Welcome And Series Overview

Hello my friends and welcome to Everyday God for Your Every Day with Kathy, a space where we'll discuss real practical ways for life with God, especially for those days when life is hard, complicated, and messy. How do we apply biblical principles such as God's love, mercy, grace, and wisdom to our daily grind? Well, join me each week as we do just that together. So wherever you may find yourself today, please know that you are seen, held, accepted, loved, and never alone. So let's get to it. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Everyday God for your everyday. I am Kathy, your host. Today's episode is a continuation of what we've been discussing all along for the past five episodes. So, pretty much, how does God become your everyday God for everything that you face in your life? I've covered this concept of everyday God for your everyday, how it came to be. And by the way, that was a complete God thing. It's how I've been also living my life, at least for the past, I would say, seven years. And then we discuss the concept of seeking God, right? Not only seeking God when you have a relationship with him, but also if you don't have an existing relationship with him, meaning that you may not even know who God is. Like who is this God? How do you start seeking? And then there are those of us who may have had a relationship with God at one point in our lives, whether it was when we were younger or just a few years ago, whatever it may be, but how do we seek God? Because I truly believe that seeking God at the end of the day is the objective of our lives. Seeking is not a one-time thing. It is not something that you do once and then you can check off the box. It is a continuous practice. It is something that we are going to do for the rest of our lives. See, not only do I believe this, but I know that it is in the seeking of God that we not only find God, but because we find God, we also find purpose, we find joy, we find love, we find hope, we find ourselves, our truest identity. We find wholeness and we find acceptance. Seeking is not passive, it is a practice, and we discuss uh the things that we can do and how to seek God. We also discuss the different steps to take to know God better, right? The disciplines that we can practice in order to make knowing God a true commitment. We also discuss the names of God, in other words, knowing God's character, because how can you do life with one if you don't know their character? And knowing God's character, knowing who he is, leads to our ability to trust God, to not only trust him in times of uncertainty, but to trust his counsel, his wisdom in order to be able to do life with him. Then last week we discussed how God's love and the grace that comes with it is the beginning of acceptance. So today and for the next few episodes, we will be exploring this really vast topic of acceptance. The more I've thought about it, not only in terms of the episode, right, it's something that I've lived, right? I've experienced it throughout my life. But I do think as I've really looked at it in the past few weeks, I've begun to really get that acceptance like seeking, like love, and like knowing is not something that you do once in your life and then you move on. So the foundation of acceptance is love, God's love more specifically. I mentioned a few times about a journal, right, that I was given back in December of 2019 by a very good friend of mine. And I speak of this journal because I really do think that it was the catalyst that God used to begin this kind of journey, this preparation for all that I would not only walk through, but I believe for all that he was preparing for me to do. And that includes sharing my experience with him and the relationship that I have with him and the knowledge that I've gleaned, that he's revealed to me with others, you know, such as those of you who are listening today. So a little bit about this journal. So the journal was by Paper Sunday, and it read, as you journey through the pages of this journal, our hope at Paper Sunday is that you would have a deeper understanding of how much God loves you. Oh my gosh. I don't even think that my friend understood what she was giving me, what a gift that has been, and how God used her to really do an amazing work in me. And I think we'll talk about this, the importance in obeying the promptings that we'll have that sometimes we don't even understand how God is using us to do great things in other people's lives. We'll talk about that a lot more later and obviously throughout the episodes. So the journal also said he sees you, meaning God. He sees you, he cares about the details of your life, and he knows you by name. So by the way, I just found this. Like I actually found the journal that I'd written this in. So this is back in 2020. And if we think about the first episode of Everyday God, I talked about these very things because they were the foundation, right, of everything for me is really understanding how God saw me, what in whatever circumstance I was in, and how he cared about the details of my life. Because sometimes, especially those of us who grow up in a religious household, we may call on God for the big things in our lives, but we truly don't think that he cares about the tiny details of our lives. And we're wrong because he does. He not only does he care about them, but he wants to be involved in everything that we do. So again, this harkens back to this concept, which is just it's more than a concept. It's a belief, it's a practice, it's a way of life, this