Changed By Love

Step 4: Ask God to show you how He sees you.

Now that you have been set free and delivered from every chain that had you bound and you are starting each day by putting your spirit above your soul and living by your spirit instead of your soul. And you are learning to trust God and look at His Word and His promises instead of circumstances, what is the next step to living a supernatural life?

Now you should ask God to show you what He thinks about you.

The Lord had to work on me for a long time before I even thought to ask Him this question. He kept nudging me toward it, but I was hard of hearing.

When I was in my early 20’s, I was a church camp counselor, and one night I saw young children receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. I had been praying for that experience for myself for several years but had never received it. I felt a little bit upset about not having received it yet, when these little children were receiving it so easily. I knew that it was probably because of fear blocking my ability to receive. But it made me really determined to seek God and do my best to clear the way so that I could receive it. I stayed at the altar for a long time that night just asking God to help me get over my fears and inhibitions so that I could receive everything that He wanted to give me.

Another counselor who was older than I am came and started praying with me. I told her what I was praying about and she prayed for me to be able to receive anything that God wanted to give me.

Then she suggested that we go somewhere quiet because she wanted to really be able to share and talk with me. We went back to my cabin, and she comforted me and built me up with scripture about how much God loves me and wants to answer my prayers and bless me. The main scripture she read to me that caused me to sob and feel His love in a way I had never felt before was Isaiah 43:1,2

But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,
Nor shall the flame scorch you.

There was such a strong anointing on those verses in that moment that I felt His love for me – for ME – I really felt it. I knew that He was calling me by my name. I knew that I was somebody to Him and that He was trying to communicate His love and care for me.

When I got that revelation, I suddenly started saying a three-syllable “word” that was not a word that I knew while I was trying to thank Him for loving me. Then I felt an overwhelming sensation of love flow through me. I felt loved, and I felt love for everybody, even those I didn’t really like that well. She took me back to the chapel and told people what had happened, and I went around hugging everybody there, which was not the way I usually behaved! I just felt so much love I wanted to hug everyone on the planet.

Well, that was wonderful and it really impacted my life in big ways. I started singing in front of people and doing things that I never could have done before because of fear and shyness.

But I still had some issues of inferiority and insecurity that needed to be dealt with.

Life went on and I met my True Love and married him. We had a child, then another and another and another… My life became very busy with learning to be a mommy, a housewife, a wife, along with tutoring and homeschooling and doing homeschool assessments for about 100 families every year. My spiritual life was put on the back burner for a while.

We were still going to church, but I couldn’t get much out of sermons because I was usually in the nursery or helping with other kids’ classes, which was expected because I had kids in the program.

One night as I was alone in the van (a rare occurrence) headed home from a class I needed to take to renew my teaching certificate so I could continue to do homeschool assessments, I sensed that the Lord was trying to tell me something. I had asked Him to speak to me now that I had a minute alone. It took about 20 minutes of really listening to understand that He was saying, “Penney, I delight in you.” I was floored. I couldn’t believe that He would delight in me. I didn’t feel worthy in the least. But I was sure that was what He was saying. I pondered on that all the way home.

It changed the way I viewed myself. It changed the way I viewed God. It revealed to me that I didn’t have to be perfect for Him to love me in such a deep way that He would describe it as delighting in me. I felt loved and special.

It was several years later that He showed me in His Word Psalm 18:19 “He delivered me because He delighted in me.”

I knew that verse was talking about me. By that time, He had delivered me and was about to deliver me from some pretty scary situations!

I got the revelation that He always will deliver me, because He delights in me. I can count on His deliverance. I can also count on His delight in me. Not because I’m delightful, but because that’s just how God is. That’s just how God sees me. He delights in me in spite of my failings, my issues and my problems.

After that revelation, He kept dropping into my spirit little hints about how He feels about me. He showed me through my little baby who was just learning to walk that He saw me the same way I saw my little baby girl. He felt the kind of tender love and compassion and pride in me that I felt for my little baby girl who was trying so hard to walk in spite of fear or failure or pain.

I came to a point where I understood that I needed to really know how God feels about me. I had some preconceived ideas from the teachings I had heard all my life. I had a view of God as a father who loves all of His children and takes care of them en masse. I had to deal with this kind of thinking as I mothered my children. I realized that I was treating my children as a group instead of individuals with different needs and personalities. The Lord helped me to see them as more than a responsibility that often got in the way of things I was trying to accomplish. I used to herd them from one place to another without taking into consideration what they really needed or wanted. I assumed that my plans were good for all of them, never thinking that some might benefit from less activity and others from more.

As I began to understand that I was wrong to think of my children as a herd, I realized that God doesn’t think of us in that way, either. He taught me that He loves me all by myself. I’m not part of the collective that He takes care of in a generic way. He cares about me and loves me and knows my name. He knows how I feel. He cares about what I care about. He is crazy about me!

Now I knew that I needed even more revelation of how He feels about me. So I intentionally prayed the prayer, “Lord, show me what You think of me. Show me how you feel about me.”

Ever since then, He has been speaking to me through prophetic experiences where people have prayed over me and prophesied that He is happy with the way I have taken care of my children and the way I have protected them and taught them about the Lord. He has turned my husband’s heart toward me in such a way that I feel God’s heart for me through him and the way that he expresses love for me.

The first prophecy contained phrases from Song of Solomon and Isaiah and other scriptures that were personalized for me:

I am His chosen one
His princess
His Esther
His queen
His favorite
No more shame
No more desolation
No longer forgotten
My land shall be married
He is ravished with my beauty
He has given me beauty for ashes
He delights in me!
Change the DNA of my heart – what I think about God and myself
I have His favor
He has put His robe on me – a robe of righteousness and a ring on my finger, and a crown on my head
Sing over her. Let your winds blow on this fragrant garden.

God spoke to me so profoundly and ministered to my heart through these words.

Now why do we need this knowledge and revelation of how God sees us? Because we can’t really know Him unless we know how He feels about us.

Ephesians 3:16-21

16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,

17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—

19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,

21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

When we know His love, His love for us individually, we will be filled with all the fullness of God.

With His fullness in us, we can live this life the way it was meant to be lived.