True
Belonging
Aloneness can lead to loneliness. God's
preventative for loneliness is intimacy - meaningful, open, sharing
relationships with one another. In Christ we have the capacity for the
fulfilling sense of belonging which comes from intimate fellowship with God and
with other believers. Neil T. Anderson
Have you ever wanted to belong to a
group? Maybe it was a certain team or a
group of kids who were popular in school or a sorority or fraternity in
college. All of us have an innate desire
to belong. God created us to be in
relationship with others.
How do we get “true belonging? In order for us to truly belong we must first
love ourselves. We need to practice
loving ourselves. This is often
difficult because, besides God, we are the only one who truly knows what we’re
made of and sometimes what we’re made of is not something we want the world to
see. The sin that we don’t want others to know
about is often the biggest road block to us having relationships with others
and true belonging.
One of the things I have learned over the
years is that true belonging only happens when I present my authentic,
imperfect self to the world. I am the
first to admit that I hate to be embarrassed in front of other people. I don’t know that there are many of us that
like that feeling of mortification that comes over you when someone embarrasses
us in front of others or, as will often happen with me, I can do some amazingly
embarrassing things all on my own without anyone else’s help.
One of the most important things I learned in
life is that God loves me even when I am in the midst of my most embarrassing
moments. I have also learned that many
people we encounter in life are exactly like me, wanting to fit in but not sure
how to go about it.
Another thing that hinders our path to “true
belonging” is our fear of rejection. I
start to think, what if I open my heart and share my true self and someone
rejects me? If I am not able to let go
of what other people think of me and own my story, then I will never have true
belonging. When I spend my lifetime
distancing myself from the parts of me that I don’t think other people will
accept; I will go through life performing, perfecting, pleasing and
proving. I will never measure up and I
will spend my life covering up who I really am.
God never intended for us to cover up what
and who we are on the inside. If we are
part of His family, we have to become authentic and that will lead to “true
belonging.”
Prayer for the Day:
Heavenly Father, I spent many years covering up who I really was on the
inside. I thought if I could become what
other people expected me to be, than I would be accepted. The problem with that is that I became
someone else. I didn’t present my true
self to the world and You were the only one who knew it because I became really
good at covering up the real me. Thank
you for standing beside me when I started showing the world my true self. You helped me to give up the desire to be
what other’s wanted me to be and to accept myself as a flawed and sinful person
loved by You.
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