Like most people, I’m pretty self-critical. I see all of my failures and liabilities. I am painfully aware of my short-comings and flaws. Sometimes I have an over-inflated ego, but more often than not I simply sell myself short.
While God is quite aware of where I don’t cut it, I keep discovering just how highly he thinks of me. Of how deeply he feels for me. Of how he believes in me.
Just listen to these passages from the Scriptures:
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. [Jude 24-25]
The God who deserves all glory, majesty, dominion, and authority is the same God who is able to keep me from stumbling and to present me blameless before his presence. Me. The stumbler. The blameworthy. Talk about having faith!
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. … Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. [1 John 3:1-2]
That being a child of God thing is pretty big. The love that is included in it is massive. And so, too, is the future: “we shall be like him.”
Just let that sink in. We shall be like him. Like God. Dude.
What we will be has not yet appeared. We’re barely shadows of what we will be. Mere rough drafts.
I read the words but hardly believe them. I see so little of Jesus in me that I find it hard to imagine being like him. But God sees it and will see it through to completion.
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. [2 Peter 1:3-4]
What?!
Not only do I have everything I need for life and godliness, but I may become a partaker of the divine nature. Or as The Message has it: “participation in the life of God.”
I get in on the very life and nature of God.
In all of these, God expresses a vastly greater belief in me than I have in myself. Now, it’s not that God believes that I could achieve all or any of these on my own. I can’t and he doesn’t. But he does believe that he can transform me in Jesus to be like him, a potential I can barely get my mind around, much less my feelings.
But this is the truth: God sees much more in me than I see in myself. And he is at this very moment working to make those possibilities become realities.
And if that’s true of me, it’s true of you as well. God believes in you, too.