You Are Not What Others Say About You
“If you know you are Beloved of God, you can live with an enormous amount of success and an enormous amount of failure without losing your identity, because your identity is that you are the Beloved”. ~H. Nouwen
Bəˈləvəd. One who is beloved is a much adored, cared for and treasured; beloved is to say that with the strongest of devotion you are able to love without any limitations; affection for another person is cherished, an unquestioning sincere assurance that your feelings are the truest of love, constant, unchanging and unconditional. Beloved - a love so sincerely special and genuine — the purest of love.
Spend any time in the Christian faith and you’re likely to hear that you are the beloved of God. Maybe we hear it, consciously. We may even repeat it, longing to embrace the fact we are ‘beloved’ = loved unconditionally.
But many of us struggle to truly embrace the definition, unconsciously. Deep down there’s a self-talk, doubt, and negative emotions. Voices telling us we’re not enough, we need to be better and do more.
When we feel like we are not good enough to be loved by God, we should remember that God’s love is greater than our doubts. We must silence the sounds of condemnation so we can hear the voice of God’s loving assurance: You do enough, you are enough. You're not what you do, not what you have. You are not what others say about you. You are God's beloved.
