If you only knew...

I just finished watching Christine Caine's message at Guts Church (gutschurch.com) from the Guts Girls Goes Aussie event over the weekend and it spoke so deeply to my heart. Christine relates a story of her daughter, who from the time she was born has had the Word of God spoken over her life - she has been told that she's intelligent, beautiful, the head and not the tail, above only and not beneath, that she is blessed and highly favored... And when her daughter was five she got in a fight at school with a young boy who took a teddy bear from her and her daughter pulled it back from the boy. The boy looked at her daughter and said, "you're ugly and dumb." The little girl pulled her shoulders back and said, "no, i'm not. my daddy says that i am beautiful and intelligent." "How much junk could we eliminate from our lives," says Christine, "if we would know and believe what our Father says about us and believe nothing else?"
After letting the message sit with me, think on it, process it, I got on Facebook and read countless status updates and posts between girls who are speaking about boyfriends who don't treat them well, and boyfriends who are rude and disrespectful to them, girls speaking demeaning and degrading comments about one another, and I can't help but relate to Christine's message - what if they would simply believe ONLY what the Word of God says about them and nothing else. And, in doing so, they would surround themselves with others who treat them according to who they are, which is a child of God.
And then you think of those individuals in your own life, those who you are entrusted to and entrusted with, who speak against their own health and the health of their loved ones, who speak gossip and idle chatter, who pronounce defeat on themselves and judgement on others, and you think, "if only you would believe what your Father says about you, and apply that to loving those around you and treating those you come in contact with as children of God." What a different world we would have, and what a different outlook on christians and christianity the world would have of us. We would actually act in accordance with what we profess. And THAT would change the world.