Building your Life on God's Love

Building my Life on His Love

9/4/2017

I have been listening to the song “Build my life” by Housefires because the lyrics have been really stirring in me.

“I will build my life upon Your love
It is a firm foundation
I will put my trust in You alone
And I will not be shaken”

These lyrics really resonate with me as I have been growing in, getting a deeper revelation of His love to be the basis of my life. I am working on being totally secure in Him and having His love be the center of my life.

How will His love really affect my life? There is a psychology model that talks about changing behavior by looking at you beliefs you have from the events in your life. The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) works on the assumption that beliefs influence your emotions and your behavior and the therapy works at identifying the problematic thoughts or beliefs to change behavior. What really got me thinking when I found out about this was the ABC model, which focuses on the Activating event, the core Beliefs, and Consequences including emotions and behavior. When our activating event is something problematic like being forgotten, or left it can lead to a belief that we are not good enough and lead us to behaviors that do not lead us to live the fullest life. Think about your life if you are changing how you act in relationships from your first love or how a friend treated you in the past that is keeping you from relating well to others now.

Changing behavior may be easy to say, but soo hard to do. Our brains generally do not readily accept change, making reminders and accountability even more important. This belief based approach to change can identify a different approach to behavior change rather than focusing on behaviors, which are really a symptom of an underlying condition. Part of why I love this model is God is not about works. He never made anything about works, we did that. God cares about your heart and even if your life looks perfect on the outside or on social media, His primary concern is your heart! God was pleased with Jesus, because of His heart, before He started His ministry and He was about 30 years old. Thirty years old before He even began? I think most parents would be disappointed with a thirty year old was not utilizing the talents and the potential in their child’s life. I know for me personally, I tend to go to think about how little I have done, and not truly believing that God is pleased. God is not some disapproving parent. This is what He says about a seemingly under-performing thirty year old, “And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:17) Our God is not performance based. We do not need to win Him over, He did all the hard work. We are able to rest in His love and allow it to dwell deep in our hearts. We no longer need to be driven by performance. We are already secure in Him. God sees me as His daughter whom He loves and is well pleased.

To get a real change we need to start at core beliefs and address and ingrain truth into your heart to live out your life to the fullest. This is how God starts too. He focuses on the heart. We may know in our heads and passionately say what we believe, but we do not live it out fully because it is not in our core belief… yet. We haven’t let God’s love take over our heart and allow Him be our security, we forget. We need to continually reminding ourselves of THE Activating event our lives - Jesus coming down, giving up everything separating from His Father so we could be connected and be in relationship with Him.

When I am really strong in my identity in Christ and His love for me, I notice a difference in how i behave. When I am really filled with His love, I can rest and no longer have to strive for performance. My insecurities, drive for performance and worries about mistakes diminish to nothing. The foundation of His love changes how we live. His love changes everything! Yes, I am saying that my emotions, beliefs and actions are more unsteady than I would prefer. I need a constant filling of His love, this is not abnormal. We need to be in prayer and constant relationship with Him delving into His word. Additionally, I have only more recently been recognizing when I am acting out of fear of man instead run to God, jump into His loving arms for security and acceptance. I no longer have to compare myself to others or compete with other people for success or beauty I am complete in God. I do not have to be nervous about a poor performance at work or if my body does not look like Beyonce or Misty May when she was my age (I am a volleyball player after all). I am secure. Jesus did not wait to come down for me to do anything, He came down because He thought I was worth the trip down and He lost everything for me!

What would it look like if you built your life on Jesus’s love? You built your life from a core understanding of Jesus coming down, giving up everything for you! He would have come down to rescue you, if you were the only one that needed saving. He loves you so deeply. He constantly reminds us in the Bible He is trustworthy and He is our Rock. We do not need to be tossed in waves, our lives are solid in His love. His love is how life should be structured. From Him loving completely you am free to be yourself. When you think you are awful, and a complete mess, He doesn’t. “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”Isaiah 41:10 His righteous right hand, did everything for you and He made a way for you to be redeemed, and live in His love. He is not afraid of your mess. Be free from other’s expectations and unrealistic expectations. You do not need to keep performing, you are secure. He is not performance based, He just wants you. He does not want you to be ruled by some other behavior or idol. he does not want you ruled by emotions that seem to take over your world. He has given you freedom from everything by His love.

I hope you join me in building your life on His love!
<3 Jessica

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