*Chad Jarnagin

“God shine Your light on the most gifted areas of our lives… Give us understanding of how to utilize these gifts effectively so that we can fulfill our callings and destines. It is our joy and satisfaction to be helpers of humanity, exuding all kindness and humility to lift and improve the lives of others for the betterment of people. Lord, we ask You to release in us in Your Creative Spirit, including clever and witty inventions along with significant, life changing ideas… Release all the creativity You put in us, so that people might be drawn to You through our lives.”

Following Jesus & worshiping our Father is obviously not centered around us as humans, but we cannot overlook how we were made / wired. Not tending to issues that are possibly laying dormant under the surface of our lives, is more detrimental to our faith journeys than we sometimes realize.

Matthew 22:37-40 (MSG) Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”

Self-hatred, as well as pride, are two of the biggest obstacles to true worship of our Creator. They distort the true image of God. We were made in our Creator’s image. When was the last time you let yourself be loved for who you are, and not for who you should be?

“If you want to benefit from [worship], I suggest that you allow yourself to be loved…as you are, and not as you should be. Christianity does not exist in what we do for God, but what God does for us. It always starts with what God does for us. All He asks is that you be astonished at the fact that He bothered at all”. – Brennan Manning.

How effective can we be at loving each other, like we love ourselves, if we don’t truly allow ourselves to be loved?
Read this passage from Psalm 139, and let this sink in. “Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! 
I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.”

“A glimpse of God will save you. To gaze at Him will sanctify you.” -Manley Beasley. Our personal, relational, and spiritual evolution will move us more and more towards Jesus as we pursue truth (John 4:23) and surrender our control to the One in ultimate control. By resolving to allow ourselves to be loved as we are, we will change.

I believe that being at peace w/ who we are and how we were made (in the image of God), will define how we live and how we treat each other. Ultimately, it will help define the mark that we leave on our society, family legacy, and communities. Godspeed on your journey.

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” -Leo Buscaglia

“You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give.” -Winston Churchill