everyday God for your everyday. He knows you by name. Approximately a year ago, or maybe it was longer than that, I'd never seen The Chosen, this great series that really goes through the life of Jesus. And for some reason, I put on The Chosen. And the very first episode, and it was, I believe, focusing on Mary, Mary Magdalene. I believe. Please, I might be wrong, but I believe that it was Mary Magdalene. And she had this piece of paper that she was reading, that she was kind of like remembering this memory, early memory, I think it was of her father, if I'm not mistaken. And it was Isaiah 43:1. God has chosen you and he has called you by name. He has redeemed you, and you are his. And as I was reading through my journal in August of 2020, which was, by the way, just a few days after my 44th birthday, I really started to see how God helped me to do exactly what that journal. I mean, it didn't promise it, it was, it was their hope. But I believe maybe somewhere, those people at Paper Sunday, maybe they pray over their journals. I don't know, maybe they do. But exactly what they hoped happened for me. I gained an unbelievable understanding of how much God loves me. That is something, again, I don't know that I ever really truly accepted before. And there goes that acceptance word, right? There's an entry that I want to share with you that I wrote in the journal that says, Lord, you really helped me to embrace and know that you see me, that you are always with me, even when I don't feel you near. You care about every little detail of my life, even more than I do. You listen to every word, you listen to every plea, you see and care about every tear and every hurt. You hear and know every doubt and every fear. You not only know me by name, you know me by my heartbeat. That's intimacy. You know me by every breath, you know my thoughts, and regardless of how ugly they might be, you love me all the same. So, my friends, that is the foundation of everything. God's love for us, for you, for me, for everyone that you know in your life is the foundation of everything. The Bible is an epic love story of a God that loved so much that He created us in His own image. And when we didn't choose Him, when we chose our own way, He didn't just throw us away, He planned in advance to ensure that He would redeem us and He would bring us back to Himself. The Bible is a story that not only leads to Jesus, the entire Bible, the Old Testament and New Testament, everything leads to our Christ, our Messiah, who is God Himself, but He is also God's love, not only God's word in flesh, but God's love manifested to bring his children home. That's you and that's me. So truly knowing and accepting God's love, not only has that made all the difference in my life, but I also believe with every fiber of my being will make all of the difference in your life. I typically don't like to promise and say anything unless I'm absolutely sure, not even 99.9% sure, but 100% sure. And then I'm not really 100% sure about a lot of things in my life. There is one thing I'm 100% sure about, and that is God. And that is if we accept, truly accept his love, then it will make all the difference. So in this theme of acceptance, we're gonna talk about acceptance in its various forms. So obviously, accepting of God's love, acceptance of our identity in Christ, acceptance of self, because accepting your identity in Christ and accepting who you are, two totally different things. I got to know that. Acceptance of God's grace, acceptance of God's authority in our lives, acceptance of God's will, and of course, acceptance of others. Now, there's a reason. And as I said before, like God is really a God of order. And He created me as regimented as I can be, I realize, sometimes for a reason. And the reason that I listed acceptance, like the different, the very, varied acceptances in this way is because I believe that they go in order. Like you have, if you don't accept God's love, like you, how am I gonna accept who God says I am? That's gonna be hard. If I don't know who Christ says I am, if I don't accept that, then it's gonna be pretty hard for me to accept the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly sides of myself. And if I don't accept me, if I have issues with accepting me, then I'm gonna have a hard time accepting God's grace and showing grace to myself and then extending said grace to others. And it is important that we accept God's authority in our lives because until we accept God's authority in our lives, then it's difficult to accept God's commands. And we're gonna talk about that. The two main ones, the supreme ones, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And you cannot love your neighbor if you do not love yourself. I just love the wisdom in scripture. Scripture is just full of wisdom. And accepting God's will. Well, accepting God's will comes a long way in terms of our ability to accept our circumstances, where we are in a lot in our lives, and the things that are happening to us. So it's important, and we're gonna talk about that. And of course, acceptance of others. That means accepting others, their shortcomings, the things that they do that hurt us, accepting others where they might be on a different journey than you are, it's all of it. So we'll talk about that as well. So acceptance, as I've come to understand it, is very much like what we've discussed before. The fact that seeking is a practice. It is not a one-time thing. So the same way that we don't seek once, we don't accept just once and move on. That I dare say that acceptance