Who He Says I Am
For as long as I can remember, I have been a people pleaser. I have always worried about how others perceive me, whether my looks, my intelligence, my eloquence, or my emotional instability. As a kid, it felt like the end of the world if I got in even the slightest bit of trouble at school. I put pressure on myself to get A’s on everything because I wanted to impress others. In middle school, I started getting made fun of for how I looked. I remember all the girls around me started to look like women, but I still looked like a child. My classmates pointed it out so often that I felt like that was all they saw of me. The seed of that insecurity was planted and as I got older; I kept feeding it.
I’m sure all of you can relate in some way. Our secular society in combination with Christian culture asks a lot of women. The world expects us to have a successful career while Christian culture expects the homemaking and motherhood aspects of us. It seems that both, judging by my social media feed, expect that we look beautiful and happy while doing all of it. But it is absolutely impossible to meet every expectation put on us. There will always be someone else doing it (whether work or home life) better.
Comparison is a trap that I often fall into. It’s too easy to find a woman who either looks the way I want to look or is living a life I want to live. This comparison occurs almost instantaneously in my brain, and it leads straight to jealousy. Sometimes it manifests as self-pity, other times it looks like feeling entitled to what another person has. Either way, this isn’t good for me, nor is it what God wants for me.
Realizing this fact is the first step for me to begin moving on from my tendency to compare myself to others. Instead of focusing on how I don’t measure up in this world, I need to cling to what God says about me.
I know I’m not alone in this struggle. My prayer is that God would use this post to speak to us all. Instead of placing our identity in unrealistic expectations (from without or within), we must place our identity in how God sees us, and in who He says we are.
Who He Says We Are
As humans, we are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image (Ps 139:14), and when He looks at His creation, it is good (Gen 1:26-28, 31). As believers, we can take comfort in what 1 John 3:1 says: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” The world will never fully embrace God’s children so why would we try to measure up to their standard? We must find our identity in what God says about us.
Jesus really puts things into perspective in Matthew 6:25-26: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Wow! God has set us apart and has given us dominion over the earth yet we still don’t always understand our value. He provides for the birds and the flowers so He will provide for us whom He loves so much more.
Psalm 8:3-6 says, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.”
How He Sees Us in Christ
Adopted as His children, God sees us differently than the rest of the world. Out of His love for us, God is so merciful. 1 John 1:9 says that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God loves you. When He looks at you, He sees His beautiful daughter. Christ’s blood has washed you clean, and God sees you as blameless. What a wonderful blessing that is! Romans 8:15-17 says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs -- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” The Holy Spirit in us is our confidence that we are daughters of the one true King. He has adopted us to be and claims us as His. Oh, what love He has for us! And later in Romans 8, we learn about how God’s love for us is unstoppable: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As we struggle with comparison, we must remember how much God loves us. He says that we are valued and cared for.
I pray that you would lean into God’s immeasurable love for you this week. And as you consider where comparison may be hindering your ability to rest your true identity in Christ, here are some practical steps that have helped me in the past:
Spend a good amount of time reading scripture about how God sees you. Write out the ones that really speak to you and/or pray that God would help you to believe those truths.
Ask a trusted sister-in-Christ to pray for you regarding this topic. Pray for her.
Spend time in fellowship with other women who are also working to better understand their identity in Christ and break out of the trap of comparison.
“Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” - Proverbs 31:30
