Have you ever been someplace that makes you feel really uncomfortable and so all that is on your mind is getting out of there?  Well, that is the way I’ve always felt once I’ve finished doing anything where I was on center stage–singing, speaking, presenting at work, whatever–it just didn’t matter; I was just filled with the desire to flee the moment I was done.  I’m telling you this because in Celebrate Recovery God is teaching me about this character defect I’ve developed.  When I did begin to sing as a high schooler and found success in it my dad would belittle me.  His words were something like, “Oh yeah, now that you’ve done this you think you are too good for us so just get out of here and go do your own thing.  Forget about us because we don’t matter.”  I would wonder why he would do this.  No one mattered more to me than my family and all I truly wanted was to hear from him that he thought I’d done well.

The last couple days I’ve focused on what God is teaching me from doing the assignment with the TV station.  I’ve already told you how I spent the rest of the day alone and how much I beat myself up during that alone time.  Also, yesterday, I told how God was correcting my thinking about His assignments and how he wants to me to learn from them.  This morning during my devotions I was journaling about an upcoming singing engagement our quartet is doing in McCall, ID.  We are singing for the Nazarene Church there on April 24th.  I am also telling my story at the time.  God was showing me how He doesn’t want me to finish it and do the same as I did earlier this week.  He wants me to learn from this.  I asked Him what He wanted me to know.  His message was astounding to me.  He said, “My son, I’m so very proud of you.  You are my beloved….”  The scripture this is taken from is Song of Solomon 6:13 “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”  In looking this scripture up I found there is a song called “My Beloved” and so I listened to it.  It is then that God said He wanted me to pass this message along to others as part of my assignment from this point forward.  He said too many of His children suffer from the sense they are not good enough to be His beloved.  He has already made that possible for them through Jesus Christ, they just don’t know this yet.

In February Kathy and I went to Israel on a 9 day tour.  Our pastor does this annually and this year we went.  While there I purchased a ring with Hebrew writing on it that says the Song of Solomon verse–“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”  Now I know why He wanted me to have this firm reminder on my finger throughout each day.  No matter what our past has been, He already loves us and waits for us to come to Him.  How grateful I am for this.  I want to spend the rest of my life proclaiming this message as part of my assignment.