Hi, my name is Chris Overstreet with Bethel Church and Compassion Action and you’re watching God Today. I want to talk to you today, really quickly, about not giving yourself a hard time. When I was 18 years old I weighed 400 pounds. God began to speak to me about my life. He began to talk to me about the value He saw in me. You have to understand something when I was 18 I didn’t value myself too much because all I saw was what was looking in the mirror, what I saw when I looked in the mirror. But God spoke to me one day when I was looking in the mirror. Through some prophetic words He said, “Stop giving yourself a hard time. Every time you give yourself a hard time you’re giving me a hard time and I don’t want you to give me a hard time anymore.” He said, “There’s a great man of God inside of you, and you need to see the greatness that I have placed inside of you.” He went on and He began to speak to my heart about when I give myself a hard time, I actually give God a hard time.
You might think you have the right to give yourself a hard time. Listen. If you’re a born-again Christian, there is someone else that lives inside of you. His name is Jesus Christ. He values you, He believes in you, He wants you to see what He sees about you. You’re not going to get more spiritual by giving yourself a hard time. It’s not going to make you a better person. What is actually going to make you the better person is believing what God thinks about you? It takes faith to believe what God thinks about you.
God began to speak to me and I began to change my language. I began to talk the way He talked about me. It’s amazing that when you begin to say the words that He is saying about you, something happens inside. In that moment Isaiah 26:3 began to unlock in my heart and my spirit. Man. It began to give me vision. Isaiah 26:3 says this, “He will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him because He trusted Him.” That word peace means “shalom”, but the word “mind” means “creative imagination”.
I want to encourage you today to step into the peace of God. The Bible says this in Romans 14:17, “The kingdom of God is not eating or drinking but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” God wants to unlock the peace that lives inside of you to awaken your creative imagination. If you can see you the way that God sees you, you will be able to see your future with hope.
Listen. Today is the day to live with hope. When you have hope, you have faith ignored in your heart, in your spirit to believe what He thinks about you. You have no right to go any further giving yourself a hard time. You’ve been created in the image of God and God only has the best for you. I want to pray for you. Father, I thank you, God, for everyone that is watching right now. I pray they would see themselves the way you see them. I pray that their hearts would come alive with love. That they would be able to receive the love of God but that they would also be able love themselves which would enable them to love the world. Lord, I pray a blessing over them in the name of Jesus Christ.