"A Woman and her God."

"A Woman and her God" is a wonderful book that I am reading that was given to me by my friend Sarah for my birthday. I have to say that I received wonderful, thoughtful gifts for my birthday but this has been my favorite. The book is a collaboration of authors, one of them is Beth Moore. Beth Moore is amazing. I am so excited to be doing a study by her in a couple of weeks with some women from my church. 

Anyway the first chapter is about loving God more then life. This has been something I have thought and prayed about A LOT over the last week. I really love life. I have had to wrap my mind around if I love God more then life and how I can love him more then life. She writes out Psalm 63. This is a great psalm. The first sentence is God you are my God. I think that loving God more then life obviously has to start by knowing him and recognizing that he really is OUR God, your God and my God. Also that God loves us personally and he belongs to each one of us as Abba Father. I have had a new perspective on God this week in the sense of viewing him as my Abba Father. When I consider who a father is in the perspective of humanity God is all that and more, and it has helped me realize that there is no reason to not love him more then I love my life. I could go on and on about this book. The chapter of Self concept was life changing. In the chapter about Self Concept the author talks about what a healthy self concept looks like and what an unhealthy self concept looks like. She expressed that her  whole life she thought that something was wrong with her, that she was weird or different then everyone else. I have shared this same feeling with my sisters and as an adult have still struggled with this but I honestly thought that I was the only person who thought this. I thought it was weird or different thinking. I didn't think anyone would ever understand and that alone made me feel different. So reading this from a woman who is an author of a devotional book was huge for me. It also got me reflecting on the ways that Satan lies to us. Seriously I think that is the one lie I fall for over and over again, I am alone and no one could possibly understand how I feel. Amidst reading all this is when she talks about God being Abba Father and that she never really had a father figure growing up. I have struggled so much in my relationship with my dad in the last few years. It still hurts now as I am thinking about it. I will tell my dad that I love him and he doesn't even say I love you back. He doesn't like to visit and he rarely calls. However, I know in my head that he loves me. What I learned is that I need to recognize God as my father. The one that I look for to receive love, support, encouragement, guidance, and wisdom. He needs to fill my tank and when I do this it frees up the people in my life to be human and make mistakes. They aren't responsible for meeting my needs, anything that they say or do for me is above and beyond because I have allowed God to be everything that I need. Again I can't say enough about this book. I can't imagine that I won't read it over and over again because I know that I will probably need to be reminded of the things that I learned but I am learning so much about God and about myself.