Decide to believe and then practice believing until you believe.

Believe you are worthy of love.

Believe you are loved.

Believe you belong wherever you are, doing whatever you’re doing.

Be intentional about believing God’s Truth about you.

You are a child of God. You are loved by The King. You are filled with the Holy Spirit. You are filled with grace and power. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are enough, just as you are.

The feeling will come as we tell ourselves the Truth about who we are and practice believing it is true for us.

Tell yourself a good story about you, about your life.

Moment by moment. Day by day. Week by week. Month by month. Throughout your life.

It is an ongoing process.

We never get to a place where we don’t need to remind ourselves that we are loved, and we are valuable, and we are enough.

This world is full of negativity. Our brains naturally go to the negative. There is human rejection, jealousy, resentment, and hatred in the world, but we must root ourselves in God’s love and live from there.

Our tendency is towards self-rejection and self-deprecation which makes it hard for us to receive God’s love deep in our hearts. We must train ourselves to believe we are loved. We must train ourselves to believe in the good, the positive, the hopeful. We must believe we will “see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

Our true identity is as a beloved son or daughter of God. When we believe this Truth, that we are unconditionally loved, we are free to give and receive love. We are free to speak and act as Jesus did. When we live deeply rooted and grounded in God’s love for us, we are free from the compulsion to prove ourselves to the world or from trying to earn other’s approval.

You are not going to start feeling different feelings until you think different thoughts. Be willing to believe new things.

That is why I say you must tell yourself a new story about you. Decide to believe in you. Decide to like you. Choose to be for you. And be kind to you. Choose to believe the best about you. Tell yourself, “You are loved.” “You are loveable.” “You are enough.” “You’re lovely.” Tell yourself, “You’re fit.” “You’re healthy.” “You look good.” Tell yourself, “You’re smart and creative and have gifts and talents.” “You can do hard things.” “You are capable.” “You can create the life you want.” Tell yourself, “You are worthy.” Then practice believing “it” regardless of what anyone else says or does. We live into what we believe. Our thoughts, the things we tell ourselves, are powerful.

We give our power away when we think that it is the people in our lives or the circumstances in our lives that make us feel good.

We choose. We decide what we think and what we believe. Other people may have an opinion, but we do not have to listen or live from their opinion of us.

We must choose to live from God’s opinion about us. We must choose to believe what God says about us.

And just because we tell ourselves a good story does not mean we will feel good about ourselves all the time. We practice. But we remain human. We will have ups and downs, good days and bad days, failures, and successes. We will feel joyful and happy, and we will also feel sad and depressed sometimes. And it is totally possible and okay to feel joy and sadness at the same time.

No matter how much we practice we are still going to have ups and downs. We are not trying to eliminate “bad” feelings or achieve being happy all the time. We were not made to be happy all the time. God gave us all our emotions. With practice we expand our capacity to feel all our feelings!

We can feel our feelings. We do not need to be afraid of them. We practice feeling what we feel based on whatever happens in our life and then we choose to remember and go back to you and stay rooted and grounded in God’s love for us, in God’s truth about us.  

We practice excepting our humanness. We learn to live more into our humanity.

We also practice not “should of-ing” ourselves. We stop beating ourselves up. We get better at feeling what we feel and moving through our emotions and not getting stuck in them or not being afraid of feeling them.

Life is hard. Bad things happen. And we need to feel what we feel, but not beat ourselves up for feeling what we feel. Too often we “should of” ourselves for feeling the way we feel. What if we just decided it’s OK to have these feelings. God gave us these feelings and these feelings are good. We remind ourselves that nothing has gone wrong. We choose to pay attention to our feelings, get curious about our lives, and learn more about ourselves. We choose to practice self-compassion. We choose to be kind to ourselves, support ourselves, and believe in ourselves.

As you practice believing God’s truth about you, as you practice grounding rooting establishing yourself in God’s truth and His love, then He does a miracle in our lives. He mysteriously transforms our life as we TRUST Him. He helps us be calmer and respond better and love well as we receive His truth and love about ourselves.

We must receive His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, inside us, believe it is true for us, before we can share it with other people. The Holy Spirit produces His fruit in us as we believe in God’s love for us. We fall more and more in love with God and who He is and what He has done for us. We believe He is on our side and working for our good. And as we do the Holy Spirit inside us produces love, joy, peace, patience and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We get to experience it and the people in our lives get to experience it.  

Miracle and Mystery! Amen!

Decide to BELIEVE!