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CHAPTER 1
THE CREED OF THE BELOVED
When I discover who I am, I'll be free.
— Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
You Are Seen Deeply and Loved
You belong and you are wanted, just as you are and not as you should be. There is no one like you in the whole world. You're doing better than you think. More people than you think love you. You are a treasure, and you have nothing to prove.
See, what I'm discovering is that my deepest need is to know I matter and belong. God made humans this way. But, because of our need to matter and belong, it is so easy to fall into the never- ending pursuit of approval and love through:
• what you do
• what you have
• what people say about you
Every day advertisers and others promise us that with a few tweaks we'll be more attractive and popular. Our peers imply that when we succeed in our goals and aspirations, our lives will count and be "one for the history books." Meanwhile churches and charities make us feel guilty and ask us to do more for them, for our children or spouse, and for the world. All of these things are great, yet every day they seem just a bit out of reach.
Perhaps you feel as though you are being pulled in a thousand directions. You feel like you are sacrificing everything but are completely out of energy and unhappy. You long for the times in your life when you had fewer worries, when you felt less pressure and stress, and you wonder if you'll ever get that life back. You daydream about an existence very different from the one you are currently experiencing — one that is fun, free, and energized. Maybe you wish you could be a kid again.
At the same time you feel a sense of shame because you didn't do as well as you thought you would. You could've been a better parent or grandparent. You could have achieved more in your career if you'd just tried a little harder. Plus you're getting older and are feeling less wanted. You promise yourself that tomorrow you're going to give it 110 percent but somewhere deep inside feel as if maybe you won't.
Don't beat yourself up, because the nasty little secret is everyone feels this way. From the wealthiest to the poorest, from the oldest to the youngest, we human beings constantly feel a sense of not being enough. We just masquerade it. We show our best to others while hiding the things that make us "unworthy" of respect and belonging. We publicly display to one another how terrific we are while secretly feeling like we're not enough.
As we compare our true, hidden self to others' public shiny versions of themselves, we run out of energy trying to keep up with one another. We wake up hoping to outpace our peers while regretting the wasted years we could have spent being happy. The net result is everyone is tired because they are hurrying to be loved. Little do they know, they already are.
You are loved by God. You always have been and you always will be. He was there when you were born, and he'll be there to catch your last breath. Your accomplishments don't matter to him as much as your smile. Your treasures only matter to him because they matter to you. You're his treasure. He also doesn't care about your reputation. He simply longs to be with you. He calls you beloved.
This was made real for me when I became a young father many years ago. I remember one early morning when the sun was still sleeping and I was trying to rock my little four-week-old peanut back to sleep.
Looking at her, I thought, I'd do anything for you. I was exhausted from not sleeping, yet overwhelmed with joy just to be with her. She hadn't done anything for me. She merely was, and that was all I needed. She was and is a beloved treasure.
The great love I feel for my children is very little compared to the immense love God has for you. He calls you his beloved treasure. He's your loving Father. He is not angry with you. He is not holding a grudge against you. He simply longs to be with you and bless you. You are his. This is your identity. Discovering it makes all the difference.
There is nothing like living in the identity of the beloved. Being friends with God helps us live every day with full hearts. When we know we are his beloved, we have clear vision, good sleep, big dreams, and peace. Being the beloved gives us the strength to let go of our regrets, self-pity, and bitterness and helps us inherit an inner joy that never goes away.
The ultimate goal of this book is to teach you to have incredible energy by rooting your identity in nothing but the love of God.
You may not know this about yourself, but every part of you is crying out to connect with God and with others. You need to feel the deep, sustaining joy that comes from being seen deeply by the people who love you. You'll never be fulfilled by your trophies, entertainment, fashion, fun, or your dazzling reputation. You'll only connect with others when you are at peace with yourself and with God. Only then can you begin to show others who you truly are and know that you are worthy of respect and belonging.
This is your "why." It's the reason you do everything. In a way, it's everyone's deepest motivator: to get connected with others and with God.
I believe if you stick with me over the chapters in this book, your life will never be the same. You'll begin to see some of the ways your behaviors are coming from a lack of joy rooted in a sense of "not being enough." As you begin to believe you truly belong in God's world, you'll develop more energy, clarity of purpose, and vision for your life, and you'll cut out a lot of the useless stuff that chokes your soul.
