Through my emotional roller-coaster of the last year I came to see myself as a failure. I had failed to be the amazing teacher I thought I would be and felt as though I had completely failed my students. My fiance and I struggled with physical boundaries and every time we messed up I felt like a failure again. Every time my anxiety acted up I felt like I was a failure because I couldn't think positively and keep it under control. Satan had made me a captive of failure. And because of it, I felt like I wasn't good enough for God or good enough for others. I even felt like a failure because I didn't have confidence in or know who I was anymore.
Thankfully our God won't stand for this, and He wants us to know who He is and know the love that He provides. It's sometimes difficult to understand God when you see Him in the old and new testaments. As several friends pointed out to me, the God of the old testament died when Jesus died on the cross and rose again. The God of the new testament is where we must look to understand Him. A mentor of mine showed me a very familiar verse that goes, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, NIV)." God is also love, so if you replace the word "love" with "God", all of a sudden you can begin to see who He is. Sometimes we see this verse as how we should love others, and don't get me wrong, it's a great guideline. The problem is, this is perfect, unconditional love that we can't do by ourselves. We need God to help us love. Suddenly I began to really see God as a kind God, one who doesn't seek to punish me and put me in hell, but one who seeks to love me!
God also showed me some mistaken views that I'd had of Him through the help of my friends, scripture, and a vision. In our educational system, we're taught that in order to show we can do something and be successful that we need to pick the one right answer out of several wrong answers. Pick the right answer and you are successful, pick the wrong answer and you need to do better because you didn't meet expectations. This line of thinking can be especially dangerous when considering big life decisions, such as who you will marry. I had believed that God wanted me to make all the right choices to complete the life that He had planned for me. When facing the decision of whether or not to marry my fiance this made me extremely anxious. I feared making the wrong decision and ending up in what I falsely believed was a huge failure, divorce. Fortunately I have some awesome friends who know more than me who helped to show me that God has presented an option to me, one that He will bless me both if I take it or if I decide not to take it. Marriage is the process of two imperfect people learning to love each other unconditionally. I now know that both choices are right and line up with the purpose that He has for me. This was confirmed by a vision God showed me of a big tree. It had a big trunk and many branches that stemmed from it, and they all went straight up. Some branches had smaller branches that emerged from it and they too pointed upward. God showed me that each break in the branches represented choices that God would allow me to make, and whatever I chose I would still be with Him in heaven because I'm seeking Christ and desire to love and serve Him, so therefore I keep climbing upward. There will always be both good and bad consequences with any choice, but as long as we seek God He will bless our decisions. I have a few friends who are single mothers. Each made a choice to have sex before marriage with people they weren't going to marry in a lower point in their lives. But God loves His daughters very much, and He blessed each of them with beautiful and wonderful children who are joys to their lives and, in many ways, saved them from the road they were going down to seek a better journey with Christ! Even more amazingly, He's blessed each of them with God-loving, strong men in their lives who love their children and want to spend their lives serving God with them! How amazing God is! This gives me confidence that no matter what happens, my life will be good because of God!
God also showed me how He sees me. I was nervous at first because I felt I wasn't measuring up to what He wanted me to do or be. But He answered me in such an amazing way! He said I was His masterpiece, His daughter, His princess. That I'm beautiful and captivating, a strong warrior fighting for His Kingdom. He sees me as wonderful, and He loves me so much! He showed me that I'm not a failure because I have Christ, who was not a failure. He conquered the grave and washed me clean with his blood. Because Jesus is a success, I am a success. And God is still working on me, an already beautiful piece of art that is getting more beautiful with each brush stroke. He knows the desires He's put in my heart and knows what makes me happy. It's hard not to feel loved when you hear that! God took me back to the early months of my relationship with my fiance and showed me how much love I felt from him when I felt like Jesus was showing his love to me through my man. It was such strong and believable love, nothing I had ever felt before! Then God took me to the recent past and had me compare how I felt. I would have a difficult time receiving my fiance's love and had a hard time believing what he said about me. I also realized that I wasn't seeing Jesus' love shining through because I didn't know God's love for me. Satan had put me behind bars and made me believe I wasn't worth loving, that I would just hurt people. When I agreed with him it was so difficult to accept the love I was being shown. Now God is setting me free and I can see clearly now. The truth will indeed set you free and I look forward now, more than ever, to what God has for me!
How important it is to know and understand who God is, understand how God sees you (He's better than any mirror), and understand the love He has for you and why He wants you to share it with others. So ask God today to show you who He is and who you are in Him, and get ready to feel the amazing love He has for you!
