Ephesians 5:1 “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.”
When I was a little girl, I used to watch my mother put on her make-up. She had this shiny pink lip gloss that marked the finishing touch to her beauty routine. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Every chance I got, I pranced around in her high-heeled shoes, and sometimes she even let me wear a dab of lip gloss. But it wasn’t just her physical beauty that made me love her. To me, she represented all that was good and safe and wonderful and loving in the world. I wanted to be just like her.
Now, I’m all grown up, and I have a little girl who likes to wear my shoes and borrow my lip gloss. I hope I represent to her all that my mother represents to me. It’s a beautiful feeling to be loved that much.
God wants us to love Him like that. He wants us to look at Him and see all that we long to be. He wants us to wear His clothes of gentleness and compassion. He wants us to emulate His love, His goodness, His kindness, His purity, His forgiveness. He wants us to imitate Him.
Friends, when we are adopted into His family, our Father falls in love with us! He adores us as a parent adores his child, and He wants to represent to us all that is good and safe and wonderful and pure and loving. He’s delighted when He sees us trying to imitate Him. He is thrilled when He hears us say, “I want to be just like my Daddy.”
So join me. Let’s play dress-up, as we imitate our Father:
Colossians 3:12 – 14 “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
Dear Father, I want to be just like You. I love You.
Amen
Renae, I love this analogy!! What a sweet picture you’ve painted for me to remember who I should imitate!
Thanks, Alyssa! This is one of my favorite verses. 🙂
–r
Dear Renae,
drinking morning coffee with you sure adds the right flavor to my day.
You are speaking the word in right time.
And the way you speak tells of a woman tried, by coming out victoriously.
I’ll bear your image with me in my heart today.
Knowing that even if I am weak, I’ll get help to do what’s right, if I pray.
Oh, the evil, he will always hold up all my failures and faults to me, but he hides the cross under which I am saved and forgiven.
Yours Felisol
Thank you, Felisol. I’m so glad we are getting to be friends here.
–r
R – Great, great, great. Just this morning Corbin was laughing at Basden trying on all my dress shoes. Love this word picture.
Adorable! I wish I could have seen it. Perhaps I’ll see a picture of it on Lift my Noise? 😉
Loved the water pump story very much. It is quite timely to my current (ahem) situation with a friend of mine, which I believe you read about on my blog post recently. I have found forgiveness (because I did shoot off my mouth and planted seeds of doubt about her – on my blog! – but that wasn’t my intention). Anyway, forgiveness is about what you said: you keep pumping at the good things in life and there won’t be room for the gunky junk.
Your story today is close to my heart. My girl loves to “borrow” my makeup, hair stuff, shower gel, jewelry, everything! It is nice to be loved like that (by her and by God).
God bless!
I agree, Sarah. It is wonderful to be loved like that. I thought of something else after I posted – you know how God represents safety and love and all those wonderful things to us? (And how ideally, we should represent those things to our children?) As we imitate Him, we start to become those things for people around us. Oh, how I’ve longed for a “safe place” or person at times in my life! That is what we are when we imitate Him – we become “God with skin on” so to speak.
Anyway, enough of my rambling! As always, great to see you. 🙂
–r
Oh, dear one, this is one of the sweetest pieces of yours I’ve read.
A touching and beautiful picture that I will carry with me forever.
You are a gifted daughter of the Father and are truly dressed in His gentle garb.
I am honored to have you as a friend,
Jlo
Thank you Judi. I feel the same way about you!
–r
Thank you for your encouragement from Eph. I ought to be like my heavenly Daddy
Great to see you here, Amrita! I love that He is our “Daddy”, and loves us dearly, don’t you?
–r
I am blessed! It is all about Him.
Awesome! I’m gonna pray now in relation to being more like Him. Thanks for this wonderful post!
Great, Daniel! That should be the prayer for all of us, shouldn’t it?
And SueNell, 😉 you’re right. Our Father blesses us more than we can ever imagine.