Love--- Brenda

I have been severely near-sighted since high school and vividly remember putting on my first pair of glasses, seeing the world and marveled how much better the trees looked with individual leaves
rather than the messy blur I was used to.  I was immediately aware of how much wonder I had been missing because of my poor eyesight and I have never forgotten the end of my blindness.

There was also a time when my view of God’s love for me was also poor and even worse than my 20/400 vision.  I spent a number of years as a Christian not seeing how God loved me unconditionally and was trapped on a treadmill of works trying to achieve and be worthy of His acceptance.  I couldn’t see, in Christ, I was already accepted and loved no matter what I did or didn’t do.  In His word, He says I’m His daughter.  Even writing that overwhelms me to tears because I know my own heart and He does too and loves me anyway.

My achievement mindset had born the fruit of death, perfectionism, tiredness, desire for control, insecurity, worthlessness and failure.  He brought me to a place where I had to admit that I couldn’t be perfect, and on my own, had always been spiritually bankrupt.  I would never be good enough and didn’t have to be for Him to love me.

Through a bible study on Grace, He began to show me how He saw me.   It was nothing like I saw myself.   There was a difference in the reading that God loves me and the receiving and understanding of that gift.  Gifts of love and grace have to be believed, accepted and most of all, received.   The bible study I attended used video clips to illustrate spiritual points along the way.   Below is a clip from Les Miserables, illustrating Jean Val Jean’s ransom being paid for the crimes he had committed.  For me, it was a beautiful visual interpretation of what God had done for me.

How much more has our Father done for us?

 In His word, He says I’m His daughter and He loves me.  I have never gotten over His grace. 

  1 John 3:1-2  Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God?  Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  2Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 
 


http://youtu.be/wF3FX43F-7Y