Filled With Grace and Favor

Here is a new part to my story....

There's been a few major things that I didn't discover until this year. It only took 22 years! One of them being that until this past winter I never realized I had a problem with self-worth. I thought since I had never had an eating disorder, unhealthy past, or obsessive focus on looks that I was doing alright. Alright until of course Jesus completely flooded my heart and told me I was worth it, and I realized in that moment I hadn't ever truly believed it. I realized then that I had spent most my life thinking that I wasn't "good enough" and was always trying to be so. I was always out to prove myself- and usually comparing. 

A while back I had been told that I was filled with grace and mercy for everyone else, but didn't have any grace for myself. As soon as I heard it, I knew it was true. That phrase wasn't to come to a head until the depths of winter when again I had heard whispered behind my back, "She needs to give herself more grace." That was the same day that Jesus gave me the word Grace. He wanted to speak grace of my life, and somehow I hadn't connected the two. Grace means the unmerited favor of God. 

.... Would you like to know what my name means? Hannah means grace or favor. Here's what I want you to know, friend. I truly believe the enemy viciously and specifically fights against our identities. He is the father of lies and it only makes sense to me that one of the greatest truths, the truth of our identities, the enemy is out demolish. In my case, he was using the very essence of who I was, my very name, to bring deception and steal it away. The very name that I have had since birth, and called every day of my life since, he was out to tell me it wasn't true. 

For several months I had been asking what the unmerited favor of God actually means and the chorus of this song describes it so well: 

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the ninety-nine
I couldn't earn it
I don't deserve it
Still You give yourself away

I imagine myself as a 5-year-old with my untamed, wild, curly head of hair, a dirty face, and exuding the carless, wild, and free spirit of child shared with a much-too-big of a smile. That's how God sees me. We can't help but so love little kids. And that love isn't based off of what they can do or have done. They didn't earn it, they just are, they are lovable and yet have done nothing to gain that. Can you imagine a daddy with His little girl? I know my brother would do anything to protect, find, or care for my little niece. My Abba is the same way. He loves me so greatly and it consumes me that I haven't done one thing to deserve it. That's just it, I had always been telling myself that I didn't deserve it, whatever it was. But I can never deserve it! Yet He gives so freely. I am filled with His grace and favor. That is who I am. That is what He says about me. 

Will you be willing to ask what He says of you?