How Does God See Me?

The other night Loren and I sat and watched old family videos for over an hour. I was struck at how much my heart warmed, overflowing with intense love for those kiddos. How thankful I was that I got to experience all of that joy and happiness with them. It was amazing to go back and see them growing and maturing. To take a walk down memory lane.

I told Loren, when I get overwhelmed with all the hard in our life, remind me of all the good. Remind me of this, because this is so beautiful, so precious. So worth it.

During my quiet time the next morning I was struck with a thought. What if that is how God sees me?

It is so easy for me to have eyes wide open to all my mistakes. All the ways I let people down. All my confusion, all the hard can push down on my chest like a heavy rock I am lugging around. Draining the breath right out of me. The burden outweighs the beauty. Shame sets in and tells me to be better. A heavy, crushing weight.

At the very root of it (whether I want to admit it or not) is the belief that God doesn’t really like me; that I wont ever be good enough for Him. That He must be just as sad as I am at all the ways I fail. I know I should believe God loves me, that He delights in me, but deep… deep… deep… down I fear He doesn’t.

The song I Believe it Now by Side Walk Prophets says it perfectly:

“As the reruns of the regrets, they replay inside my head
Got the devil on my shoulder, and he’s leaving me for dead
Whispers and lies have brought me here
Flooding my veins with doubt and fear“

Regret and mistakes can cloud the vision of how I see me. But it doesn’t cloud God’s vision. I believe God sees us like I saw those family videos. He looks down on us through eyes of a deep, deep, parental love. One I can’t even get close to plumbing. He sees us growing. He sees our pure joy and happiness. He sees us, the beauty in us and the beauty in moments we shared together. And He deeply delights in it.

Oh He knows we arn’t perfect. Just as I knew those days I captured those happy moments weren’t perfect either. Yet I didn’t see that in the videos, it was merely knowledge. I saw the beauty, the deep love in my heart overflowed and the beauty blinded me from the bad.

God knows we make mistakes and we fail. He knows we mess up and create messes. But He is the God who works all things out for good. Even evil. (Romans 8:28 and Genesis 50:20) We can let go of the shame because we don’t bear the burden of fixing the problems we may create. Our responsibility is to respond to His conviction and leading in our hearts. To repent when we do wrong. Then to live life free of e condemnation (Romans 8:1).

When we believe God sees us just as I saw my kids on those videos: pure love, pure delight our hearts can bask in peace, instead of being crushed by the regret rock.

We can respond to this gift by loving freely and enjoying the life He gave us. By believing that His good outweighs all our mistakes. When satan comes perched on our shoulders shaming us with regret, we can pause and picture our Loving Father up in Heaven watching the camera reel of His favorite moments spent with us. His love overflowing from His perfect daddy heart pouring out onto us.

God knows we are sinners and thats why Jesus’ blood covers our sin. Because of this, I can’t help but think, in my teeny-tiny human brain…He doesn’t see my sin. He just sees how much He loves me.

What a wonderful thought.