Live Free with Josh Howerton - How God Sees You | Ep. 97 | Tuesday June 20, 2023

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Social media can change how we think about our physical image. We are bombarded by lies every day making it hard to believe the truth of who we are. Tune in as Pastor Mike reminds us with Scripture pointing us to the identity we have in Christ. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the podcast. My name is Mike, and we're spending a few minutes every day just talking about identity theft. And the lies our enemy uses to hack into our soul.

He uses lies like, I am what I feel, I am what I do, I am what I've done, I am what people say about me. And the one that goes hand in hand with the whole people-pleasing thing is I am how I look. We started yesterday talking about how in our culture we are obsessed with our physical image. I mean message after message we receive about how we're supposed to look. And those messages literally are in our hands now all day long as we scroll through them. And for our kids, they're receiving those messages on the average of seven hours and 22 minutes of screen time every day. I don't know if you've seen the most recent Dove Beauty campaign ad, but it ends with a stat that reveals that social media is harming the mental health of three out of five kids,

especially highlighting young girls with eating disorders. And you know what, I'm not like railing against social media. I know there are great things about it. But we do have to be aware all of us that we are receiving thousands of messages, many of them selling us a lie, that we can begin to believe about ourselves, our identity, and are worth based on what other people say, think, do eat, look like, achieve, way, perform, succeed, and on and on it goes. And again, I said it yesterday.

This whole thing seems so sinister to me because it comes straight from the original identity thief. He wants to distort our image in the image of God and hack into our identity with his lies. I told you the last episode that we would start to unpack some victorious secrets that could help us expose the lies for what they are and live in the truth of who we are. I don't want to make these simple, easy to remember,

and I included tons of scripture so you will know these are not the rambling thoughts from an imperfect person like me. So let's just take the first one today. Know what God says. Know what God says. Like we said in our last episode, it's so important to grasp the unfailing, unconditional, reckless love of God for you.

I want to read it to you again with this guy named Paul wrote to a bunch of people struggling with their true identity, living in a culture that closely mirrored ours. He says this, Ephesians 318, may your roots go down into the soil of God's marvelous love, and may you have the power to grasp as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, how deep his love really is. And once again, that word grasp means more than just know about. It means to eat all the way through. He's writing, I just don't want

you to know about God's love. I want you to let it eat all the way through you. Yes, you, you, with your wonderfully unique nose and your lips and your eyes and your hairline and your waistline, You are a much-loved treasure child of the most high God. You're accepted by the one who matters most. You see, a lot of people spend the lifetime trying to become what they already are. Accepted. Knowing, really grasping what God says about me has been so freeing to me. I don't have to fret about looking just right in order to be accepted.

I already am. I don't have to hide behind the right pair of jeans or some kind of. kind of filter on Snapchat that unfiltered me has been made very good by a super creative God who loves me and does not make mistakes. I don't have to be a size two. I don't have to have a six-pack. I can rock this two-liter I got and know I am loved by God because his love is one-size-fits-all. I love what Enri Nauan writes.

He says, even though you may not be chosen by the world, you are chosen by God. And every time you listen to his voice, you will discover within yourself, desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply. It's like discovering a well in the desert. So drink from that well. Hear his voice. Gasp how wide and how deep and how high and how long God's love is for you. Let it eat all the way through you.

Refuse to buy the lie any longer. Say, I am not going to let a filtered photo or a bathroom scale of some worthless piece of glass take me captive. I will not be held captive by a reflection. I will not pursue any image except the image of God and me. Knowing the truth, knowing what he says, knowing that you are love with an unfailing love, and then regularly telling yourself the truth about who you are,

it affects the way you eat, the way you drink, the way you love, laugh, exercise, play, relate, and work. Know what God says. Gasp it, memorize his truth, pray through these scriptures that we're unpacking every day. Just eat it every day and let it eat through you. My wife Debbie is incredibly beautiful. She just is.

But do you know when I find her the most attractive? It's early in the morning. You got like some flannel brobe thing on, a Bible in her lap, a pair of cheap readers hanging off the end of her nose, just soaking in God's word, God's truth. And, gang, we spend so much time scrolling through images of people on red carpets

and music videos and workout videos saying, man, if I could only look like that. We'd be so much better off scrolling through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John looking at Jesus saying, man, if I could only look like that. And I'm praying the day that you would start to know what God says about you, and you would love what you see. Have a great day. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekends services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this

podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint. dot church slash daily drive.