Learning to Live From a Heart of Restنمونہ

Surrendering to Your Belovedness Beloved. I might not have had the privilege of meeting you but I do know this one thing is true of you: you are God-loved! That’s what the name Beloved means: “loved by God.” You might have seen this name in Scripture or maybe you’ve even worn it on a T-shirt or a necklace, but I wonder, have you ever truly owned your place as the Beloved of God? If you look at it, it’s really a command isn’t it? Be-loved! What if I told you that living from your Belovedness changes everything? That the way forward in this life is actually the way back? Back to living from your true identity as God’s loved child. Did you know that as the Beloved, you have an insatiable longing that only God can fill? Romans 8:23 tells us what this ache is: “We wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” This means that this side of heaven, you and I long to belong. And it’s God’s extravagant love for us that brings us to that place of belonging. 1 John 3 reminds us that the Father has “lavished” great love on us, love so great that “we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1) But as the Beloved, we have a vicious enemy of our soul. His name is Satan. He wants us to believe in his counterfeit version of who we are. He wants us to develop what I call a commodity mentality that declares, “I have to be useful to belong.” When we believe this lie, our worth gets tangled up in what we do and our belonging becomes something we think we must earn. We end up running ragged, striving and hustling to prove ourselves to God and others—when all along, God is simply calling us to live out our Belovedness. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my own tendency to strive, it’s this: striving and hustling only end up holding us back from the life we truly long for. Yet when we surrender to God’s lavish love for who we are, not what we do, we are ready to receive the life-changing power of His strength and His life—the life we have wanted all along! What are some areas of your life in which you are striving to prove yourself rather than surrendering to your identity as God’s Beloved?