Beauty in Transparency
It's amazing how intricately perfected the world's expectation of our appearance is...how specific, how superficial. But what's more amazing is the deeper call to beauty that the Lord has placed upon our hearts.
Honesty in love, transparency in sorrow, worry and fear...these are the products of an open heart and mind, the result of an active vulnerability that the world basically tells us to hide, to fake, to retreat from. Yet isn't it true that it is in our deepest vulnerabilites that we are more widely opened to receive that which is most nourishing to our souls?
At Life Group this week, the host, Danny, spoke on understanding our needs and knowing how to address them. While this seems somewhat selfish in it's inward focus, it is a truth that many christians, including myself, avoid because of it's call to transparency. To understand our own needs is a necessary willingness to wake up in the morning and take time to truely acknowlegde the emotional and physical state of our beings. And not just to realize our needs but to know where to take them. God is the lover of our hearts and the creator of our bodies! So coming to him first and foremost is what pleases him to the utmost! But God also created us to live in community. To look to each other for the love, encouragement, affirmation and accountability that we all crave.
Yet, when I woke this morning, rather then taking a simple moment to evaluate my state of being, I immediately began with worry and questions. Even praising God felt strangely empty. As I sit here now, however, I see that God was waiting patiently for me to simply breathe and allow him to breathe life into me, to let me to recognize the deepest desires and needs of my aching heart. It amazes me how little we can know about ourselves! So this is the lesson God has been teaching me in this day. Find joy when there is joy, be sad when there is sorrow, but in all things praise God and seek his voice and the revelation of his Word.
All we need to know is that God is good. With that hope and trust, comes such an outpouring of love, grace and mercy! It is beyond comprehension. So Abba, I pray that you would give me a spirit of wisdom in the evaluation of my own needs so that I may know all the better, the ways I can invite you and those you bless me with, into my life and into my heart.
Truthfully and imperfectly yours,
~Andrea Christine
Honesty in love, transparency in sorrow, worry and fear...these are the products of an open heart and mind, the result of an active vulnerability that the world basically tells us to hide, to fake, to retreat from. Yet isn't it true that it is in our deepest vulnerabilites that we are more widely opened to receive that which is most nourishing to our souls?
At Life Group this week, the host, Danny, spoke on understanding our needs and knowing how to address them. While this seems somewhat selfish in it's inward focus, it is a truth that many christians, including myself, avoid because of it's call to transparency. To understand our own needs is a necessary willingness to wake up in the morning and take time to truely acknowlegde the emotional and physical state of our beings. And not just to realize our needs but to know where to take them. God is the lover of our hearts and the creator of our bodies! So coming to him first and foremost is what pleases him to the utmost! But God also created us to live in community. To look to each other for the love, encouragement, affirmation and accountability that we all crave.
Yet, when I woke this morning, rather then taking a simple moment to evaluate my state of being, I immediately began with worry and questions. Even praising God felt strangely empty. As I sit here now, however, I see that God was waiting patiently for me to simply breathe and allow him to breathe life into me, to let me to recognize the deepest desires and needs of my aching heart. It amazes me how little we can know about ourselves! So this is the lesson God has been teaching me in this day. Find joy when there is joy, be sad when there is sorrow, but in all things praise God and seek his voice and the revelation of his Word.
All we need to know is that God is good. With that hope and trust, comes such an outpouring of love, grace and mercy! It is beyond comprehension. So Abba, I pray that you would give me a spirit of wisdom in the evaluation of my own needs so that I may know all the better, the ways I can invite you and those you bless me with, into my life and into my heart.
Truthfully and imperfectly yours,
~Andrea Christine
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