Likeness

I though it was an odd statement, from the first time I heard it. "The confidence of My likeness will be your portion." Huh?

In the beginning, God said, "Let us make man in our image." He did not then make them pastors, teachers, prophets, and so on, nor did he make them farmers, musicians, and shepherds. No, in making them in His own image, He made them male and female. It is in the very heart of men and the very heart of women that we bear God’s image. (My interpretation of those early chapters is that God originally made adam both male and female—as God is—and later removed the female parts and used them to form a separate entity, so that a man must abandon his own pursuits and loyalties and be joined to a woman in order for them, as "one flesh" to obey God’s command to be fruitful and take dominion over the earth and all its critters.)

Surely God has succeeded in His aim, which leads me to say that when He’s replaced a stony heart with a heart of flesh, that heart bears a resemblance, if you will, to God. It cannot express the fullness of God (all the creation that we know and see and hear, plus all that we can’t know or see or hear, doesn’t manage to do that) but what it contains is the image of God. It would be similar to a photograph of me: it certainly doesn’t express everything I am, but its limited expression is of me. This little blurb demonstrates the same principle. You cannot possibly know me just by reading this (there is so much more to me than this!) but this is a genuine reflection of me. In the same manner, my heart (and, I trust, yours) is a unique and limited expression of who God is.

What’s more, God’s image is portrayed not merely in a unisex or non-sexed heart, but in my feminine heart. And it was right around here that the light bulb went on.

In the past two months, my memory has allowed a truly violent attack against my heart. At times I’ve been overwhelmed with shame (the anti-thesis of confidence) as I’ve been flooded with memories of things that certain people have said to me, and accusations that have been made against me. About a week ago the Lord told me bluntly that it was a lie, but I still didn’t see this connection.

Out of my feminine, God-like heart, I had temporarily set aside accomplishment in order to have relationship. God calls that the better thing (see the famous story of Mary and Martha) but I’d been accused of being a time-waster and of having caused harm, and made to feel ashamed of myself.

But I don’t need to feel ashamed, the Lord tells me, because it is my lot—my portion from Him—to have the confidence of knowing that my heart bears His likeness.

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