I had this really powerful message to deliver to you guys… But what I’m led to share with you is something a bit different than usual.

I speak to you, not as a spotless woman of virtue. I speak to you as a broken vessel. Repaired and redeemed by the one true living God who saw it fit to love me when I had deemed myself unlovable. I had counted myself out and saw me worthy of nothing more than the stolen moments of affection I had begun to settle for.

When I gave my heart to God, I was so broken and confused that I didn’t even expect Him to love me fully. After all, who could love a mess like me? Who could possibly love me knowing all I had done and how could anyone love me when I could barely manage to love myself? How could this perfect God ever see anything good in me? Those prophets had to be wrong, those promises in the bible sound good but they weren’t for me; they don’t know how messed up I am!

The nights I pictured the world without me and envisioned it to be better that way. There were days I hated everyone around me only because they reminded me that I existed. And even when I was foolish enough to like me, along came a reminder of how unworthy I was of love.

BUT God!!!!

He had a plan for me when I didn’t even want to exist! God kept me, literally. I’m not speaking hypothetically, I am talking about times when I should have and would have been dead. I’ve been held over a railing, had a machete held to my throat and raced down a dark highway pleading for a life I wasn’t really sure I wanted.

God loved me so much He forced me to love myself!!!! I had to love me because He did and in my intimate times with Him, He left no room for my self loathing. I’m not who I was, I do not accept what I once did. My redeemer has reconciled me to Himself and shown me the truth about me when I had bought into the lies of the enemy and those that despise me. God began pouring Himself into me and flushing out the darkness I once was familiar with. I speak to you with the authority of Jesus Christ who calls me His own and I am telling you that you are worthy, you are magnificent and you are planned! Every detail of your life is important to your creator and there is no room for you to continue to hate the beautiful being He created you to be!!!

Let love reign!

I know, the pain won’t go away right this moment. But I am a living testament that it will go away, in His presence there is fullness of joy and the more time you spend with Him… The less you spend in despair.

Try Him, try the savior that changed me. Try the God that loved me into loving myself. Try this Holy Spirit that comforts me and leads me.

Just try.

I love you, God loves you – even if you don’t love you. You can learn to. God will show you how!

– Shakeisha M.