is a discipline that we should practice. Not only that we can practice it, but we ought to practice it in the same way that we practice such disciplines as gratitude, prayer, solitude, simplicity, submission, and so forth. So I've said before that all of these concepts that we've previously viewed as sort of passive really are not. And just like love is not passive, it's an action, it's a verb, and it's a command. When Jesus was asked, you know, Rabbi, what are the most important commandments? He said, you know, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And for those of us who may or may not be familiar with the Bible, really, Jesus as a rabbi and as a Jewish boy who would have studied the Torah and who also is, let's not forget, God's word in flesh, meaning all of the words in the Bible, scripture is Jesus. He really was quoting the Shema, which is in Deuteronomy 6.5, and the command to love thy neighbor as yourself is from Leviticus 19, 18. So Jesus said that on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets, which again is Matthew 22, 40. So when I talk about that, acceptance of God's love is truly the beginning and the foundation of everything. And it makes all the difference. That really does tie back to what Jesus said in terms of the two commandments, which are love, to love God, the way we love God, and the way we love ourselves and our neighbors. All the law hangs on those two commandments. So that tells us that is the foundation of everything. So Jesus even gave a new commandment. He said in John 13, 34, I give you a new commandment. Love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. And then he says, with this, everyone will know that you are my disciples. I've often thought about that in terms of my walk with God and how I've not been the best at loving other people in so many different, oh God, areas of my life. And I've said this before as a driver, number one. That's why I don't have the fish on my car. I don't have anything because I'm like, God, I know that more than eight times out of ten, most likely nine times out of ten. I think it's gotten a lot better recently, but I'm I'm just I'm not the most loving. And I don't want to not represent you well, Lord. But it's something that I don't have to do on my own. God knows I'm gonna fail, and he's the one who's gonna help me to do it. So accepting God's love. Let's talk about that, right? That's the foundation and the basis of everything. So God loves us. We've talked about this. And by the way, I'm gonna keep bringing this up. He loved us and loves us so much that he sent Christ to die for us. For you, for me, for everyone, so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life with him. So let's think about what I said a few minutes ago: that the Bible is a love story, an epic love story about a God who loves his creation, his children so much, it's it's an entire story of how he wants to bring us back to himself. So again, Christ came to save the world, not condemn it, as I think so many of us wrongly believe. He came to save you. He didn't come to condemn you. It is very difficult to accept something pure, unconditional, boundless. That's a that's a hard concept to understand. Hence, I think the reason why many of us have a hard time accepting God's love. I mean, we don't get it, especially if we're comparing it to the way that we human beings love one another. So I'll talk about my love of my mother. My love of my mother was I can't, I can't even explain it. So, in the way that I loved my children was really modeling in many ways how I believe my mother loved me. To this day, I can tell you there's only one other who's loved me more than my mother loved me, and that's God. Second to God is my mom. I do think that I was everything to her. My brother and I were. She always chose us. Always, always chose us. She was my best friend before she died, and in many ways, probably was my God. It's hard for me to say it sometimes, but my mother was my God. And when she died, it was really hard for me. It was my greatest fear that came to be. And I don't know whether I've discussed this, but I felt my heart break when my mother died. I felt it. It was a pain that I've not experienced since. It was the most heart-wrenching experience of my life. One that without God's help, I wouldn't have survived. And God knew this, and that's why I was pregnant when my mother died with my second child, because I have said this that if I didn't have a child, I probably would have ended my life. Now that's a hard thing for me to really think about nowadays, but it is. My mother was my everything. She was the one person I knew. And remember back then, I didn't know how much God loved me. So the one person that I understood loved me died. So as far as I was concerned, even though I had a relationship with God at the time, I didn't know how much God loved me. The one person who loved me was gone. I had my eldest, but she was a child. I didn't think that I could do it. But that's a story for another day. But that's the kind of love I'm talking about. Like an authentic love that you understand. And I love my kids that way. Like I love them. I will choose them over and over again. There isn't a sacrifice that I have made for my kids that I regret. Not one. I love them with all of me. I've done a lot of things in terms of been better and sought God because I wanted to be better for them. I wanted to do my best. And I knew that if I sought God and if I sought his wisdom, he would help me to be a better mother. And that when we talk about the concept