I have developed a creed that has made this change possible for thousands of people around the world. A creed is like a prayer you say to yourself to realign your mind and heart with what really matters. If you're an American, you likely said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school. This patriotic creed is taught to children to help them remember what it means to be an American. In the same way, the Creed of the Beloved will help you train your mind and heart to know what it means to be the beloved of God. Over time the scriptural truths in this creed will give you an incredible sense of energy and power to succeed in every aspect of your life.
Discovering My Personal Why
In the eighties, my grandfather, Robert H. Schuller, was the most-watched religious television personality in the world on the program he started, Hour of Power. Every Sunday millions of people around the world looked forward to watching him preach a powerful word from the Crystal Cathedral about possibility thinking. Many in my generation are unfamiliar with Dr. Schuller, but no doubt he will be remembered as one of the greatest influencers of the Christian church in the twentieth century. If you've ever been to a church calling itself "seeker sensitive," you can thank him.
Of course, this meant very little to me as a kid. I simply saw him as my fishing buddy, my chubby grandpa who gave great hugs. This remained mostly true until I was about eighteen years old and was invited to go with him and five hundred members of his viewing audience to Israel.
Shortly after arriving in Jerusalem that first evening, I found myself wandering around the lobby of our hotel. I was looking at their displays of religious artifacts yet couldn't forget I was in an everyday Hyatt. I was feeling antsy and wanting to go see this famous city for the first time when, out of nowhere, a man with a bushy red beard and a big personality said, "Are you Robert Schuller?"
"Sort of," I replied. "But probably not the one you're looking for."
"You'll do," he quipped. "My name is Israel." And after a warm but brief conversation, we were off to his home.
He was a Jewish-Christian man who told me he'd had a profound encounter with God while serving in the Israeli army. It was this encounter that convinced him to become a Christian. He also proved to the Israeli government that he was a direct descendant of King David. This led to the government giving him special land just outside of the city that would have belonged to the family of David.
We walked to his home under the stars. In the warmth of the evening, he showed me a couple of dig sites, an ancient baptismal, and a little outdoor chapel he had made years ago. He shared stories about his country and what it was like growing up there. Then he stopped by a little outdoor table to make a phone call. After talking briefly with someone on the other line, he said, "The real reason I brought you up here was for this." He pushed toward me his tan-colored, seventies-looking phone. "For you," he said.
On the line, a woman introduced herself and told me her story. She said years ago she'd been married to an Eastern Orthodox priest. At first the marriage was sweet, but it wasn't long before he became violent and cold hearted. He beat her regularly and from his own religious perspective felt he had every right to do so. Having grown up in this tradition, she'd believed priests to be God's mediators, a reflection of God himself. As her then-husband abused her physically and verbally, she felt as though it was God himself abusing her, beating her.
One day, alone in her room, she turned on the TV and saw a kind-looking old man in a robe say, "God loves you and so do I!" She said he smiled right at her through the screen.
She began to watch my grandpa every week. His words gave her hope and encouragement that God really did love her and that God wanted the best for her. She believed for the first time that she deserved better than this — she deserved love and respect. She became convinced she could get out of this mess ... somehow.
One day, as she was watching my grandpa's show on TV, the ministry offered a little cross with that same phrase — "God loves you and so do I" — engraved on it. This line meant so much to her that she gave a donation — her first to a ministry — to get it. But upon arriving in the mail, it was intercepted by her husband, who was so enraged he beat her bloody, and she ended up in the hospital. It was there, cross in hand, that she decided she would leave her husband and start a new life.
Over that tan-colored phone, I heard her say, "Now, years later, I've started a nonprofit that helps abused women all over the world. The man you are standing with is my new husband, and we are so happy. It's all because of your grandpa's words, 'God loves you and so do I.'" She continued, "Those words gave me the strength to become the woman I was called to be."
She had heard two different messages from two different ministers. The first was from her ex-husband, who said, "You're worthless. I'm angry at you, and so is God." The second voice was from my grandpa, Dr. Schuller, who said, "You are loved. You're a child of God." She believed the latter, and it gave her the power she needed to escape a violent husband. She really believed God had more for her life than she was currently experiencing, and that belief made all the difference. She was given a personal creed — "God loves you and so do I" — and it empowered her to start a new life.
