The Lord reminded me of the scripture in John 16 that the Spirit would lead me into all truth. He said He would lead me into the truth of how He sees me and reveal me to myself. He went on to say that He is calling me to love myself fully as He loves Himself. He’s calling us to love ourselves just like He does for Himself. He showed me that He cares for Himself, loves Himself, respects Himself and He wants me to be the same for myself. He wants that for all of us. Self love is not selfish. It’s self respect and loving the creative work of His hands namely us.
If I love myself as He does I will become more authentic affirming and caring for all of who I am. If I am authentic, real, then people will know me because I am not hidden. I will have true fellowship with others because I am known and I will have true fellowship with them who are also authentic. In 1 John 1:7 it says to walk in the light as He is in the light. He reveals His true self to us and as a result our true selves are revealed in His presence, because of His presence, and we come alive revealing more and more of who He intended us to be – authentic, real, shining lights just like Him.
He just recently revealed to me that each of us have 100% of His attention and not like the partial love we had growing up. He showed me that the 100% love and care He has for us is just like as if we were the only child on Earth. He is fully focused on every part of our lives 100% and He can do this for every single person because He is … well … God – omnipresent – omni-loving parent. I had many siblings as did my parents. We all got as much love and care as could possibly be mustered and distributed which was incomplete and left many of us insecure. He doesn’t have to muster up a portion of love for each of us because there are so many of us. He gives each of us the whole thing – the full on 100% compassion, love, attention, care, concern and acceptance. He wants us to know that we are so very special individually because we are. He selflessly and personally is so very 100% focused and committed for our healing and wholeness. As a result of this 100% love environment my true, authentic self emerges into the light feeling secure within.
If I am not my true self then I am a lie or something other than who I am. How much of our lives have been a performance? Musing with a ministry friend, we realized a lot of our ministerial lives have just been playing church and that it was time to get back to basics. Get back to our first love, our first real encounter with Him and Him with us. Jesus came to set the captive free. He has set us free from the cage of false, unauthentic selves. Liberated, we proclaim Him out of the joy of having found Him. I recall going around telling people, “I found it!!!!” Little did I consciously realize, that I was well on my way to finding me too!! So really it was, “I found us!!”
He is saying to be found in Him, not lost in Him. He is not the great absorber. He is the great liberator of our true selves. Some religions or beliefs in the world are about being absorbed into some great cosmic collective with our personalities subsumed, dissolved or worse by being reincarnated as a fly. This is not what He is about. He, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are individuals and we are part of that too and yet we are one. This is a great and amazing mystery. We are individually preserved for all time because of the great love He has for us.
I asked Him to show me how to be my authentic self and He said to review the things that I am passionate about and that will start to show me about who I truly am as a person in Him. As I compiled a list, I realized I needed to spend more time with those parts of me, that when I am engaged with them, that there is a sparkle in my eye. The sparkle in our eye when we are doing what we love and who we are tells the story of what is authentic – authentically alive.