Lovely

 I love to be surrounded by lovely things. I think as women we tend to want to surround ourselves with things that we see as lovely. I had a friend who could see the lovely in everything. She would write and tell me how lovely the sky was that morning. She would witness the birth of a baby animal and see it as lovely. We all find things that we see as lovely, and they may not all be the same things. If you haven’t guessed by now, our word that we are focusing on this week is lovely. In the Aramaic translation, it says precious. So we are to be thinking thoughts that are lovely and precious. All of the things I mentioned are things that we see around us and things we might think are precious or lovely. Did you know that God thinks of thoughts that are precious and lovely too?

In Psalm 139 we find what God thinks about as precious, and you know what he is thinking about? Us!

 Psalm 139:13-19 says, “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!

God knows you. He has known you from before you were born. When you were still in the womb, he formed you and He knew you. He knew exactly who you would be, what you would look like, your personality, your giftings and talents- He knew and still knows all of you!

If you are like me, there are definite times you have questioned God’s judgment in this. I mean, if I were choosing things for God to have put in me I would have chosen to be quieter, less insecure and less introverted, braver. And don’t even get me started on what I have wished in the past that God would have changed about my physical features.

Here is the thing. If we are going to think lovely and precious thoughts, and we are going to think the thoughts that God thinks, we have to change how we think about ourselves. It is so easy to see everything that is wrong with ourselves and compare ourselves to everyone else. We look at Facebook and Instagram and wish that we could look like our friend who is a size 5. We look at the pictures of someone's vacation and we wish that we had a life that could afford a vacation like that. We see their kids and wish our kids would act like theirs. We spend so much time wishing we were like someone else, that we forget to see how precious we are!

We have to remember that God chose us to be exactly who we are. Like Esther in the Bible, He has chosen us to live for such a time as this. He made us on purpose for a purpose. There are things that God has put in you, that only you can give to this world. Trust me, I have spent enough time feeling worthless and useless to know what that feels like. It has taken me years to begin to climb out of that and recognize that my value is in Jesus who paid it all for me. My value is not in my looks, my brains (thank goodness), or even how other people see me. My true value is the way my Heavenly Father thinks about me. He thinks that I am marvelous. He loves that I am wonderfully complex (even if my husband doesn’t always appreciate my complexity). God formed me. He wove me together as a person would weave a beautiful tapestry. His precious thoughts towards me cannot be numbered. And every single day when I wake up He is still there. No matter if I failed the day before. No matter if I am not as pretty as someone else. No matter if I stick my foot in my mouth and ramble on and on because of my insecurities. HE IS STILL THERE. He will never leave me, nor forsake me.

And all of this is true for you as well. When people do not see your worth, the one who made you worthy sees it. When people do not see your beauty, God is captivated by it. When others do not understand your thoughts and actions, your Father gets you. When you are thinking thoughts that are not lovely about yourself, you are not thinking the thoughts that God wants you to think. As much as we love to be surrounded by lovely things, it is even more important that we have lovely thoughts about ourselves. 

Beloved, this week take every thought captive that does not line up with how God sees you. Remind yourself that you are his masterpiece. You are the very you that God intended you to be. Though you may not be the you that you think you should be. The all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful creator of this world created you- knowing that the world needed you! I pray this realization gets so ingrained into your thought life, that you can begin to see yourself as your Father in Heaven sees you.