of co-parenting with God, is where that came from. It was seeking God in order to make the best decisions and choices for my kids, who, quite frankly, are the loves of my life. When I think about, huh, why is it that we have such a hard time accepting God's love? It is because I think that we question its authenticity, right? Or its reliability, because for many of us, it's it's not as tangible as the way a human being might love you. Because I I know this person and I know they love me. I can see them and I can experience their love. And with God, many of us don't have that. And I think that that's why it's so important we seek God with all of our hearts. We will find him. That is a promise. But then you continue to kind of try to get to know him so that you truly can know who he is and you can trust the authenticity of his love for you. And you can trust that it's reliable and it's dependable. And you don't have to do that on your own. Just as I've shared with you, God will take you through a journey in your life where you understand just a little bit, just a little bit of how deep and how wide his love is for you and for me. I think that when we finally do trust God's love or we think we get it, we then sometimes start to question our own worthiness of that kind of love. We start talking about, like, well, God loves other people and we exclude ourselves because we simply think that how can God love a wretch like me? He must love this person and that person because that kind of love can't possibly be for me. I'm gonna share a Google definition of the word acceptance. It was the very first definition provided. Acceptance is the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered. I want you to really think about what I just said. Acceptance is the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered. See how the definition mentions nothing about worthiness of what is offered. It mentions nothing about the ability to comprehend the offering. As a matter of fact, in Ephesians 3:16, verse 16 through 19, I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with the power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the measure of all the fullness of God. That in itself tells us that we truly do not have the capacity to fully grasp or understand the vastness of God's love. It is only by his power at work within us that we can understand a love that surpasses knowledge. Acceptance of God's love is how we become rooted and established in love. And that's how you then have the power with all Lord's, with all of God's people, that we could even begin to understand the depths of his love for us. I promise you that God is patient. Remember, we discussed this last episode. Love is patient, love is kind. God is love, he is patient, and he will be patient. He will take time and so much care so that you get to understand just a little bit, just a fraction of how much you matter to him. So you don't have to fully understand this love that is yours for the taking to accept it. All you have to do is accept it. That's all you have to do. So again, acceptance doesn't mean that we have to understand it. It doesn't mean that we have to feel worthy of it. It simply means that we just receive what has been freely given to us. So now we'll discuss accepting our identity in Christ, who we are in Christ. So I ended last week's episode with some affirmations, right? They are who God says we are in the Bible. As Genesis 127 says, we are made in the image of God, Imago Dei. The reason why this is important is that oftentimes we have the world, other people, and even our own inner voice, our inner critic that tell us that we're not worthy, that we have a hard time accepting God's love because we don't feel worthy. It tells us that we're not good enough. I want you to remind yourself of who God says you are. You are made in his image. When you don't like what you see, I'm gonna tell you that right now. There are times I look in the mirror, or there are times that I wake up that I don't like what I see, and I don't think that I am significant enough to do what God has called me to do. There's times where you might have a dream, or because of who you are, because of the station to which you might may have been born, because of your lack of education, because you look this way, or because you sound this way, that dream is not attainable for you. Well, I want to remind you of who God says you are. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are made by God on purpose and for a purpose. It is important that we remember when we fail that God says that we are more than conquerors, and that at the end of the day, for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, there's no condemnation. Guilt and shame has no authority over you because of what Christ did on that cross. So when you feel like, well, I've failed, I've gone down too low, I've hit bottom so many times, I'm just not redeemable. The cross says otherwise. The cross says otherwise. The Bible says otherwise. The Bible says his grace is sufficient. That means you don't need to be anything, you don't need to do anything. Christ did it all. It is finished. It is important that we remember who God says we are. I'm gonna tell you right now that there are days where nothing in my life makes sense. You know, sometimes our identities are anchored in things that change and things that are temporal and things of this world, you know. I am a mother. What happens if you are no longer a mother, God forbid? I am a wife. What happens when your marriage ends? I am a director. What