Grafted: How God Sees You
Welcome to the Solidarity podcast,
where we share stories to connect with one another, find comfort in life’s challenges & to celebrate the solidarity that is..
being a woman.
I cannot believe I’m already to episode 20 of the podcast, it feels surreal. I have never been good at sticking with things. In fact when I went on my month mid-season break, I really had to push myself to come back. It’s a habit I’m trying to break. So to hit 20 episodes feels like a milestone to me. I’ve decided every season will have 24 episodes so I’ll wrap this up at the end of July and see ya back in September for the start of season 2!
So I did a poll on my Instagram the other day to find out how ya’ll would like me to use these last few episodes. Now there’s not many of you, but I’m so thankful for those who do listen and it means the world to me when you share. In fact, we’re really close to 700 downloads, I’d absolutely love to hit 1000 before the next season starts, so if you feel at all inclined to share on social media or just send this to a friend I’d appreciate it so very much. Anyways, like I was saying, sorry for the tangent, I did a poll on Instagram and most of you voted that I talk about how God sees you. I sensed some encouragement about our value was needed.
It was really beautiful because a few weeks ago I got a word from God, a reminder of how He sees me and I felt compelled to write it down and share it on social media in the form of a video. But I decided I wanted to expand upon it a bit and then share the spoken word as a reminder that you can take and claim as your own. Something that you can listen to when you’re struggling to feel anything.
In the distracting age of 2021 where social media dominates and we have a constant influx of information that we are trying to process, it can be really easy to put our worth into everything but God. When we are being pulled in a ton of different directions and constantly being pushed off our foundation, if we have one, it can be confusing and isolating and when we find ourselves isolated we let our thoughts- which more often that not, lie to use, take over and abuse us. We end up with the lies from hell being whispered within us, cover us over and over again. I believe this is why a. being in solid community so we don’t get isolated is really important and b. getting grounded in the Bible everyday is vital to our survival. Because Satan wishes us nothing more than death. This is through our thoughts and how we feel about ourselves and then eventually through our actions. It’s why we have to be on guard.
He wants us to believe that we are worthless, that our value comes from what we can accomplish (knowing full well that we’ll never be enough on our own & then feel defeated and worthless).
I read something recently from Dallas Willard that we have the power to create matter into other matter. It’s one of the gifts that God has given us. He gives us thoughts and ideas and the original matter- as He is the ultimate creator- but then He gives us the ability to turns those thoughts and ideas into actions and things. God is incredibly generous because not only did He make us in His image visually, but He gave us a micro-taste of His gifts and abilities. But that is only best used when it is within Him and given back to Him. It’s only fully experienced within gratitude and His guidance.
That’s the slippery slope we have to walk of feeling like we’ve accomplished things and knowing that we’ve only accomplished them through the grace & provision of God. Make sense?
It can be easy to set our worth in those accomplishments when things are going well and then promptly fall apart and lose our identity when they’re not.
But here’s the thing. Our worth isn’t out of our actions because He gives us the ability to act, it is fully and irrevocably out of the fact that we are made fully in His image and made perfect through the sacrifice of Jesus. And when we let go of that fumbling grasp that we have on constantly wanting to redefine ourselves, reinvent and control our inspiration- we can find true freedom because nothing we can or can’t do can make Him love us any more or less. Anything we can or cannot do will make us better humans- there is no status because we are all on the same level: in need of a savior and within salvation there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.
Pretty cool right?
We can let go of our insecurities and fear that we will never be enough because fear is only a lack of faith being exposed and revealed. The reality is that we aren’t enough, so we can stop fearing it because it’s true, but thankfully God didn’t stop there. He values us because He made us and loves us and so He fixed the issue of our separation and our lack of existing outside of Him by making it possible to be grafted back into Him through Jesus. So letting it go means setting that fear into His hands and then re-establishing new thought patterns by reminding ourselves of who He says we are in Him.
I do want to make a side note about the fruit of our works because it is talked about and once we’re in Jesus it can be easy to caught up in putting our value and worth in those things. Because although we’re supposed to be working hard, we still cannot be dependent on those things. They will never be enough. Yes we will be judged on our fruits- by God- we will be held accountable for our actions, but our worth is not dependent on our actions- but the opposite actually. Our actions are an outpouring of the worth God has assigned to us. When we are rooted firmly in Christ, grafted together with Him, our actions, our fruit should be an outpouring of our worth- our identity in Jesus. Through Jesus, God doesn’t look at us, waiting to see us get better, be better, do better— He sees us the way He looks at His son. He sees us as healed, redeemed, white as snow, unblemished; and that is where we can root our worth. Because if we try to root it in our actions we will constantly find ourselves gasping for air, grappling for soil- because in our inherently sinful actions, there is no solid foundation. It is constantly cracked with tangled roots. There is no clarity in that- no peace.
So thank God for his plan. Thank God that He already thought of a plan- of a way to value us when we were no longer of any value. God calls us His because He made you new and that is a miracle worth rooting yourself in, worth rejoicing in.
Earthly roots will always leave you stumbling, wavering, wobbling- but as Romans 8:37-39 says: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” In Jesus your worth isn’t going anywhere and you can walk in confidence in that and believe that what He says about you is true.
So what does He say about you?
I want to share that word I talked about earlier because I think it’s important. It’s based on a lot of different verses that I couldn’t possibly all reference, but if you’re getting in your Bible you’ll find these reminders as you read.
You are so incredibly loved.
You are worth more than literal GOLD because you were created in the image of THE Creator-
a reflection of the one who molded the stars & called the sun into existence.
Y’ALL THE SUN!
You are incredibly and intricately designed.
You don’t have to prove anything to anyone because God called you His.
He proved that you were worth it already.
It is done, finished. You are His & He is yours.
You are a blessing because He first blessed us.
You are so inner connected that when you are weak, He is strong & through Him you are no longer weak.
You don’t have to worry about Him showing up because He’s already done it.
He lifts the veil of your broken heart & calls you by name.
He assigns gold that your feet will walk over.
He ADORES you. You are adored.
You are cherished as He admires His craftsmanship.
You are beautifully restored as He looks at you through the lens of the cross- He looks at His son and H e sees you through Him- all transparency.
Oh darling you are loved.
Deeply known.
Intimately seen.
Wonderfully created.
You are His own.
The old has passed away, behold the new has come.
Thank you so much for listening in this week, I hope you’ll take what you heard today and set it on your heart. I pray that you’ll ask God to reveal to you what you’re supposed to take from it and what He wants to reveal to you. I encourage you to keep coming back to find solidarity in our shared experiences. If you’d like to share your own story, I would love to have you on. Just shoot me a message on Instagram - @riley_quin or send me an email- riley@rileyq.com and we’ll talk!
Don’t forget to share this with a woman who you want to encourage today, you can share it on Facebook @solidaritypodcast or Instagram @riley_quin and tag me so we can get the word out on social media and if you’re feeling it, subscribe and leave a review to help get it out to others on the podcast algorithm who need to be shown some solidarity! Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next Wednesday for a new episode!
As always, I’m so glad you’re here.
You’re wanted, needed and loved.
I see you, I hear you and you my love, by the grace of God, you are enough.