"Undeserved Love" series, prt. 4 -- Broken to Beautiful takes acceptance.

Beauty....

This picture was really inspiring to me when I first saw it the other day. It reminded me of what the Lord has been teaching me over this year about Image, along the lines of being His Hephzibah. For me, beauty and the teachings from my Saviour about undeserved love are closely tied together, because of how I viewed my image being something that would make me more deserving of God's Love. So for me, they are very intricately woven together. Acceptance was one of the things that the Lord had to work in me about Undeserved Love, and what true beauty is,... accepting that you are created in His image, and loving yourself as who you are in Christ, because He loves you for who you are unconditionally. Not all struggle with image though. You might not be able to relate to that area of your life. But I think we can all relate to the feeling that WHO we are defines our worth, and that God would Love us more if we were,... better. Or that He won't love us because of the things we have done. I came to realize, though, that we as Christians must remember it is nothing we do that could ever make God Love us... it's something given unconditionally. We have to accept that. If we do, what was broken can become beautiful. In Isaiah 62, the Children of Israel viewed themselves as a forsaken, desolate people. One who was broken within. When God told them that He changed their name,... do you think they believed that? When He said that they were more then their surroundings and situations declared them to be, do you think they could truly fathom that? When God touched my heart with the simple message of Isaiah 62, and showed me the heart of the name Hephzibah, it wrecked me. I honestly couldn't believe it because of the way that I felt within, as well as the things around me that seemed to say otherwise. I didn't feel that God could call me His delight. I didn't deserve that. And yet He did, because He loved me... unconditionally. The only way that the healing process started for me was by accepting that. So often we do not simply accept what Jesus Christ has done for us on the Cross. We don't accept the fact that God has made old things pass away, and all things become new. We just don't. When we do, though, Christ can begin to work healing in us, and show us who He made us to be in Him. It is only then that which was broken can become beautiful in Christ. Healing begins there; and the Love of God surely flows through a life that accepts Love that they openly acknowledge as undeserved. It is then we can say, out of a heart of belief, that "God commendeth His Love towards us, that while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us." Even though we fail to see why or how He could Love us with all our faults,... Christ died for us. That makes us truly beautiful, when we can look upon what was once broken, separated from God, and see a new creation at work. We can cast aside the old sin,... the old names, whatever that may be; maybe it's depressed, cutter, eating disorder, runaway, used, failure, broken, desolate and forsaken,...  God says all those things are passed away, and He no longer sees that, He sees you as a restored Child of God. Praise God for such Love! That is true beauty of God! Learn to cultivate a Hephzibah spirit through accepting God's Love and delight, and you will have a truly beautiful, Hephzibah heart.

Love you all,
XOXOXOX,
Isaiah 62:4
Tawney Rae