“Red rover, red rover, we call Cindy over.”
Do you remember this schoolyard game? Admitting so will be sure to expose your age. Apparently, it’s been quite some time since schools have allowed such dangerous activities as charging with reckless abandon toward a haphazard chain of primary school friends.
In Red Rover, two teams line up, facing each other in an open field. Girls and boys of all shapes and sizes link arms, an impenetrable barrier. Or so they hope.
Carefully, teammates scrutinize their opponents. Eyes lock as weight, muscle and speed are accessed from afar. Only the weakest challenger will be selected.
Children wait with hopeful hearts. Please, please, please let it be me! Finally, the team captain (likely the largest and therefore toughest boy) calls me over. My heart swells! He called my name! I can barely believe it’s true. I’ve been chosen. It doesn’t matter one bit that it was for all the wrong reasons!
My heart flits with joy as my gangly legs trot towards the rival team. Carefully I choose the most promising juncture and thrust my way through tiny hands, tearing apart the weakest link.
If I’m successful, I return a hero to my team and bring a captive opponent to beef up our forces. But most likely, I bounce back unsuccessful and meld into the rival squad boosting their ranks.
Either way, I really don’t care. They chose me. My name was called!
Don’t we all want to be chosen? To hear our name ring out? God wove that desire in our hearts when He created us. The desire to be selected, to be picked.
The Bible says God chose me to be His. If you’re in a relationship with Jesus, He chose you too!
This knowledge that I’m hand-picked by God himself is enough. I can stop hoping to be chosen.
There have been times in my life that I flitted from relationship to relationship, person to person deeply craving. Like a puppy at the pound, hoping for love.
I was lost in a perpetuating cycle, continually longing to be prized. And all along God had already chosen me.
Truth is, I still struggle with this. I wonder if I always will. But here’s what I know to be true: He is enough. We can be secure in his love. We don’t need to beg for scraps from people. No longer bait and hope for the right answer to confirm our worthiness.
Countless times, I have set people up as the centre of my life. And countless times I have been let down by their inability to meet my needs physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Do you ever find yourself in this place? Hoping to be chosen and placing impossible expectations on the ones who love you?
Listen, sister let’s take a collective step back and give God his rightful place in the heart of our life. He will never disappoint us. After all, He chose us first.
♥ Tess
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. John 15:16
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 1John 3: 1a
Praise be to the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Ephesians 1:3-4