happens when that career is no longer? I am a friend. What happens when those friendships and those relationships end? We are more than the labels and the titles that we place upon ourselves. We are more than that. God says so. We are beloved, we are God's children, we are a royal priesthood. I am God's child that was worthy of a horrible death. Jesus did that for me, scorning the shame of the cross. He did it for the glory of bringing me back to God. It's the same for you. Wherever you are, whatever label has been put upon you, however lost you might feel, you are a child of God who is loved. Then, as scripture says, God will leave the 99 to find the one. God will open his arms when you are seeking, and you will find him. So accept who you are, your identity in Christ, who God says you are. And it is much easier when we've already accepted God's love, that it is not about worthiness, it is freely given. So then you can accept who God says you are, that you are worthy of his love, that you are worthy of death on a cross, that you are worthy of Jesus, the Son of God, part of the triune God being separated from his Father for the first time ever, an eternity, that you were worthy of that, that you were worthy of him leaving heaven. You are worthy of it, you are worthy of everything. So it's important that we remind ourselves of that. Now we'll talk about acceptance of ourselves. Another definition of acceptance is the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group. So as 1 John 3.12 states, we have been given the right to be called children of God. And as Ephesians 1:5 says, we have been adopted into sonship. Remember, accepting God's love, you know, you have to already believe that you're worthy of it. God believes and says that you are worthy of his love, he gives it to you. Secondly, accepting our identity in Christ really leads to our ability to accept ourselves and all of the things that we may not like about ourselves. But if I know who God says I am, if I have now accepted that I am a child of God, that I have already been accepted into the family of God, that I now am surrounded by a large crowd of witnesses who are cheering me on as I run my race. Once I have accepted that, then I can accept who I am. I can accept that I am unabashedly, fearfully, wonderfully me, embracing myself, all that makes me me. Faith, love, relationships, all my passions, my work, my dreams, wholly owning and knowing who I am: the good, the great, the ugly, the not so great, embracing my shape, your shape as God designed you. It is important that on this journey we learn to accept all of ourselves. Many times in life we compartmentalize, right? We accept aspects of ourselves, the things that we find acceptable, right, and amenable to the world, the things that we've been told are great about ourselves. We relish and highlight our strengths, right? We we want to talk about our qualities, like all of our different gifts, but very seldom do we own our weaknesses. As a matter of fact, we tend to hide them away, right? Because they're shameful. We don't want to talk about them. We don't want to own them. And many times those very things stand in the way of our ability to see God or our wanting, not our ability. I would say our wanting to see God because we think there's no way. There's no way. There's no way that God will accept me. You don't know what I've done. You don't know who I am. You don't know the thoughts that go through my head. Well, let me tell you, you don't know the thoughts that go through my head. There are thoughts that I have sometimes that, quite frankly, I'm ashamed of. There are things that I have done in my life that I'm ashamed of, but I've given those to God. He's already forgiven me. When Christ died on that cross, he not only died for the world's sins as they existed 2,000 plus years ago, but he died for the sins that were yet to come. That means for yours, for mine, for your parents, for the people, the generation that came before them, for the generation before that. And then by the way, for our kids, for your siblings, their kids, and for all the generations that will come after until the world ends. He died for all of them. And by the way, the great thing about God is that he knows everything. So he already knows the most awful thing that you have done and the most awful thing that you are capable of. And yet, he chose you. You just have to accept that you're already accepted. And I think that right now there's a dangerous trend that I've seen where we're pretending. And I say pretend because outwardly we appear to embrace those perceived weaknesses of ours. We turn them into strengths, right? We we do this thing where we believe that if we say that they are strengths, if we say that we own who we are, that we are directing the narrative, that we're owning it, that, you know, if I've already owned this perceived weakness, that no one else can use it against me. No one else can say, hey, that's a gotcha. No one else can exploit it and make me feel horrible about myself. But in essence, by focusing so much on other people's ability to exploit your weaknesses by pretending and by thinking that we're directing the narrative, we end up oftentimes just exploiting our own selves. The reality is you're not really accepting yourself. You are pretending to. And you believe that you are not worthy of even being authentic and true enough to accept who you are. Because somewhere deep down inside, and sometimes maybe not so deep down inside, those perceived weaknesses, they're not perceived at all. You believe