Sweetheart, Stop That. You Are Enough.

By Katie Krog | Guest Blogger

If we wrote stories about how we treat ourselves and view the world in relation to reality, no one would publish or buy them, because no one would believe them. The Creator of the universe thought she was beautiful, whispered it to her every moment of every day, but she refused to believe she was beautiful unless a being literally formed from dirt lusted after her. We fail to see through the illusions we have created, and we flounder around acting in ways that not even the worst-written characters would. We cannot even invent anyone stupider than ourselves. Or more loved.

We want approval from the world for everything we do, for everything that we are. But why do we need the world’s approval? Our God loves us, and He is infinite and wonderful. Love Himself loves us, and we don’t care. No thanks, God. You’re not good enough. I need humans to love me. And really, what we usually seek in place of God’s love isn’t love. It’s lust or idolatry or a thousand different things. We get excited when people like us for our looks or for our grades or for our baseball batting records or for our singing ability. We get excited when people lust after us, when they view us as objects instead of people.

Really, when people like us for our abilities or our popularity or our money, they’re still viewing us as objects. And the only being in the entire universe who always loves us perfectly as people, who loves us for the essence of who we are rather than for anything we say or do or have, is God, and we have decided that’s not good enough. We would rather be objectified.

That’s a great mystery to me. Why do we want to be objectified? Why do we throw away God’s love of our very being in order for strangers in bars to tell us we’re pretty? We accept the love we think we deserve. – Perks of Being a Wallflower

We want to earn love and admiration. We don’t want to owe anybody. When somebody says we did a great job, we feel we earned that compliment, that we deserve to be admired or praised. But God doesn’t love us because we deserve it. In fact, God refuses to consider what we truly deserve, instead showering love and mercy on us. And to accept His love, we must first accept that it’s given freely, that is a gift we can never earn.

And that would mean giving up our pride. So God will keep telling us we’re beautiful, that we are made in His image, that our purpose is to love and be loved. And we have to choose whether to accept that or not.

P.S. You are enough.