BEAUTIFUL!

Well hello there!

How doth thou fare? Tis mine desire that thou fareth well. 

Welcome to today's gist. 

I had an unexpected conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago and I just read a book that drew my mind back to that conversation and I thought to share.

Ever wondered about the fact that one of the easiest lie for the devil to sell to us is about our unworthiness? Not good enough, not beautiful or handsome enough, not tall enough, not smart enough, not funny enough, not godly enough, not deserving of love, too fat, too slim, too dark… the list is endless! I've realized that everytime the devil wants to begin to destroy or disrupt God's plan for me and send me down a road whose turn I shouldn't even have taken, he begins by attacking my sense of worthiness and, from my experience, when he successfully gets me to that feeling of unworthiness and despair, I become putty in his hands –willing to do things to make me regain that sense of worth that I let him steal from me. Crazy thing is, doing those things never made me feel better, they actually had me feeling worse! 

This feeling of unworthiness doesn't even have to come through whispers from the devil to you, sometimes it's from the things people, especially those you care about, say –mostly carelessly; you find that someone says something in a fit of anger or frustration and the words nestle deep in the recesses of your heart and become available for the devil to spring up when he needs to pull you into places you shouldn't be in. 

He would have you questioning everything about yourself including the things that God has told you about yourself. Someone recently said that if you really are a child of God, then the devil shouldn't be able to get you to despair, I laughed! Not because it was funny so much as because it was really a sad thing to say. Now I'm not saying despair is a good thing to feel, what I'm saying (and I hope I'm making sense to you) is that it is very possible for things to happen in your life to get you to that point, and to pretend that that isn't the case, or attempt to gloss over it, will only end up causing incredible harm to you, and I say this from experience. 

Growing up, the feeling of worth is one that I struggled with, which is probably strange to anyone that has known me for a while because I was seemingly the most self-assured person you could ever meet. I could play the part completely! Very few people knew that I struggled all the while, until just a couple of years ago, with that. The devil was constantly whispering to me, in addition to things people were saying to me, that I was a worthless piece of garbage, and I bought the lie! I believed it but I didn't want to admit that I did. And because I refused to admit that I believed it, I obviously didn't seek for help so everytime the devil needed to push me into moving mad, he went straight for my feeling of worth and messed with my head. I was constantly under the pressure to be perfect in everything I could be perfect in because somehow I felt that doing that would make up for the areas I felt inadequate in. And when I didn't perform up to par at those things I felt I could control, the feeling of worthlessness would multiply because if I couldn't even get it right with the things I can do, what then happens to the ones I couldn't control?

I struggled with that feeling for years and it wasn't until God began to teach me who I am to Him that I realized the problem: I had been looking for the definition of who I am from everyone and everything but the person from whom I originally was supposed to turn to. Only God can define my worth, no one and nothing else can –it would all be untrue!

And when God began to teach me who I am to Him, each revelation was like pouring buckets of cool water into a parched land, I kept soaking it up and slowly God began to work on my sense of worth.

Today I know that I am worthy, not because of something I've done or can do, but simply because He deems me worthy. And I tell myself, if God decided that I was worth Jesus' death on the cross, there is no good thing that I am unworthy of.

It's a struggle sometimes, especially because I had spent a great part of my life believing in my unworthiness, but these days I'm more intentional about reminding myself, and the devil, who I am in God: I am His beloved, the object of His affection –so much that the angels have to wonder and like David, I too can now say "I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well" (Psalm 139:14, KJV).

So if you're like me and have struggled, or are still struggling with that feeling of unworthiness, I bring you a message from your Lover, He says you are enough, you are worthy –of His love and every good thing, you are beautiful, you are a source of delight to Him, don't let the devil or anyone tell you otherwise. Meet Yahweh, let Him show you who you are. 

I pray that God will help us continue to find ourselves in Him. 

See you next week!

Love,

Achenyo.