that they are weaknesses, they're real. And there are things about ourselves that we hate, and that we, you, me, we wish to change because we can't accept them. We want to just improve or altogether kill them, stuff them away somewhere where they'll never see the light of day, or better yet, no one would see them. When we do that, we create misalignment. And what I mean by that is that when outwardly you are conveying something that inwardly you truly don't believe, that's an example of cognitive dissonance. And that's a that's a fancy word essentially for having an internal conflict, that you hold a belief while simultaneously pretending that you don't. And many of us, as a matter of fact, walk around with that internal conflict, with that stress, with that pressure of although we're portraying one thing, we're conveying one thing to the world, it's really honestly not what we think of ourselves. And this often leads to self-hatred and quite frankly, a complete lack of self-awareness. We spend so much time on our weaknesses, either focus, hyper-focusing on them or trying to suppress them. I want you to think about something. Think about a time in your life when you might have made a mistake or you did something foolish or you failed. And someone, and I hope that you actually had an experience like this, that someone just embraced you, just hugged you, and told you it was okay. It's not a big deal. It's all right. Let's move on, let's see how we can make it better. It's not gonna undo you, it's not the end of the world. That feeling, I've had that in my life, and I thank God for it. When you are embraced, when you've made a mistake or when you've been embraced in your weakness, and somebody didn't focus so much on problem solving or solutioning your mistake, but they just focused on telling you it was okay. They took you in, they accepted you. What did that feel like? I want you to think about that. It it feels like everything. So imagine if someone else accepting your weakness and your failures can feel that empowering, that wonderful, that amazing. What must it feel like when we do that for ourselves? What must that feel like when we are able to embrace ourselves? Because I will tell you that when we don't, not only does that lead to that self-hatred that I talked about, but it often leads to the smallest question or critique can be an undoing. I mean, it can become like the end of the world. I understand that all too well. It is crucial that we accept all of us, every facet of who we are. The things we love about ourselves, the things we don't like so much, and that we be honest with ourselves and honest with God. Honesty with yourself is key because if you're not honest with yourself, you will attempt to lie to God. And I don't even know why, because we already established God knows everything. And then you lie to yourself and then you lie to everyone else. And that's not a good way to live because the reality is you're not living. It means that you live in kind of this other universe. And because you're unable to be honest with yourself, then you don't trust anyone else. That's why you can't trust who God says he is because you are living a lie. You can't trust what other people say because you are living a lie. When you are honest with yourself and you can accept who you are, it's an incredible, incredibly freeing experience. And the great thing is that when we accept God's love and we accept who God says we are, then this step of accepting our weaknesses is not impossible. Is that it makes it so much easier? It's hard, I get it, and it takes time and it's ever evolving. It's a process, it's not a one and done. Remember that. I've talked about this. It's not a one and done. Like oftentimes the world lies to us. It says if you follow these, you know, three steps, or if you follow these 15 steps, you will, you know, you will gain this and it you will be done and you will. No, I take it from someone who's been living for 49 years. Ain't nothing one and done. The one thing that is one and done is that when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior, when I was saved by grace, that was salvation. And that wasn't because of me. That was because of what Christ did. And even then, sometimes I would go back and forth not accepting salvation. I mean, that is ridiculous sometimes what we do to ourselves. But when we put it in God's hands, God can do amazing things. God helps you to take the first step to fully integrating all aspects of who you are. And then the next iterations are a bit easier. See, I've gone through this process before multiple times. I know me and I've accepted me, Kathy's many talents and her not so great personality traits. However, depending on what's going on in my life, I can find myself struggling with insecurities that I thought I'd embraced already. So here's the thing: acceptance is embracing aspects of yourself that you do not like, that you're not comfortable with. Acceptance is not embracing who I am now, embracing my weaknesses and saying, well, I'll fully embrace them once I've changed, once I've fixed them. No, acceptance is welcoming all of you to the table. It's welcoming all of you to the table. It is saying, I'm okay. Like I may not like this aspect of who I am, but I know that it's part of me. It doesn't mean that you lie to yourself and say, oh, these things about me are awesome. No, it means that you own the truth that the likelihood is that I'll never fully like these things about myself. But I accept them as part of who I am. And God, who made me, he'll sit at the