2203 Loved By the Maker

Jesus says we will be known by our love, and our love is to make Him known. But let me ask you a question: Who is the hardest person for you to love? Oh, I know exactly who it is. It’s someone you live with. Someone you work with. Someone in every one of your circles. It’s YOU. You are the person you are hardest on. You know every flaw, every failure, every awkward quirk, every stupid thing you’ve ever said, and every way you think you should be doing better. And because you spend a whole lot of time with you, you’ve become really good at criticizing you. I’m a fan of long-distance relationships. Our time together is short and sweet. It is savored and precious, then you go home. I don’t have to deal with your quirky self on the daily, and let me tell you, girl, you are quirky! You’ve got some weird things you do. Some of y’all label stuff, then alphabetize it. Some of y’all can’t sit and keep your hands still. Some of y’all eat really loud. And some of y’all come up with the craziest cockamamie ideas that no one understands. Oh wait. That’s me. It’s cute for a short amount of time, but then it’s best if we have some space. And that’s the problem. Wherever you go, THERE YOU ARE! You can’t get space from you. You intimately know your struggles. You have to put up with your own darn quirkiness twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You had a front-row seat to every one of your failures. You don’t even like the sound of your own voice. And let’s not talk about looking in the mirror or seeing yourself in photos. Oh mercy. It’s a real issue. Do you have a hard time loving you? Let’s make this real clear: this is a problem. You will be known by your love, and your love is to make Him known, but you refuse to fully love the one person you can simply never get away from: YOU. I promise you this: you hating you is not an honorable representation of your Creator. You may cover it up as humility, but at its core, it’s hateful. You’re hateful toward you. And you being hateful toward you doesn’t make a single soul say, “Wow, I just gotta know what that girl is doing! I gotta know about the One who helps her hate herself so well. I just gotta know where she gets this deep critical spirit for herself, because I really want some of that too.” Nobody ever says that. In fact, what if your self-hatred is actually telling the world something about your God that isn’t true? Imagine something you own now that you really love. Maybe you love your Roomba. Maybe it’s your Sleep Number bed. How about your Lululemon workout pants? Or your Stanley cup, your Dyson hair dryer, your UGG winter boots, your jacked-up Jeep, your fancy Tesla, or your Dawn Dishwashing Spray (because that stuff is pure magic and gets a three-month-old stain out of your favorite shirt.) You have something you love. Now imagine that product you love started telling you all about how much it disliked itself. What if your UGG boots constantly told you how truly ugly they were? Because let’s face it, those boots are ugly. You know that’s why they’re called UGG, right? Ugg-ly! If every step you took in your UGG boots came with a little voice saying, “I’m so ugly. I hate how I look. I don’t deserve to be worn,” you would eventually start believing there was something wrong with them. ****And there’s certainly something wrong with whoever made those boots, because boots aren’t supposed to talk about how ugly they are. What if your Roomba roamed around on your floors, vacuuming up all that dog hair like she always does, but she started incessantly talking about her clumsiness and her tendency to bump into things? “Oh my gosh, I can never just get from the kitchen to the bedroom without running into everything. I always get stuck under the couch. Gosh, why do I do that? I hate that about my Roomba self. I’m always just wandering around lost, and then I start running low and run out of energy. I just can’t do it all.” If your Roomba started talking like this, you would think the insanely rich creator of the Roomba wasn’t so great after all. Dude, what you made hates itself! Here’s your ah-ha moment: Could that be your representation of God? “Oh, God is sooooo good. He is sooooo faithful. I loveeeeeee God, but I just can’t love me. I’m just messed up. I’m flawed. I’m never good enough. I’m unworthy. But everybody, you should really love the One who personally designed me. He’s great!” Do you see what you’re doing when you are unloving towa