When we are looking for our worth, value, purpose, or meaning “out there” in the world from our work, what we do, or from our children, or anywhere other than from God in ourselves, we tend to show up to our life needy and clingy and expectant.

When we are looking for love, joy, or peace “out there” in the world from our spouse, or from our children, or from our parents, or anywhere other than from God in ourselves, we tend to show up to our life needy and clingy and expectant.

When we are looking in all the wrong places to feel good about ourselves, we probably drive the people in our life crazy because we are constantly seeking assurance and/or some kind of validation.

I think so often we want someone else to do something specific to “make us feel” a certain way. We want someone else to validate us and tell us we are doing a good job, so we feel we have purpose, and our life is meaningful. Or we want our children to perform in a way that makes us feel good about our parenting. Or we want our husband to act a certain way, plan a certain event, respond a certain way for us to feel loved.

Also, I think sometimes we expect God to make us feel a certain way. We think if we read His Word or do a Bible study or pray or worship or do more, we should feel a certain way.

I have learned through study, spiritual direction, and God’s grace that we have more power than we think, the power to decide what we think. We have the power of the Holy Spirit in us. We have the power to believe and receive.

God’s power transforms our lives as we do our own work of practicing and believing and trusting and seeking and living intentionally.

It is nice when God blesses us with friends, community, and support, but if we do not have those things, we can find within ourselves the strength we need to think thoughts that generate the love, joy, peace because God lives in each of us.

When we do the work of rooting, grounding, establishing ourselves in God’s Truth about us, believing He has instilled in us all the purpose, value, meaning, we are ever going to have, we live in freedom. When we know our worth and value in Christ, when we know we are loved by Him no matter what, then we can show up in love and grace and compassion for others wherever we are and whatever we are doing.

We give ourselves, our spouse, our children, family, friends, and co-workers a gift when we do our work to live from our true self knowing our worth and value in God.

We must choose to believe in God’s love for us and receive that love as our own no matter how well other people do or do not love us. We let go of needing other people to make us feel a certain way in order for us to feel good. We recognize our power to generate any feeling we want by the thoughts we think.

As a child of God, made by Him, we have all the love, joy, peace, worth, value, purpose, and meaning we are ever going to have because He made us with it. Our worth, value, purpose are inherent. God loves us, period. It is not dependent on anything we do. It is who we are. We do not have to hustle for God’s love or for our worth. We cannot do anything to add to it or subtract from it.

Too often we tie our worth, value, purpose to what we do then when we stop doing a job or our role in life changes, we think we no longer have purpose because we are no longer doing that thing. Our worth and value and lovability are NOT tied to anything we do or do not do.

When we think our worth, value, purpose is tied to what we do, we are living from a lie. We are choosing to believe a lie. We are thinking unhelpful false thoughts.

There is Good News, you can stop lying to yourselves. You can start believing you are loved, valuable, full of purpose and meaning. We practice believing until we believe. We claim God’s Truth over and in our lives. We live into His Truth about us as we practice trusting and believing Him. Receiving and resting in His love for us.

We must retrain our brains. Training is hard. Most people are not willing to do the work. We must keep practicing believing and trusting. Keep practicing self-compassion. Keep refocusing on Truth. Our brains will continue to offer us unhelpful negative thoughts, that is part of being human. We never eliminate our humanness. God expands our capacity to live into our humanness as we trust and believe Him.

We choose what we think about and what we focus on grows. What we think about becomes who we are. Deciding to live differently will require thinking new Truth thoughts.

We have the power to choose. We decide what we think about.

Choose your thoughts carefully. Decide what you want to think. What you think creates the feelings you have. What feelings do you want to have? Choose your thoughts accordingly, you have the power to choose what you think.

We choose how we show up in all things, in all places, with all people.

We practice showing up in love, grace, kindness, joy, no matter what anyone else is doing.

We decide to make the most of every opportunity because life is precious and short. We decide to see the good and believe the best about people. We decide to have courageous faith, to fiercely love, to walk in integrity. We decide to have fun and enjoy our life!

We choose each day how we are going to show up to our life. We can choose to be negative, focus on what is wrong with our life, our world, ourselves, complain, be judgmental OR we can choose to be loving, kind, compassionate, gracious, peaceful, believing in what is possible and God’s provisions and goodness in all of life.

Decide on purpose, with intention, what you want your life to look like and then live into it!

We have this one precious gift called life. We decide what we make it mean with the thoughts we think.

God has given us the ability to take our thoughts captive, renew our minds on His Truth, and live transformed lives. God sets us free from the lies of this world as we practice and believe His Truth.

You can do this! You are strong, capable, resilient, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit in you! Choose to generate the feelings you want to feel by thinking thoughts that are true, lovely, good, honorable, trusting in God. Choose to believe you are loved by The King! You are full of worth and value and purpose! You are a child of God! Your heavenly Father delights in YOU!

 Keep TRUSTING! Keep seeking! Keep discovering God’s Way!