An invitation to know God

In my recent video on my YouTube channel, Living Unshackled, I discussed how our beliefs shape the lives we live. They act as unconscious scripts that run our lives and affect how we interact with others, including God. I also talked about how, in Jesus, we have now been given a new script, and how it’s part of our faith walk to intentionally choose, day to day, to align with it.

Today, I want to talk about the quiet invitation in the word of God to know Him, which we miss when we have not postured our hearts to hear Him. Our ability to perceive and receive this invitation is affected by the mental beliefs we carry from our past.

I had a revelation some time ago that the word of God, the Bible, is a love letter to humanity. In it, we see God pleading and reaching out to humanity inexhaustibly. From beginning to end, God weaves a beautiful love poem for humanity, sharing and revealing Himself so that humanity can choose Him, just as He chooses them.

This invitation is also available in the difficult passages we come across; in fact, I love my testimony because I met Jesus in the Old Testament, in the very hard passages that many struggle with. I heard and saw His pleading heart to the people He called His own. I met a God who so dearly desired for humanity to turn and see and know that He was God, that He desired a hope and a future for them.

Recently, I have been reflecting on the phrase: "Those with ears to hear, hear." I am beginning to understand why the lady who was called a dog responded the way she did to Jesus and why He was amazed by her faith. It is so easy for us to miss Jesus because we are overwhelmed by biases, hurts, traumas, and busyness. Instead of being offended, the Lady saw Jesus and responded with faith. Jesus is Lord; she knew who He was. This helps me understand why Mary chose to sit at the feet of Jesus and was commended for it.

This has raised so many questions about my willingness to hear Him, to really hear Him. I recently learned in a YouTube video that obedience, the kind Jesus requires of us, begins with being able to hear Him. When we obey, we are hearkening unto His voice. It’s easier to obey when we can first truly hear Him. When Jesus speaks of having ears to hear, that is a heart posture; it’s a posture that demands so much of us and costs us. Intimacy is the price. Humility is another. It’s about knowing God and understanding Him. Sometimes God will ask us to do things that make no sense; sometimes He will test us seemingly harshly. But when we choose to really listen and hear Him, we can trust any and all requests from Him, even if they call us to our death or humiliation.  Abraham trusted God, which is why he obeyed immediately when he got up to sacrifice his son, his promised son. The Canaanite woman, who was called a dog, didn't get offended but pressed in more deeply. What do you do when God seemingly rejects you? How do you respond when God makes a hard request of you? I notice I respond through the lens of my upbringing, not according to His character. I know that as I walk more with Jesus and grow in the knowledge of God, I will learn to obey Him as a simple extension of knowing Him; it won't be hard work.

There are many passages in the Bible that I have struggled with, many that I misunderstood, and which, in turn, led to my misunderstanding of the character of God.  One such passage is Isaiah 55:8-9:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
 neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

In these verses, I didn’t meet a Father longing to be reunited with me, longing to love me, for me to receive His love. I met a father who was like Matilda’s father in the movie “Matilda”, specifically the scene in which he says:

Listen, you little wiseacre! I'm smart, you're dumb! I'm big, you're little! I'm right, you're wrong! And there's nothing you can do about it!

Matilda

This misunderstanding caused me to withdraw from Him. I missed God completely and what He was saying to me. I would weaponize verses like these by using them as permission to minimize and bully myself into submission to God. What I heard was that I was insignificant, my thoughts didn’t matter, and neither did my plans. In response to that misunderstanding, I would cut out of myself what I thought was too lowly for God. I chose only His desires, and abandoned my own, “they didn’t matter anyway, I wasn’t God”. What I heard was God desiring me to be a robot He could control, one that had no thoughts or feelings and only did what it was told to do.

I filtered God through the lenses of belief already present in my life. I wasn’t worthy. I didn’t matter. This was the sacrifice He required of me, but I was wrong.

When shame speaks louder than the voice of God, it’s easy for us to be offended by who we think God is revealing Himself to be. These lies and beliefs take up so much space that they leave no space for God to be Who He says He is in our lives. We only allow versions of God we can understand or accept. We don’t receive God as He is, but as what we want Him to be. We easily get offended by who God reveals Himself to be, not because of who He is, but because of our preconceived notions about Him. I honestly believe that if we truly knew God, it would be hard to say no to Him.

I think a great example of God’s lovingkindness beyond the cross is His willingness to endure and walk with us through our great misunderstandings of Him. To outright accuse Him of being unrighteous, abusive, a liar, and unholy, and to know that there are many wrong accusations in my heart towards Him, but He gladly bears them for a chance and hope at a relationship with me. He willingly takes the time to teach me to know Him and trust Him. I know of no other love like His.