She explained to me that when she heard Robert Schuller was in town and was down at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, she asked her beloved husband, Israel, to find him and bring him up here so she could tell him how much his words about God's love had changed her life. Unfortunately for her, she got me instead of my grandpa, but she was just as happy to share her story with me. And I'm glad she did. Through her words, I gained a new passion for the message of God's love and dignity for people. I realized then how much Hour of Power was touching lives in dramatic ways. I became a believer in TV ministry that evening.
I realized the power of telling someone, simply and without apology, "God loves you." That creed — "God loves you and so do I" — influenced my creed in a big way. I grasped the power of assuring God's love to those who are suffering. I learned the first purpose of every church is to ascribe dignity to lost and broken people. That's what Jesus did. And as a student of Jesus Christ, my task was to be a living reminder of God's love to hurting people.
Years later I remember talking to my grandpa in his office about why he spoke about God's love so much. He favored both architecture and psychology, and this time he gave me a psychological response: "Freud believed the greatest human need is pleasure. Adler believed the greatest human need is power. And Frankl believed the greatest human need is meaning. But I say the greatest human need is dignity." That day in his tower office, I got the words to describe why I got up in the morning: to give, teach, and ascribe dignity and belonging to everyone — to teach people their identity as the beloved.
Dignity means, to a degree, that you should respect everyone. Dignity means viewing people through the lens of the beloved, not the lens of resentment or judgment. It means striving to understand the story and the brokenness of people before rejecting them. It means looking at those who are hurting and believing in them. It says, "You belong before you believe." It repeats the hopeful words of St. Augustine: "There's no saint without a past, and no sinner without a future."
Living in our identity as the beloved is the gateway to a life full of energy because it helps us endure feelings of embarrassment, shame, and rejection. It gives us the inner strength to be vulnerable and share our weaknesses with the people we love. Do you ever feel like your friendships, marriage, family, and work colleagues are draining you? Walking in the dignity of the beloved will free you to make the appropriate steps to turn those relationships into your greatest source of joy.
The Opposite of Dignity Is Shame
After years of ministry serving thousands of hurting people, I've seen how shame leads to death and grace leads to life. Without a doubt, feelings of shame lead to more mistakes, hurtful behavior, addiction, and pretending. Those setbacks and mistakes then intensify the shame that was already present and cause people to feel more worthless and isolated.
Grace, however, causes people to be more trusting. It's healing and allows people to show what's really hurting them.
My friend Matt has talked about what it was like being addicted to crystal meth. He came from a loving Christian home but sometime in high school got involved with the wrong group of friends. These friends introduced him to drugs, and by the middle of college he was totally hooked. He lost everything and was hurting himself and others. This caused him to feel incredible shame, isolating him even more from the thing he needed most: deep connection with friends and family. These feelings of unworthiness became a major emotional trigger for him that elevated his desire for more drugs. He was caught in the cycle of addiction.
Years later he was mentored out of his addiction. He was taught to be vulnerable, to live at peace with his mistakes and his shortcomings. Most important, he got involved with a college church group who accepted him as an addict and loved him through the process. They invited him to be a part of revival nights, where he would enter into prayer and worship for hours. It was these loving, vulnerable connections and a newfound relationship with Jesus that helped my friend overcome shame and reconcile with his friends and family, ultimately beating his addiction. He is now a loving husband and father of three.
Though most people have not been caught in the grip of drug addiction, most of us have a "substance." By that I mean that we all have good things we make bad by using them to escape from our feelings of unworthiness and emptiness. The same addiction cycle can be found in workaholism, compulsive shopping, overeating, or just lethargically napping and watching TV. We see these behaviors aren't good for us. We then feel shame about the results of these behaviors. We beat ourselves up, which triggers the need for more work, shopping, food, naps, TV, or whatever.
God wants to break your need for an escape and give you the life you've always wanted through being the beloved. To have true life we must rid our lives of shame.
Jesus = Anti-Shame
Jesus reveals to us what God is like. Jesus was always carelessly abandoning his own reputation by loving and celebrating people who were societal outcasts. In his day reputation was everything, yet he did things that could harm his reputation. He ate with all the dregs of society, such as tax collectors, Samaritans, and lepers. He ate with business cheats who openly swindled people out of their money, like Zacchaeus. Once he allowed a prostitute to wipe expensive perfume on his feet while weeping.
Jesus just didn't care about appearances.
This kind of ministry was radical.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "You Are Beloved"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Robert V. Schuller.
Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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