where I am whether I am empty in the desert, fighting in the battle, struggling through the fire or living in the harvest, God is still present, God is unchanging, and God is going to pull me through it. I wonder how many people can depend on something like this in their life. How lucky am I to have this confidence that there is hope in all circumstances. No matter what life throws at me, my God is still God. Praise the Lord!

Our lives are never going to be without bumps and bruises.  Let’s be real. This world is ready and willing to attack at any moment. Some attacks we can see coming and others appear out of nowhere. On our own we will be defeated every time. I can promise you there will be times we find ourselves at the bottom of the mountain or in the desert or in the midst of a battle, but we can be confident that we are not there alone. How many of us walk through life feeling like this battle we are facing is our burden alone? How many times do we need to be reminded that in the end we will be conquerors? That is God’s promise to us. How great is that!  And because I have faith in God’s promise I will sing praise. It may not make sense, it may hurt, and it may not be fair, but

…I will bring praise
I will bring praise
No weapon forged against me shall remain

I will rejoice
I will declare
God is my victory and He is here.

All He's Asking for is Just a Little Respect

A very popular book in the marriage field is Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs. In his book, Emerson explains that woman need to feel loved and men need to feel respect. This basic principal is even found in one of the most quoted “marriage” verses from Scripture, Ephesians 5:33.

 

                “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

And yet, even though the idea of love and respect is written very clearly in Scripture, how often do we, as husbands and wives, forget to follow this basic principal? 

I have had many conversations with married women and I have found one thing that seems to be prevalent in these conversations; we don’t show much respect for our husbands when talking to other females. We find it easy to complain about what our husbands don’t do and how they frustrate us. My personal favorite is when we refer to our husbands as if they were pets. “You would not believe what I finally got my husband to do. It took me a few years, but he is finally picking up his dirty socks from around the house.” Do we consider our husbands to be animals that need to be trained? In reality I do not think we truly feel this way about our husbands, but in conversation that is how we come across. How would your husband feel if he heard you talking about him this way? I highly doubt he would feel like you respected him at all. Showing respect for your husband when he is in the room is important, but as wives we need to be showing respect for our husbands even when they are not around. And let’s be honest we wouldn’t like it if our husbands were complaining about us to their friends, would we?

Questions:

Being honest with yourself, how do you talk about your husband among your friends?

Do you have a great level of respect for your husband at all times? Or is this an area of your relationship that needs to be worked on?