Do you live loved?
What is your identity found in?
How much money you do or don't make?
How many accolades you do or don't get at your job?
How well your kids behave?
How loving your marriage is or isn't?
What size clothing your wear or a number on a scale?
How busy you are, or aren't?
When our identity is in any of these things we aren't living loved. We're living to be loved.
There is a HUGE difference my friend.
How do we live loved?
It starts with two simple questions: Do you believe Jesus loves you?
If we say we do, do we live loved?
Any time we worry if we're good enough, we are not living loved.
Do we decide we're good enough based on how well we play our roles?
Are we good enough mamas?
Are we good enough teachers?
Are we good enough wives, daughters, sisters and friends?
Our search to be "good enough" leads us away from living loved and into a search for significance in our accomplishments. This search causes us to make agreements between our value and our behavior: If I am good enough then I will be valuable. If I am valuable then I will be loved.
This is a dangerous game that invites lies into our lives, distracting us from the freedom we have in Christ.
You are valuable already, not because of what you have ever done, but because of what has been done for you. Your identity is already in Christ; the one who first loved us (1 John 4:19.)
Therefore, the search for value in our identity is unnecessary. We have nothing to prove. We are loved more thoroughly than any act could ever create.
Living loved is believing we are enough.
Loving loved is believing we are beloved.
Living loved is believing we have security in WHOSE we are, not in how well our lives are run.
Where is your identity found?
Your answer either locks you in a prison of your own making or sets you free.