table with me, with all of me. And he says that I'm okay. See, I struggle with. The fact that I have a huge ego. I struggle with the fact that I overthink. I struggle with the fact that I'm judgy and that I can hyperfocus on things that aren't seemingly perfect. I like things to make logical sense. Can you imagine that? I'm a Christ follower. Even salvation self is not logical, right? Like, how can I be given something that I don't deserve? Grace is not logical in the way that we that we understand logic to be. It doesn't. You know, one plus one does not equal two in God's kingdom because, you know, I continually sin, but yet God calls me righteous. And not because of anything that I've done, but because of what Christ has done. That in itself is not, you know, it's not logical. As a matter of fact, there are so many things sometimes about myself that are contradictory to my beliefs of who I know that I'm called to be. And quite frankly, they're not flattering aspects of me, but God. But God. Like my weaknesses do not limit me when I leave myself in God's hands. They do not limit the things that God is able to do in my life. My weaknesses do not limit God. Here's the thing: it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks of you of me, meaning they can think that I'm awesome or they can think the opposite. It doesn't really matter. And sometimes we can't accept ourselves and what we think of ourselves until again we accept who God says we are. So I want you to really own this and understand that this is how God sees me. When I remind myself of who God says I am, I can embrace the shape that God designed with all of its flaws. Accepting you means understanding that we are wonderfully imperfect, that our imperfections are actually part of God's plan of redemption, that it's God's job to transform us, to be more like Christ, because He is the one who made us. See, I actually started thinking about this word transform. That to transform is not to fix, because if we think about the connotation behind fixing, it means, ooh, you're not good. So I gotta fix you. And sometimes when we fix something, we're trying to annihilate what already existed. Whereas transforming means to make new out of what was already there, meaning the foundation is important. Transformation means that there's something already there in existence that I am transforming. And that's that's what I want us to think about that our brokenness, the imperfections, the flaws, the weaknesses, the insecurities, when given to God, somehow they make sense. And he uses those very things that we sometimes hate about ourselves and that we are so uncomfortable with. See, love made you. Love made me. Because of whose I am, I am who I am. Because of whose you are, you are who you are. So we need to embrace all of us. And I used to do this exercise with my team. I would have them list like 10 strengths, and then I would want them to also list 10 weaknesses. Or you can do 10 strengths and then five weaknesses, whatever, you know, whatever you can do. And I could always tell like how someone was, depending on their approach to the exercise. So you will have someone who has an inflated view of self, an inflated ego. And typically remember what I said in arrogance, inflated egos is just the other side of the coin of insecurity. It's actually insecurity masking itself as pride. That's all it is. Those folks would have a hard time finding any weaknesses. They would list, you would ask them for 10 strengths and they would list 15 or 20, but could barely find a weakness. And then you would have those that could not list three strengths, but could list a host of weaknesses, a fully integrated self, someone who accepts who they are and who, and by the way, when you accept who you are, that comes with self-awareness. When you have a healthy sense of self, you have the ability to look at your strengths and to look at your weaknesses. And your weaknesses don't make you cringe. They don't make you like, oh God, I can't even look at them. I can't even face them. I use God's love of me to accept the aspects of Kathy that I'm not wholly comfortable with. I know what they are, just not wholly comfortable with them. Sometimes I find myself having to deal with insecurities that I thought I'd long ago accepted. Well, different things in your life, different situations, different seasons in your life will impact those things. Right now I'm going through menopause, or maybe I'm post-menopause, whatever. There are aspects of my body that I'm struggling with. And I don't even just mean how I look, the fact that I can, you know, I go to Pilates six times a week, and I am the strongest physically that I've ever been in my life. I've lost weight, I've done all of that, whatever. But my body doesn't recover as quickly as it used to. My memory, my gosh, I had such an awesome memory. Oh my God, in my youth. I'm just talking about, not even in my youth. Three years ago, two years ago. I can remember everything. Memory of an elephant. Just amazing. And now sometimes I struggle to find the right words to say the fact that I'm just not who I used to be. I have to accept the 49-year-old version of myself and stop comparing me to who I was when I was 46 or 45 or 44. I see, I'm not even comparing myself to when I was 30. I'm comparing myself to just a few years ago. But the danger in comparison is that we then focus so much on our old selves, on our past, that we then really cheat ourselves of the today that we have in of the tomorrow that hasn't even been written yet. See, I am no longer the person, I