When You Feel Less Than Perfect

When You Feel Less Than Perfect

Just when I want to hang my head for all the ways I mess up, I hear a whisper in my spirit in the early morning: Song of Solomon 4:7 . . . You are altogether beautiful, my love – there is no flaw in you.

With my feet propped on the ottoman, books stacked at my side, I give thanks, pray, and wrestle out a plan for the day. These days I’m reading My Utmost for His Highest, found in the dusty stack of books at the family ranch. It’s about time. Every time I pick it up I know I’m going to have to die to myself just a little bit more.

I grab my thick black Bible, wondering why the Spirit would blow open those pages to the love and sex book, Song of Solomon, to remind me he saw “no flaw in me.”

Seriously? No flaw? “You are altogether beautiful, my love,” the scripture reads, like a whisper to look at myself the way He looks at me. Belly rolls, missed deadlines, temptations, and all.

It’s grace upon grace that helps us walk loved and unashamed. It’s knowing how He sees us — without flaw and without fault — that actually makes us want to live a beautiful life. God looks at us through the lens of total grace — giving us the gift of righteousness through faith in His Son — and He has quite a bit of faith in us too. He actually believes we can take these truths into our spirit, believing we are flawless in His eyes. If He just keeps reminding us, He believes, we will one day get it.

Maybe if we look at ourselves the way He looks at us, we could be so bold to look at others through the same lens. How beautiful the people in our lives would feel if we saw them the way He sees at us: “There is no flaw in you.”

What sweet relief. These words are so healing to my heart. And they actually make me want to go running and do sit-ups, meet my deadlines, and turn away from temptation. He never shames us into living our best life; He woos us with His love.

Ultimately, He challenges us to receive these truths unto ourselves, and be conduits of them as well. To see ourselves as flawless too. To look at others through the same grace-lined lens. You are “altogether beautiful, my love.”

Pass it on.