Being Beloved
During her time in prayer and preparation for the upcoming academic year, Student Director of Women’s Ministry Anna Sconyers felt that our calling as God’s Beloved is what the women at Colorado Christian University needed to be surrounded with this year. Anna said, “I really just felt Him impress it on my heart that we all need to be reminded of the powerful & kind & deeply tender love he has for us.” From this impression came the theme for the year, “Becoming Beloved.”
God’s kind of love is not just some flowery idea of sunshine and pansies but has deep and powerful effects on the lives of all who follow Christ. Anna believes that “when we truly realize how deeply the Lord loves us, when we really allow that to settle into our hearts and live for Him completely, nothing else matters.” In contrast with it, “all else fades away in the wake of a powerful & loving God whose sights of love are focused right in on us.” Living in light of this focus completely alters the way we live as beloved beings “when we operate out of this place of knowing God calls us his beloved, everything changes – the way we view ourselves, the way we interact with others, the love we show to others, it all changes.”
Along with a theme, Women’s Ministry chose a verse for the year which also centers on the Love of God,
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentation 3:21-23)
Anna observed that “in a book filled with lament & confusion over what the Lord was doing in a season that led only to desperation, the first time hope is introduced is when the love of the Lord is.” She believes the same is true for all of us, “we can so quickly get caught up in living life without remembering the hope found in being loved so tenderly & passionately from the Lord, and the moment we begin to let that settle into our hearts and minds, I feel that’s where we find our ultimate joy & satisfaction that we can find this side of eternity.”
Anna’s hope for the year is that the women of CCU “will lean into this love – that if they haven’t experienced it before, they’ll be able to learn & feel what it’s like to be beloved. If they’ve grown weary or forgotten what it’s like to be his beloved, they’ll remember and draw near & be refreshed in it, encouraged in their journey.” Her prayer is that “the Lord [will] use this year to draw the ladies of CCU back to Him in a tender way & [remind us] of just how present and tender and powerful and lovely and joyful his love for us truly us!”
Being Beloved is not a fluffy statement but a deep, soul-changing journey. On this journey, we discover the identity we were created to live out, and when “we begin operating from a small fraction of knowledge of the identity we were created to have – his beloved, his great work…it truly changes everything.”
Photography by Margaret Sattler
