Beloved - there's an old fashioned word that isn't used much these days. What a shame. This is such a powerful word that paints a beautiful picture of the how God feels about us, His Children.
Beloved means to be dearly or greatly loved. It paints a picture of being close to the heart of the one who loves you. It is more than just being loved. It is being loved in a way that surpasses everything else that we might hold dear.
I believe that so much of the angst we feel in the world about who we are is due to the fact that we just don't get how much God really loves us. We are so busy trying to get our work or our relationships or our hobbies or our status or any of a million other things to be enough to prove to our fragile souls how much we are worthy of a love we need to feel so badly.
Brennan Manning, in his book "Abba's Child" puts it this way, "Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion."
Way too many of us are living in that illusion Brennan speaks of in the quote above. Connecting identity to anything other than being loved by this God is such a victim thinking approach to this world. Yet, when that illusion works it feels so good to those of us who need something tangible when it comes to proof that we are worthy of love.
The problem with letting things we do be proof of who we are is that we won't always be able to find success at what we put our hands to. There will be situations where all our most competent and best efforts will fall short. When that happens we will find it hard to believe we are worthy of being the beloved if we have tied our failed actions to who we are. Our "true self" isn't one based on what we do. Our "true self" is something that is based on what has been done for us.
The fact that we are the beloved has nothing to do with how good we are at getting anything done. This fact is discretely made in a very familiar Bible verse I have used several times in these presentations. Take a look at this verse with me now.
And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, 'You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.' Luke 3:22 (NKJV)
This isn't an argument against working in this life. Jesus had a lot to do, so do we. This is a call to let the work be what God intended it to be - a means by which His Kingdom can be built, not a confirmation that we are worthy of being dearly loved. We are the beloved because of who we are. We are His Children and that makes us the victors we so often try to make our actions prove.
Beloved never comes as a result of actions. It comes as a result of choice. It is God's choice to call us His beloved child. It is our choice to take His choice on faith and live out our lives as Jesus did in that place of being the beloved.
It is when we act from a place of being the beloved that power really happens in our lives. It is like we limit the power of God trying to use our actions as proof as to who we are. Want to know something really interesting? That's exactly what we do - we actually limit God's power by being distracted when we use our actions to prove something that just doesn't need to be proved. Our actions were meant for something more profound than trying to prove a fact that we might find hard to believe at times.
I don't know about you but I want power in my life. More than that, I want to be called the beloved like Jesus was. Fact is that I can have both these wants in my life by choosing to believe. By believing I am the Child God says I am my victor status is guaranteed no matter what circumstances I might come against today.
Maybe what we need to do is to write down Luke 3:22 on a card and look at it many, many times today. Maybe we need to hear God speaking over our lives as He did that day over Jesus' life. Maybe we need to hear that we too are the beloved son or daughter of the King! Talk about a victor filled proclaimaton! You Are The Beloved Child of God - and He is well pleased!
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