Where I thought I met condemnation and shame in His word was an invitation instead. An invitation to know Him, to be curious about who He is, and what He is trying to communicate with me. To come boldly before the mercy seat and ask questions, sit and incline ourselves to hear Him truly. To be willing to pay the price of intimacy. To seek His face to know Him. To simply receive from Him. Where I heard a father browbeating his daughter into submission and self-abandonment was a Heavenly Father pleading for His daughter to come and know Him.

The Gospel can be told in this way as well: that God, in His desire for us to know Him as He knew us, sent His Son to take on our sins and shame, thereby obliterating what made it impossible for us to know Him. This is the Gospel, that we would gain eternal life, and  “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” John 17:3

The only response to this Gospel is to open our hands and humbly receive this wonderful, gracious, generous gift. This is the invitation to come and know God. Everything flows from first knowing Him. Eat His food, drink His wine, come and sit at His feet and receive from Him!

God, in His great kindness and grace, has helped me understand that when He declares His ways and His thoughts to be higher, He is giving me joy and hope. God sees the whole thing and can fully fulfil it in its entirety to the overflow. Where we only see one dimension, He sees it all. Where we might try to treat the symptoms, He reaches and fulfils the core of the desire. Only He can do the impossible, and answer abundantly, above, and beyond what we think we can ask or think.

It is good to say that God’s ways are higher, because here I can trust Him to fulfill in full and not tarry, seeing the whole of me as He does. I rejoice knowing that my God’s ways are higher and thoughts higher, I rejoice knowing He doesn’t look to give to me just for today, but for eternity.

Blessed be the God who sees us in all our entirety and who continues to invite us to seek and know Him. To have ears to hear.

 

 

Who told you that you were naked?: What lies are you believing about yourself?

Some time ago, I had a revelation while reading this passage: 

“Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” Genesis 3:11

The question "Who told you that you were naked?" caught my attention, and I kept rereading it over and over. As I sat and pondered that question in my mind, it shifted to, "Who told you that you were unworthy?" "Who told you that you were ugly?" "Who told you you weren't capable?" "Who told you you were a failure?" and so on, hitting at every lie and deception I believed about who I am.

From the beginning, shame was not part of God's design. Shame says, "I am bad." The core of who I am is ugly, bad, or evil. It is a negative self-evaluation. An identity issue.

Adam and Eve hid from the Lord in shame because of their nakedness—nakedness they already shared with God, and one He had declared good in their creation. Their reaction when they perceived they were naked was to sew "...fig leaves together..." and make "...coverings for themselves."

This was a negative evaluation of their nakedness; no longer was their nakedness good, but something to be ashamed of—something to hide and not share. Their nakedness became something they believed they had to withhold from God. It wasn't good enough. It wasn't worthy. So, in their own understanding, they tried to fix it by covering themselves with fig leaves, but even then, it wasn't enough. God killed an animal and covered them with "...garments of skin..." before banishing them from the garden.

The truth is, although they were naked, their nakedness had always been covered by God. God had been their covering. He made complete their weaknesses and inadequacies with Himself. He was their clothing. He was their covering. That was the intimacy they shared—all of Him for all of them.

In eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they rejected God's covering. They rebelled against Him and chose to be their own gods. They didn't understand the weight of what they were choosing when they ate the fruit.

Like all of us, they did not understand the weight of their yeses and nos. We don’t understand how powerful it is to stand firm in the truth of what God has revealed to us, or how strong it is to resist the devil and flee. To reject his lies and deception. How monumental it is to stand in who we are in Christ.

Christ is our gate, our path back into intimacy and fellowship with God. In Christ, God becomes our covering again. What is weak becomes strong, what's unworthy on its own is made worthy once more. What wasn't enough becomes enough. What is lost is found. What was dead is made alive again.

Adam and Eve died; they lost their connection to their only source of life. So was the fate of all humanity until Christ was revealed. A phone without a charger becomes useless. We died.

We lost sight of who we were created to be. We were not built for this world, but for the heavens. We were created to be superheroes on a grand scale. We were created to be image bearers of God. We were created perfect and complete in Jesus.

We were created to be children of God—His family.

We are royalty. We are world-changers. We are overcomers.

You are enough. You are worthy. You are beautiful. You are a good creation!

Like a puzzle piece, we are uniquely crafted with weaknesses and strengths. Each weakness and strength serves a purpose for God. Within each of us, that combination of weaknesses and strengths is good and perfect. The traits you might dislike about yourself were crafted by God.

Maybe you don’t like how you look, but you were designed with this final version in mind. You were crafted with intention.

Maybe you dislike how quiet you are, but even your quietness has a purpose in God.

Maybe you dislike that you were born a boy, but even your gender was part of God's intentional design in you.