no longer have the memory that I used to have. I'm no longer the person that I used to be. But the current iteration of me, there's so much about her to like. She's a lot more patient than 44-year-old Kathy with perfect memory, who, quite frankly, didn't have the patience with other people because they didn't have the memory she had. She's a lot kinder than she used to be, than the 44 version of myself, who, because I could not show myself grace, therefore I had a hard time extending grace to others. This version of myself, oh my God, has this intimate knowledge and relationship with God, a dependency, a daily dependency upon God that I didn't have a couple of years ago. I didn't have last year because I was working. Now I walk with God and I can be in his presence, and I'm so much more present in my life than I was at the age of 44. So, yes, I might have been able to do a whole lot more than I probably can do today, but there's a whole lot more that I'm doing today than I was able to do at 45 or 44. So acceptance is also that. It is accepting the newer versions of ourselves, the transformed versions of ourselves, being kinder and being more patient with who we currently are. So thank you for joining me. I know this was a longer episode than we're normally used to. But next episode, we will cover the remainder of the list, right? We covered on this episode acceptance of God's love, acceptance of our identity in Christ, and acceptance of self. So next episode, the goal is to cover acceptance of God's grace, acceptance of God's authority in our lives, acceptance of God's will and acceptance of others. I don't know that that episode will cover all of that, but at least for the next few episodes, that's what we'll be covering. So in our usual manner, we are going to end this episode with a prayer. So again, before I start the prayer, remind, embrace who you are. So I want you to do that little exercise that I talked about a few minutes ago, which is I want you to write 10 strengths and write, let's say six weaknesses. Okay, I won't force you to write 10. And remember what I said. If you are struggling to find weaknesses, then that's okay. Ask God for help. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. And if you are someone who is finding it hard, like you can list all of these weaknesses, but you're finding it hard to list 10 strengths, 10 qualities about yourself. Ask God to help you. I think like when you see the list of weaknesses and the list of strengths, you will find that there's something that makes sense about it. You'll probably find that the list of strengths compensate for your weaknesses. It's amazing how God does that, isn't it? Or you'll find that the strengths that you listed, the weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. Your weaknesses are your strengths with the wrong motive associated with them. So I it's just fascinating when I see people do that exercise, which by the way, I've done myself multiple times. So do that. And I would actually love to hear from you. Like there's a place where you can, I think on my website where you can either like you can email me. I think it's like fan mail or something, or you can text me, says text Kathy, something like that. I would love to hear about what you discovered, what you found. That would help me a lot. I think that would encourage me to continue on this road. But I would just, I would love that because it would be some means of interaction. And so let's pray. Father God, thank you. Thank you for this time together. Thank you, Lord, for directing my steps, Lord. Thank you for using me despite my many weaknesses, but using those very weaknesses, Lord, to speak to others, to really show your power in my life. Lord, your word says that in our weaknesses, Lord, you are strong. I have experienced that so many times in my life. When I have come to the end of myself, Lord, it is when I have seen you at work. Father, I pray for everyone listening, Lord, that they would experience that. Lord, that they would experience the things that we've talked about today, that they would have an encounter with you, that they would accept your love for them, Lord, no matter how unworthy they might feel, or no matter how much they don't understand it, no matter how much they just can't seem to get it. It's okay. Just accept it. Receive, Lord, may we receive what you have freely given, which is your love. I pray, Lord, for everyone that is listening, that they would accept their identity in Christ, that they would accept who you say they are, Lord. And in doing so, that they would accept themselves, all the things that you already know about them, about us, that they would accept every facet of their personality, those things that may they may feel shame about, Lord, that they would give those to you, and then thereby, Lord, that they would get rid of the shame. Lord, I thank you for loving us the way that you do, for doing everything, Lord, to bring us back to you, to the relationship that we first had in the garden with you. Father, I thank you for your presence. I thank you for your love. I thank you for your grace. I thank you for your steadfastness. I thank you for your faithfulness. I thank you for who you are and all that you are doing in the lives of those who are listening and everyone else, and for the things that you are doing in my life, Lord, for the fact that this podcast is as much for me as it is for everyone listening. It is in your holy name, Jesus, I pray. Amen. Looking forward to seeing you guys again and continuing our conversation.