Since I spend most of my days listening to music I thought it best to start this out with some lyrics from a song I just recently hear and fell in love with. The song is All of me by John Legend.
»Cause all of me
Loves all of you
Love your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections
Give your all to me
I’ll give my all to you.«
Obviously a love song. Duh.
I want you to read through those lyrics one more time and just let them sink in.
I love how he talks about loving everything about her. Her curves and her edges and her imperfections. He believes everything about her is beautiful. He knows everything about her is beautiful. Even the things that might drive him crazy.
So if a simple, sinful human being can have love like that, how much greater is Gods love for us? And why, WHY, is it so very hard for us to grasp the truth that God loves us no matter what?
From experience I can tell you that accepting and truly believing that simple truth is a lot easier said than done.
Trust me when I say I know that He loves me. It’s truly believing it in my heart, that someone as amazing and holy and just plain awesome can love a little broken, flawed person like me, is what causes the problem for me. And God has definitely been helping me understand that in His eyes I am perfect. And you know why? Because the blood of Jesus brought all of my rough, sinful, broken pieces together and made me into a new and whole person, a person that God views as perfect.
But the eyes of the world can and will never see me as a whole. And I have let my eyes adjust to what the world sees and not to what God sees.
The media bombards us with images of skinny women who wear only a few strips of clothing (no, make that fabric) and men showing of their six pack. It tries to tell us that with that diet we can have a great body, or with that lotion we can have perfect skin, or with that shampoo our hair will be soft and silky. It’s basically saying we can never be perfect, no matter what we do.
So how can we believe we are perfect when everything around us tells us otherwise?
We know, because God tells us true beauty isn’t on the outside but it comes from within.
And let not your adornment be merely external – braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. – 1 Peter 3:3-4
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. – Proverbs 31:30
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. – Psalm 139:14
These are just a few examples of how Gods views us. The Bible is filled with so many more. Heck, the whole thing talks about Gods love for us. I might as well tell you to read from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, so you can see Gods unconditional love for us.
And just because I can I’ll give you some more food for thought:
A cat can only see the faintest of colors. It only sees very light yellow, light blue and light purple. The rest is all grey.
That’s what our vision looks like to God. It’s what our perspective of ourselves looks like to God.
Imagine us seeing ourselves the same way cats see colors and God seeing us as we see colors, but even brighter and more vivid
When I figured that out, actually when God showed me that, it totally blew my mind. Seriously. I literally heard parts of my brain working overtime, about to explode.
Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. – 1 Corinthians 13:12
Think about all the lies of this world, about how imperfect we are, falling away and God, my, our, eternal and loving God, taking over. Imagine the love that will surround us, the love that will go through us, that we will share with others and others will share with us. And no one will look if you are wearing designer clothes or have a skinny body or have beautiful hair. All anyone will see is Gods love shining through us. Nothing else will matter, but that. Personally I cannot wait for that day.
I am not claiming that I am not self-conscious or that I love every little thing about myself, because honestly, I don’t. And I don’t know if I ever will while I’m still here on this earth. But that is the thing I love most about my Savior. He reminds me every day that He loves me and He will NEVER, ever, ever, stop loving me; no matter what I think or do, or what the world says about me, because in His eyes I am perfect.
You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you. – Song of Songs 4:7
-V
My Short Infinity 