You were created with purpose—on purpose.

I am not advocating for sin—anything that goes against God's original design and purpose. You are not your sin. I am advocating for you—the one who is human, imperfectly messy, and perfectly loved.

Each piece of the puzzle plays a role in the full picture, connecting pieces that usually cannot be connected. They act as bridges bringing the whole picture together. No puzzle piece is more important than another, and none less so. Though different, they are equally valuable, regardless of where they are in the puzzle.

So I ask, what lies are you believing about yourself?

Invite God to answer that question, and you will be surprised by what He reveals.

I am on my own journey of discovering who I am. God still tells me I have no idea who I truly am. I am much greater than what I believe. This is just the beginning. 

Rejection is not the weapon I thought it was

 I had this revelation recently that reframed rejection for me. I struggle a lot with the fear of rejection. I have participated heavily with self-rejection and self-abandonment. 

I had this reframe that I believe nullifies rejection in a way for me. I had this realization that people weren't rejecting me because I was unworthy or because I was this 'bad' person. I realized their rejection didn't affect who I am, the core of my identity, but people's rejection of me came from their incapacity of being able to receive and fully understand me. 

There's a toy that parents get for their kids called a Shape Sorting Cube. Children have fun by sorting the various shapes into the corresponding opening in the cube, a square shape into a square opening, a circle shape into a circle opening, etc. If my being were a star, and the person I was hoping to find common ground with had only a cube that didn't have a star-shaped opening for me to fit into, they don't have the capacity to receive me. 

How I understood rejection was that there was something inherently wrong with me for not being a square or circle that could fit into that person's cube. I was wrong, so to fit into that person's cube, I ended up cutting parts of myself into a shape that fit.  Who I was to my core was wrong, it was bad, unworthy, and not enough. Each time I experienced any form of rejection, or anything that might appear as rejection, it would only reinforce this story I was telling myself, that there was something inherently wrong with my existence. 

If who I am was wrong, that meant I couldn't be myself, so from a very young age, I've played many caricatures of myself in the hopes of being chosen and being seen as worth it, as enough. Unaware that I, too, was dealing out rejection wounds to myself. Not only was I suffering from rejection wounds from other people, but I exacerbated those wounds by cutting out those very parts that I internalized to be shameful or bad. 

I am realizing a different truth: the rejection that I experienced had nothing to do with who I am at my core, my identity. I wasn't bad or unworthy or not enough; I wasn't shameful. My existence mattered. Just like it wouldn't be a be-all and end-all type of situation if I tried to fit a square into a circular opening and it didn't fit. The cube being able to sort only certain shapes into it, and the square not being able to fit, was not the problem. I had no right to hate the cube for not being able to accept squares, and I couldn't hate the square for being a square. That was what I did; I hated myself for being rejected. 

The people who rejected me didn't have the capacity or space to receive me. I am not saying this is the case for every situation, but for some it is. It's this deeper understanding that you truly can't please everyone, our finiteness, our limitedness, our uniqueness, make that impossible. That's not bad either, that's a gift, we were created different and unique because it matters, our voices matter, our existence matters. We are all like puzzle pieces, each with our own unique place and position in the full puzzle, not one greater or lesser than the other.

I have gotten so good at playing caricatures of myself. If you asked me who Angelique was, I would be at a loss for words. I do not know who I am. 

I had this realization a couple of years ago on a walk that all along I had been running away from myself all my life. At that time, God was requiring me to come to a halt and meet Angelique. There was this feeling of having to sit down in front of a mirror and come face-to-face with her. All the parts of me I rejected and killed, the parts I had, in hate, cut with such malice of heart. The parts that seemed to me to be filled with shame and unworthiness. But Jesus Loved. 

Jesus loved her with such gentleness and care, whereas I would cast her aside as unworthy, he would pick her up and hold her, and cherish her, and require me to do the same. " What is she worth?" I would sneer in contempt, and " My blood," he would respond. 

I have lost who I am through the many years of self-abandonment, self-rejection, the cutting and shaping, trying to fit into the lives of people I was never meant to fit into. All in vain. Fear of rejection did not serve me; it served the rejection itself. To run away from being rejected, I rejected myself. 

Rejection is not the weapon I thought it was. If a blue whale tried to live on land because it wanted to be human, would it survive? You will not thrive or survive in the places you want to belong if that space wasn't made for you. 

Rejection doesn't define who I am, it doesn't define my worth, it doesn't define what I am capable of, and it has no say. It's just noise.

Rejection doesn't change my worth. If someone rejected gold because they didn't have the knowledge or expertise to recognize gold in its raw form doesn't mean the gold is worthless. Nor is it worth it because someone was able to recognize it. It's just gold; its reception or non-reception doesn't affect its worth.