What Does Living Loved Even Look Like?

“Lived like you’re loved” was the title and theme of my last post (taken from the title track of Hawk Nelson’s album, Diamonds). This new-ish  song has given me a new name for what really has been my manta the last couple years. “And the Soul Felt Its Worth” is how I have written and thought about it.

The idea of feeling our worth, knowing our value, finding a secure identity and living loved started for me early on in my daughter’s treatment for an eating disorder and depression. As I began to understand more of her underlying struggle, I knew it was not a struggle unique to her. We all know what it is like to long to know we are accepted, loved and approved. But it was her experience that put me on a path to discovering what life is like when we don’t live loved and don’t feel our worth. It’s the concept that birthed my coming book, Face Time: Your Identity in a Selfie World.

Lysa TerKeurst in her book Uninvited (which I’m reading alongside other women this semester) writes of her “live loved quest… a one woman experiment in whether or not it is actually possible to live from a place of being loved.”  In other words, if we lived loved (if we knew our worth) would it change how we see ourselves and interpret our circumstances? Would it enable us to see others with eyes of compassion instead of comparison and envy? Would it alter our self-talk?

My small group has taken this challenge to live loved.  And even though I have already been thinking, writing and speaking about it, my awareness of how often we subconsciously chose to live loved or not has increased over these past few weeks. But here’s the deal, the way to living loved or being filled in Christ has to come through knowing who Jesus is for us – his worth and work – otherwise it will remain just an elusive concept.

It was Jesus’s perfect performance – his sinless life – given to us upon salvation that makes us right. And in being made right Christ secured for all time God’s love for us. His favor. His smile. For those who have been redeemed,  there is nothing we could do that would change his opinion of us. We are declared perfect; sealed in his love.  This is what gospel self-talk is. And I  I had amble opportunity to preach it to myself this past week. To live loved we have to.

This is what it has looked like for me…

1. Realizing I used the word “YOUR” instead of the correct “YOU’RE” in my last blog title and Instagram post. Not the end of the world by any stretch, but as a writer I thought how stupid I must look because seriously that’s something you learn in grade school! Others must be questioning my credibility as a writer or secretly laughing. What other mistakes have people noticed that I never did?  As trivial as this is, you see where our self-talk can so quickly go if we aren’t filled in Christ.
2. Feeling forgotten and dismissed after not receiving a response I was hoping for. As I conjured up reasons why, it included believing that I was uncared for and less-than. How easily then I could let my disappointment create false realities. No wonder friendships fracture and masks are worn, but gospel self-talk changes how we feel about ourselves and others. Grace can run free when we are free of self and full in Christ.
3. Receiving a phone call from another mom about something one of my kids did. Isn’t our tendency in a situation like this to say, “My kid would never…”? Well, don’t ever say that! Thankfully when I had the aforementioned conversation I was living loved which sparred me from going down the path of stressing over what the other mom thought about me or my kid. But you can see how different it might have gone if I needed her acceptance or my child’s obedience to feel my worth instead of resting in Christ’s acceptance for me, no matter what.

Being full in Christ is being filled by the reality of the unchanging, irrevoakable love of the Father.  When we know our identity is tied up in his, there is no need to try to fill the soul hole with anything else.  We feel our worth and can stand secure even when daily things, as small as the examples shared, threaten to knock us off our feet. Day by day, hour by hour, filling our minds with the truth of who he is is what living loved looks like.

Face Time comes out May 29th. You can preorder it now: here. To learn more about the coming book launch team please sign up for the newsletter.